The Dream Trotters

Chapter 14

Pencils clicked clatteringly around the room, creating a pandemonium of noise.  Up, down, up, down.  The top of the pen splurged into the body, sending the inky tip in and out.  Was it choice a or b?  Finn sat in his desk, annoyed by all the noise, yet tapping his own pencil against the desk.  

These surprise quizzes were what killed his grade. In reality, he had known about it for the last week, just not cared enough to study.  Basically, he dug himself his own grave.  That is, the grade point average grave.  You see, to adults, school doesn’t seem too hard.  All you have to do is try hard, do a minimal amount of studying each night, pay attention in class.  

But in reality, school is more than just grades- it’s a battlefield.  Sometimes, social standings are much more important than meaningless numbers on inky pages.  Yet that attitude always came back to bite Finn in the back.  He turned, staring discretely at the clock, which adorned each room.  Finally, he indecisively circled choice b.

Slowly stepping up to the desk, he slipped the thinly heavy paper into the box.  Slipping back to his desk, he threw open his notebook.  Of course, the answer had been choice a.  Yet outside his desk of indecision, the teacher couldn’t hear the screams of graphite sticks, sacrificing their innards to display meaningless markings on the compressed relics of trees.

He just sat reading a book, in the most common manner.  Without windows, the room was a jungle, but not the good kind.  Hours earlier, hygiene challenged seniors had inhabited the room, releasing toxic breath into the atmosphere.

Within this destructive hemisphere, lived Finn.  Sitting and staring at the clock was his life.  Counting down the minutes, forever waiting.  It never ended though.  Even a consoling sustenance break, he was back in the knowledge induced slumbers, struggling to not fall into a boredom induced comma.  

Even though he had nothing better to think about, the thoughts of yesterday’s occurrences hadn’t passed through the newsreel of his mind, the first time in hours.  Instead, he sat crunched in his chair, pivoting around and staring at all that encompassed him.  

His surroundings were no exception today.  Walls, composed of cinder blocks painted over in tacky tan paint, surrounded him on every side, cutting off every seeable exit.  A white, yet never completely clean white board dominated the focal point of the room, shouting out its contents even to the blindest students.  

The ceiling was bleak, no fans, and just extremely temperate florescent lights, trapped in condensed tubes.  The light that was admitted from these came with no small price; they were constantly emitted a buzz, just audible enough for the human ear to hear.  To the teen ear, it sounded somewhere in between the sound that accompanies static on a TV, mixed with the screech of a mosquito, floating around one’s head.  

All these colors, all these noises diverted Finn, completing a harmony of discord- basically the most distracting environment one can be in.  The teacher’s voice was lost within the tranquil clamor, yet was still noticeable.  It didn’t help that Finn’s current teacher, whatever his name was, sounded pretty close to a yippy Chihuahua.

Because it was mid-November, a dusty heater raged on in the corners, choking out ancient warmth, which nobody wanted.  Finn though about raising his hand, to condemn the heaters back to the coldness from which they came.  He knew better.  

There was always the one student, normally a girl, who sat in the front row, shivering and shaking no matter the season.  A red, drippy nose almost always accompanied the girl, which made her all the more pitiable.  

His objection would be overruled no matter his plea.  Through the back of his casual t-shirt, imaginative sweat slipped down his back, plastering him to the humid metal of the compact, mint-green desk.  It was no longer a struggle to listen; it was a war to survive.  

Each second was an internal battle.  The day was almost done, for this was the last class of the day.  A man’s endurance is clearly tried through such experiences, a feeling that Finn felt every day.  

Would he give in and ask to turn the heaters off?  The following milliseconds passed like Christmas break afternoons spent lazily lying in front of fireplaces.  Essentially, incredibly slowly.  Finally, when all hope was almost gone, the bell rang.  The startling sound awoke all the students from their trances, summoning them to go home, only to return in about seventeen hours. The day was over.

The conqueror of his own trials, he weaved through the halls triumphant.  Finally he reached his locker, entered the code into the lock, and yanked the door open.  The contents were messy, yet not dirty.  A strange, malignant odor seemed to escape from the lockers of other students, yet not his.  

The charred hat which lay on the sole shelf of his locker incited awaked the shallowly buried thoughts; and as students attempted to converse with him, he didn’t care.  Finn ignored all attempts of conversation that were made on the behalf of others; he only had one person that he was dying to talk too.  

Shoving his homework into a black canvas backpack, he slammed the locker door shut.  Then he proceeded out the front of his school, to retrieve his bike.  Then he found his target- the girl with the tight braids with the white streak.