Cowgirl Cat

Chapter 4

Math Mayhem

I hate math.

It just stinks. And the only thing worse than math is my teacher who has a thing about blood and germs. As soon as someone gets a cut, she immediately sends them to the hallway to wait while she writes a pass to go to the nurse. Then she sprays the place where the victim had been seated with Lysol and dims the lights because, as she tells it, "Germs love the bright light."

One day, I told my mom about this weird phobia that Mrs. Strayer has and, sure enough, Mom shook her head, then reached for her cell phone. She's a Googler. If anyone raises a question or makes a statement that has the slightest possibility of not being true, she's on it, like a monkey on a banana. Alex always rolls his eyes and threatens me when I mention something dumb that might trigger her compulsion to research stupid things.

"Why'd you feed the monkey?" he whispers whenever I challenge Mom about some weird random fact.

At school today, I got cut during gym. We were playing volleyball and Leslie Murphy kicked the ball right into my ankle, only the ball missed and her shoe didn't. I'm positive she did it on purpose. The good news is that I got to sit out the rest of the period while lounging on the bleachers and playing on my iPhone.

Now, however, I'm sitting at my desk in the worst math class ever. To make time pass faster, I scroll through my iPhone to see if Aiden Quinn uploaded any new videos. When I see that he hasn't, I watch his old ones, letting them loop over and over again. I must have sighed, thinking that he is the most adorable boy on the planet, because I sense a heavy silence fall over the room. When I look up, people are staring at me and I'm worried that my obsession with the videos has been discovered.

That's when I realize that Mrs. Strayer is staring at me, too, her eyes bulging out of her head and her hands on her hips. She looks like she's ready to lose it.

"What. Is. That?"

It takes me a moment to realize that she is talking to me. When she turns around and stares daggers at me...I realize I'm doomed.

I also realize that I have only two choices...honesty vs. playing dumb. I quickly decide that the former would mean no smartphone for the rest of the day (and that would definitely be bad) while the latter, playing dumb, might buy me some time.

"I'm sorry," I say innocently. "What?"

She lifts her arm and points at me, only she's not pointing at my phone, but pointing at my leg, instead. "Is that blood?" she questions.

I breathe a sigh of relief. She didn't catch me scrolling through the videos. She's more concerned about the scrape on my leg. "A volleyball accident," I explain, shifting my weight so that my ankle is more visible to her. At the same time, I manage to slip the phone into my book bag so its safety is ensured.

She flings her arm toward the door. "Wait outside!"

Quickly I gather all of my things. I know the routine. Once sent to the nurse from Strayer's class, I won't be able to return until the next day. I stand in the doorway, half in and half out of the classroom as she writes the pass, hands it to Tommy Linn to bring to me and then reaches for the light switch to darken the room. Her standard quest against germs spreading.

I can't help myself. The words just blurt out of my mouth, as if I have no control of myself. "You do know germs breed faster in the dark, don't you?"

There is a collective gasp from the rest of the students and every pair of eyes turn to look at Ms. Strayer. If she looked like she might have exploded beforehand, I sense the completion of that act is upon us. She's clenching her teeth and her hands are curled into fists as she stares at me before reaching for the can of Lysol that sits on her desk.