The Ghost Room (Frerard) - DISCONTINUED TEMPORARILY

"Like an avalanche." (3)

Hey, readers! Sorry this took so long. It's been exactly a month and a day since the last update and I'm super sorry for that, but life has been weird as heck recently. I had my first meeting with a psychiatrist (which was scary as hell,) I went to Washington D.C. for a week, and I've done a lot of strange moving back and forth between houses.
There's not much otherwise to say here except, like always, if you spot a typo or an awkwardly worded sentence, PLEASE, point it out! I do my best to edit but sometimes I miss things, and I want to make this story as good as possible for you all.
And, like last chapter, if you have a ghost (or just generally creepy/unsettling) story that has happened to you or a friend, please do share it if you haven't already! I'm collecting research for the rest of TGR and every bit you guys share with me is helpful.

Thanks so much, everyone! Sorry again for the wait, I hope you enjoy!

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School sucks. And not in the cool, like, blowjob type of way. It sucks in the vacuum type of way, draining innocent children and already hopeless teens of their souls. It's based on biased opinions and doesn't even teach important things, like how to survive a panic attack or what to do when you feel like killing yourself.

You never hear of English teachers giving gay kids books with gay main characters so that maybe- just maybe- they'll have something to connect to besides the offensive comments muttered in locker rooms. You never hear of science teachers teaching the chemistry behind crushes or first loves or why the hell cute people make you feel like you're dying. School teaches the shit that doesn't matter. It judges kids based on their ability to do the exact same thing as everyone else. Be original, they say, but don't stray too far from the land of conformity or you'll be bullied for it.

They want to "prepare us for the real world," right? No one fucking talks about the carbon cycle, in the real world, not unless they want to dedicate their life to science. No one discusses math theories in their time off, unless they're an architect.

School doesn't teach us what we want to know, only what they want us to know for the jobs that we don't wanna' do.

What's the point in teaching a kid who's in love with Hemingway an entire lecture about the second World War? That kid doesn't give a fuck. He never will. He just wants to write, so goddamn, why didn't he get into Creative Writing? Because there wasn't enough space in the classroom? Bullshit. That kid in the back of Creative Writing, he fucking loves learning about wars. His grandpa died overseas, he wants to honor that. But do the teachers care, do the principles make efforts to help kids follow their passions, like they say they do? Absolutely not. All they care about is if we pass their tests.

I hadn't paid attention to a single word my teacher had said during the past hour, and I wasn't planning on starting any time soon. There were only ten minutes left of class but my brain really did not wanna' focus on math. It wasn't that I hated my teacher, he had an okay personality and sometimes wore this really neat Carcass shirt on casual Fridays, but it pissed me off. The fact that I was being shoved in that shithole of a room, against my will, and was being taught mind-numbing information that I would never use? It fucking pissed me off.

Like, seriously? Math? I could add up how much change the guy at McDonalds owed me, I'd helped my mom pay the taxes before. That's all I needed to know, right? Food, taxes. Simple.

But, fuck. Fucking imaginary numbers? They were imaginary, couldn't we keep them that way?

I'd been doodling on my notebook for a while, a few stick figures with lamely captioned speech bubbles, but it was something besides math, so my brain felt slightly less tense.

I wanted to text Ryan but there was no angle I could hold my phone at that would successfully shield it from the teacher.

My stick figures did not feel like good company.