F*** Cancer, This One Did Us All In.

1

"Theodore." Amelia whispered to me. "Theodore, wake up. You need to wake up. Theodore!" My eyes snapped open and I was once again introduced to consciousness. I moved my aching jaw around as I moved my head away from my folded arms. I blinked a few times before realizing that I had been sleeping on a desk. In a class. During class. More importantly, Mrs Hobkins class. Now, don't get me wrong. Mrs Hobkins is a nice lady. You know, if you like all the evils of the earth trapped inside a fifty something year old who's been a teacher for thirty years. Then she's a blast. But if you're a child or a human being capable of feeling emotion then she wouldn't seem so nice. Especially if you fall asleep in her class. I looked to the front of the class, I expected to see her brown eyes examining my soul and figuring out the best ways to embarrass and humiliate me but instead I saw her with her back to the class, writing on the board.

"Your welcome." Amelia whispered to me and I turned to her and smiled.

"Thanks." I whispered. My voice was going through that stage in my life where it sounded like somebody shoved an upset porcupine up my ass. It was a medium high pitch, constantly whiny and I hated it in every way I possibly can. When I tried to whisper I was either too soft or too loud. But I risked whispering because Amelia just saved me from a week of detentions. Amelia was my best friend. She had brown hair that was plaited. Her left eye was green and her right eye was blue. She had a spray of freckles on her cheeks and nose. She had braces and always wore a band around her wrist that said "Save the world" or "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle". We had been good friends for the past three years, ever since our first day at high school. She was always trying to get me to join some club for saving the world or learning how to stitch wounds but I never really was into that stuff. I liked running. I was the fastest runner in our school. I was a fan of Dungeons & Dragons. She was a fan of Science. She never even knew who Anakin Skywalker was before we met.

So, yeah, we didn't have a lot in common but I still risked whispering. I gambled. Threw my die onto the table of life in a game against bad luck. There was only two ways this could end. Me speaking too soft so she doesn't even hear me but understands. Or I speak too loud and she hears me but also Mrs Hobkins. I took the chance. I jumped into the unknown. I played the game. And, I lost. I fell. I went the second way and bad luck completely owned my ass. I just had time to grimace before Mrs Hobkins turned.

"Who talked?" she asked, her hawk-like eyes already surveying the class. I tried to act casual but must have failed because she stared at me and said, "Theodore, did you talk?" I don't know why she would ask me if she already knew the answer to the question but I felt it was safer to answer honestly.

"Yes ma'am." I said in my annoying voice that I hated so much.

She stared at me for a moment as if she was trying to give me nightmares. Whether or not she was trying, I knew it worked. "Why were you talking?" Oh crap. I don't think telling her I was thanking my friend, who woke me up in her class, was going to get me any golden stickers.

"Um . . . erm . . . uhh . . ."

"That's what I thought." She said, which just brought up so many unanswered questions for me. "Be here tomorrow afternoon. Two till four." I wanted to groan but I didn't. There was this one time a kid groaned after receiving punishment from Mrs Hobkins. She asked to see him after class. The next day, he wasn't at school. Then the day after. Then the day after the day after that. I had been working on a theory that she had killed him when we had been informed that he had left the school. So, yeah. She turned around and continued writing a complicated equation on the board with a lot of x's and y's and m's and, surprisingly for a maths class, a sore lack of actual numbers.