SHOUT - Adopted by Lin Manuel Miranda

THE GRIND

On Monday I wake up with a migraine and stay home from school. Vanessa picks up my homework from Wilmington on the way back from work. Lin stays home with me and watches bad cartoons while I try to nap on the couch. He doesn't mention the computer. 

I feel worse when I return to school the next day. I ditch homeroom and retreat to the second floor girl's bathroom. I lock myself in the last stall, try to fall asleep. Can't fall asleep. Count salmonella molecules in the air. Pretend I'm Vanessa performing an experiment, formulating a hypothesis. Conclusion: there are enough salmonellas to take down Harvard med. 

I slunk around the empty halls before walking into english ten minutes late. We're studying poems written by dead guys in powdered wigs. I try to fall asleep again. Can't fall asleep. The kid who asked me if he could borrow my eraser on the first day pegs me with spitballs whenever Ms. Rishanki isn't looking. I pick them out of my hair when no one is watching. I'm too worn out to fight him. 

Ms. Rishanki tells us to read the chapters carefully so many times, I know she's baiting me. I rest my head on the desk and shut my eyes until the bell rings. She stops me on my way out the door to ask if I'm okay. 

I push past her into the hallway. 

Getting through this day without jumping through the shiny glass windows is like running an uphill race towards a finish line that never comes. I try to sleep in each class, but always wake up to the same nightmare of an angry teacher yelling teacherthings in my face. Pay attention. Turn in last month's homework. Potential, potential, potential. I catch a glimpse of myself in one of the windows on my way to science class. I'm trudging, hunched over with books weighing down my arms. I look burnt out, like some freshly bitten zombie, dragged from the grave but too tired to suck any brains. Hasn't quite adjusted to the hivemind of delirium.

Seventh period, I get to the library before Gracie. Sit at our table. Try to fall asleep. Don't fall asleep. Draw mehndi on my homework. When Gracie finally walks into the library fifteen minutes late to our session, she sits across from me and crows for the entire library to hear: "I did it!"

The librarian glances our way and puts her finger to her lips. I don't know why she hasn't stapled Gracie's mouth shut with one of their blue Wilmington staplers. What could Gracie possibly do to fight back? Slander the librarians in the school newspaper? If The Guys From The Newspaper bless her with an open column, that is. 

Yeah, right.

She launches into some story about how Matthew let her write a sample article for next month's edition. I pick at my nails and nod whenever her words hit a dead end. She wrote about the imminent extinction of pandas in China. My existence as a Wilmington graduate is going to go extinct if she doesn't shut up and tutor me. 

Eventually she pauses her story to inhale. I lift my head from the table when she goes quiet. "Are you ready to learn?" She asks. 

There's no such thing as being ready to learn about Shakespeare. We might as well be studying hieroglyphs. Gracie opens her folder and dumps a tsunami of papers onto the table. Mrs. Rishanki bombs us with stanzas and gives us one night to decipher them. We have to explain them in our journals each morning. I stopped writing in my journal a while ago. I usually shut my eyes and dream up solemn letters of farewell to my deteriorating brain cells. Makes the time fly by. 

Gracie moves her index finger along the words as she reads aloud. " 'Beauty itself doth of itself persuade the eyes of men without orator.' Try and translate that, Vidya."

"Beauty is..." I speak into the lip of my sleeve. "Beauty is on the inside, or something like that."

Gracie chews on her top lip for a moment before stacking the papers into a pile. "The test is next week."