She's Older Than Me

Chapter 13: So Much In August

After some grueling days over books, notebooks, and Johnson’s soufflés, the first periodical exam finally came.

Thursday.

Justin sat on his seat, the last one at the back by the window, and rubbed his hands. Sure, elementary school life had been easy, and he had been able to pass all his exams with good grades despite frolicking around days before the exam, but he found out that high school was not the same. The lessons and the exams had been difficult. Surely, the periodical exam would be difficult too.

But hey, students studying at SIDL always make it. Just like the students studying in his previous school, Ateneo de Manila. Though he and his friends weren’t really that brilliant like the students from Section A, they still managed to get good grades for short quizzes and long exams. This particular exam was a mountain that each student needed to climb in order to succeed.

Miss Alcasid started to do a roll call, and found out that only Keric was absent from the class. She sighed, feeling sorry for him. Oh well, he could take the exam once he gets back, she thought. Then, she grabbed her plastic envelope containing the test papers. As she walked down to distribute the papers, she spoke up.

“Okay class, please do not attempt to cheat,” she said. “And pass only when I tell you to do so.”

The students maintained silence while their corny class adviser cheered on them. As Miss Alcasid turned her back, most of the students were shaking their heads. Yeah right. Miss Alcasid had gone cool because of hip-hop, but her attempt to reach out to students in her own brand of “cuteness” still did not get to them. When will she stop trying too hard to act cute when she’s not even cute?

The teacher went back to her seat and instructed her students to pass the papers. They obeyed religiously and started reading the instructions and scribbling away. The first exam was Chinese subject, followed by Reading, Science, and English subjects.

Meanwhile, at Frigate Academy.

Mr. Udagawa started to pass the papers for English subject. The students were aware that cheating, even an attempt to do so, would get them punished, no matter how organized the planning and execution were. They remembered two classmates who were expelled the year before because they cheated during the third periodical examination, and it was the terror teacher, Mdm. Rudas, who had facilitated the said exam. They thought they should not do anything shameful for fear of losing their cool points. For Mr. Udagawa, they were willing to be good girls all year long.

He looked at his girls pondering deeply, getting lost in the examination. Nadine, who was crying in front of him two weeks ago, was attentive and ready to conquer. Ashley was tapping the test paper with her pen, her favorite study tic. Natasha, a skinny and tall girl at the back, was yawning, and her neighbor Andromache, yawned after her.

The room was very quiet although the place was very stuffy and uncomfortable, for it was a humid day. Mr. Udagawa went around the room to increase the speed of each wall fan to give comfort to each student. Then, he went back to his seat and grabbed a notebook from his portfolio. He started to scribble something, writing a poem about the stillness of the day and the unspoken battle his students were fighting today. As he monitored his students, his fingers lazily scanned from the past pages until he came across a poem he wrote about and for Miss Alcasid.

Years from your life

Flow gracefully like the wind.

Youth is replaced by glorious age

Once young, now an adult