Among Dragons (Editing)

Chapter 1

My eyes struggled to stay focused on the textbook that was spread open across my desk. The teacher’s voice seemed to induce their swaying into sleep from the unchanging tone of it. Right as I felt my body slipping into the blissfully numbing sensation, the sharp incline  in the volume of the voice snapped me awake.

“Any questions?” She scanned the classroom briefly before giving a confirming nod. “Okay.”

I looked around at my classmates cautiously. Had any of them caught me nodding off? I got no looks that confirmed my question, though. They all looked back and forth from their papers to their books, every so often scribbling something down quickly. My eyes followed my teacher walk back to her desk. She sat down in a way that told me she had no intention of teaching us more.

That’s when I realized how screwed I was. I took a deep breath to try and calm the dread that was beginning to blossom in my stomach.

Of course I would zone out when she gave us directions to do something. Now I had no clue what I was supposed to be writing down, and the board up front had no directions for me to try and decipher, either. I was completely on my own this time.

My eyes shifted to my left discreetly to try and catch what the person next to me was writing. It seemed like some sort of structured response by the way they worded their sentences, though I saw no question at the top of the paper.

A low sigh hissed from my mouth at the uselessness. Instead of just sitting around not writing anything, I had about a fifty-fifty chance at picking one of the two questions printed at the bottom of the page of the textbook.

It was close to the end of the class anyways, which meant this was probably our homework for the night. I could always ask Lila what we were actually supposed to be writing about later. If she was closer to me I could just ask her now, but of course her seat was on the entire other side of the classroom. I couldn’t even see her through the students around us, let alone ask her a question. The only thing visible from my position was the very top of her curly brown hair.  

I began to write down my response to the first question slowly. It asked to describe the symbolism used in Edgar Allen Poe’s writings, and how they related to his life. My nose wrinkled from annoyance. It was hard enough to try and understand what he was saying, let alone analyze symbolism of all things. Air hissed through my teeth in another frustrated sigh.

At least five minutes passed with me staring absentmindedly at my long wavy hair as it piled on the edge of my textbook. Golden colored streaks mixed with the light brown color of it, reminding me of a honey pot. I turned my attention back to the question in the text. 

The whir of the air conditioning was loud in the silence, and once I realized how loud it was, it was all I seemed to be able to focus on. The sound of it served as a hinderance to my thoughts. The pencil I was holding hovered nearly a centimeter over the sheet of lined paper, the only words scratched onto the surface being ones that simply repeated the question.

The person to my left sniffed slightly. A couple of seconds passed before they did it again, and then repeated that same process. I could feel my teeth clench at the constant sound. Had they been doing that the entire class? It was honestly not that hard to simply walk up to the front of the classroom and get a tissue.

The combination of the air conditioner, the sniffler to my left and my incompetence towards the question whirled together inside my head at once. They ate my nerves short, until it felt like I was going to explode and start screaming just to get my anger out.

Almost like it was answering my silent calls to end the mild torture I was experiencing, the soft sound of the bell chimed like the sweetest sound on Earth.

In record breaking time, all of my stuff was shoved into my backpack and I was following Lila as we merged into the stuffy crowd of students shuffling down the hall.

“Hey, do you think you could send me the prompt we were actually supposed to be writing?” I asked her with a pleading look. “I completely zoned out what she was saying at the end. It was just too much for me to handle.”

Lila let out an exasperated sigh. “Of course you did, Eris. I don’t even question it anymore,” She grinned sarcastically, her dark brown eyes lighting up. “I’ll text it to you, but I have no control over you even remembering to do it or not.”

“Hey, it’s not my fault if I zone out listening to someone drone on about the significance of symbolism for over a half hour straight.”

“Hmm, you’re right. I don’t really blame you for today. I nearly missed out on the lesson and that’s my favorite class. It didn’t help that the two chatty cathys behind me decided to whisper the entire time.”

“You know you love eavesdropping,” I gave her a teasing nudge. “Don’t deny yourself the simpler pleasures of life.”

She snorted. The action made her normally welcoming and happy face turn sardonic. “Simple pleasures? More like minor tortures.”

I stopped at the door of my French classroom with reluctance tugging at my chest. “Speaking of torture.”

My eyes locked with hers. “I don’t want you to leave,” I pouted sarcastically.

She smiled vibrantly and stuck her tongue out. “You say that like it’s my fault I was forced into German.” Her nose wrinkled as if by just mentioning the class,  a deep boredom stirred to well up and overtake her.  “I’m constantly surrounded by people trying to pronounce things like they’ve got something stuck in  their throat.”

I shrugged. “What can you expect? Half the kids in that class are failing already, you said so yourself. Let them get as many points for effort as possible to try and raise up the grade. ”

“Trust me, no amount of participation in the world could bring up those grades.” Her eyes rolled in exasperation. “I’m definitely counting down the days until it’s over, believe me.”

“About seventy six, not even counting weekends and days off,” I added for her. Of course I knew the exact number of days left. I kept a little countdown in the corner of every square on my calendar.

Lila shivered at the number overdramatically. She turned with a slight wave before drifting crankily into the crowd of students to head further down the hall.

My seat was awkwardly warm when I sat down in it. It was hard to stifle the groan of disgust from tumbling out of my mouth. Nothing was worse than feeling the leftover body heat from some random stranger.

Right as the bell rang the teacher walked in with a rigid stride, her voice filling the room with foreign sounds. She started writing verb forms up on the board that we had started yesterday. I just stared at her absently. I had no clue what she was saying. I never did. My eyes drifted up towards the clock above the door. A low, heavy sigh escaped my mouth, and with it went all the motivation and tenseness in my body.

I allowed myself to fall under the spell of my imagination and disappear from my current world. It was the only way I really survived school. Every class I would fade away from my body and enter the many realms my mind provided me. I could slip into them as easy as sliding through water, the worlds always swirling over my body to give me a life I would never experience. I wasn’t just in French class anymore. I was in a new world where verb conjugation didn’t matter and I could push myself to be a hero and overcome amazing feats. Most of the time I didn’t even imagine myself. I bent and flexed into other personalities, other lives that I would never be capable of making a reality from.

Hey guys, I did some major editing on this, so just a heads up if you have read it before and noticed something was a little different or the comments don't make sense e.o