Stuck at the Galleria

Act 1: The Fall (by Tre Listman) (part 1)

and so it begins.

stuck at the galleria by lyle terry

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"Alright, class. Settle down, please. Shall we go over our assignment from last night?" In front of the whiteboard was my teacher, her brown, elegant-looking dress drooping to her heels. It must have been a Tuesday.

I hauled out my big book o' pre-algebra from my backpack, and flipped to page 93 – in which there were several graphing questions that I'd agonized over the nightbefore. Why do these teachers feel like they have to torture us, even when we're away from their grasp? I figured it was because the principal paid them lousy money for it. Pfft, some living that would make.

Anyway, where did my paper go? It wasn't there where I'd stuffed it. A blushing sweat rushed over me. This was embarrassing. I hurriedly rummaged through my stuff, fingers searching every dark corner of my bag for it. All the time I was wondering why I had to bore myself with this incredibly dull pre-alg stuff every day- when I could be a hero already by this time.

I could be saving the cat from that tree. Get my name in the papers and on TV and everything. The whole enchilada.

Yeah. That's the life. People just going on, chanting my name like a celebrity or something. Tre! Tre! Tre! Tre...

"Ahem, Tre!"

That one, unlike the others, was not just in my head.

Oh, darn. I felt a shiver up my spine. My teacher must have noticed me. I didn't dare to look up. I just sunk like a tall, brown stick into my sweatshirt, frozen in my seat.

I'd hoped I could disappear.

"Mr. Listman!" she called. My name. And when she says "mister", you know you're getting it good. She was going in for the kill.

Here I was in the starkness of the most white and cookie-cutter classroom you could find anywhere on the planet, the unwilling star of a government-mandated reality TV show.

Welcome to Fillmore Junior High. Enjoy your learning.

"Mr. Listman!" she said. "Would you kindly come up front and show us how you did question no. 1!"

...How did I do it again? I was trudging between the long desk rows of desks, to the front of the classroom. I swear my legs had some lead weight then. Then before I knew it, I was right beside Miss McGraw, and she had her hand out to me with the whiteboard marker. I gulped. Her big, cute, brown eyes were scrutinizing me all over. Man, she can be pretty sometimes, I admit. If only she weren't such a... well, a bum.

I took the marker.

"Well, first, uh, " I went, facing my class— I got stage fright. "I to-took the equation of the line... and then, er, I determined the line's... slantedness?"

"Come on, Tre, it's the slope!" some chick yelled from the back.

"Yeeeeeah, that thing. The slope. After that, I..."

My mind went blank. The classroom was eyeballing me. I could feel their gazes burning away at my head.

"I..." I went. There was nothing but the slow tick, tick, tick of the overhead clock. "—excuse me, I gotta go to the bathroom."

And I zipped right out the door and made a beeline straight to the men's restroom, where I stayed in one of the stalls, waiting for the bell to ring.

Phew, that was close. I'd pick my stuff up on the break, provided the teacher hadn't confiscated it.

Or that someone hadn't taken a whizz on it.