The Day of The Escape

I. Typical Teacher's Ways, Hot versus Hormonal Students, and a Text.

 Typical Teacher’s Ways, Hot versus Hormonal Students, and a Text.

C21.

I wasn’t ready for this. You think I’d be used to this by now. You think I’d be used to plastering a small smile on my face and striding into that doorway to my inevitable doom, but I’m not… I mean, I wasn’t. Nerves filled my every bone and I couldn’t breathe as I read over the room number for the seventh time just to make sure that it was the right doorway, into the right classroom, where the right teacher would teach the right English class. I hugged my notebook tightly to my chest as I finally took my first steps into the nearly empty room; I pulled down on the long, right sleeve of my, what-most-would-call, ‘oversized sweatshirt’ and walked further into the dimly lit room. One of the lights flickered overhead and the square, incredibly claustrophobic room nauseated me. Up on the smartboard mounted to the far wall was a seating chart and I had to squint in order to see the names that were in each little square.

Alphabetical Order… how completely original.

I quietly slipped into my cold desk chair and opened my notebook to doodle my own drawings, for only my own eyes, cowering at the thought of someone trying to talk to me. And as it would be, when the bell rang my pen left a large red blemish down the page due to my complete jittery-ness.

I hoped that no one had noticed my nervousness as I was hunched over in my seat and dared to looked around, noticing the total lack of students in the room and not one with their eyes on me. Most likely because it was the first day of school and “no one can ever find their classes”.  Juniors! We are all Juniors in this class, so how can you NOT know where your classrooms are?

It wasn’t until five minutes after the late bell that everyone was in the room and most people into their correct seats. I say most because there were two that switched, Hannah and Casey, because Hannah ‘just HAD to sit next to her boo or she’d die’. Might I remind you it was ‘her boo’ of like three days. I couldn’t help it as I rolled my eyes before focusing back on my doodling. Don’t get me wrong here though. I would much rather have Hannah sitting in the T section of last names instead of her old seat, also know as the one right behind me. Casey I could deal with when she wasn’t with ‘the Group’, but Hannah- Hannah’s a different story.

The teacher limped into the classroom, just as Casey sat down. The teacher, a middle aged man, on the older side of the spectrum, with those old people glasses and a balding spot on the back of his head, trudged to the front of the room with a thick stack of white printing papers in his hands. I knew those were going to be copies of his Syllabus for us. Hip hip Hooray...

“Hello Everyone.” the man’s old, cracked voice, which I assume is this way from smoking because you could just smell yesterday's pack wafting off of him as he hobbled by you, let out, “I hope you all enjoyed your Summer.” the silent air after that was broken by his hoarse cough, “My name is Mr. Hiltons and I will be your English teacher for the whole year.” … that is if he makes it through the whole year.

We were less than three minutes into the first teaching of the first day and already I felt like hitting my head on the desk. I wonder if I hit my head hard enough on my desk it would kill me? After having to physically restrain myself from doing so I noticed his lack of presence in the front where he was prior to my zoning out.

“Kaylee Astown?” he called from his ‘L-shaped’ desk in the back of the room.

“Here.”

He looked up to see her face to connect the name to the face, but I doubt he could really see her face with his vision.

“Samuel Austin?”