Miya Marshall [✔]

~ Chapter 3 ~

The marker squeaked as it wrote on the whiteboard. It seemed to be having a conversation with it in its own language. Miya wondered if the marker knew what it was writing and if the whiteboard understood what was being written on it, because undoubtedly she did not.

“Miya! Miya!” she heard someone repeating her name. Miya came back to reality finding everyone in the classroom watching her – including her English teacher.

“What?” she asked, with a flushed look on her face.

“Can you please read what I have written on the board?” her teacher, Mrs. Collin, asked, slightly annoyed that Miya was daydreaming.

Miya gaped at her teacher. Her hands felt sweaty as she looked at the words on the whiteboard. She felt helpless again, because she knew she couldn’t do it, and she didn’t even know why. Maybe it was her nerves acting up for being called upon without preparation. If so, why were the words dancing and reforming?

“Why didn’t she ask Henry to do it?” Miya thought. He was the class reader, not her.

“We’re all waiting Miya.” Her teacher said, drawing her back into reality. Miya glanced around the class, and sure enough everybody was watching her – including Kaitlyn and Bianca. They stared at their friend wondering why she was taking so long to read.

“Ugh! Mrs. Collins? Can I read what’s on the board?” Henry asked with his hand raise in the air. Miya let out a relieved breath, knowing that she was saved.

“No Henry. I want Miya to do it.” Mrs. Collins replied.

“But Mrs. Collins she’s taking too long!” Henry objected. A few of Miya’s classmates cried in agreement to what Henry said.

“Settle down everyone! Ok, Henry you can go ahead.” She consented. After Henry finished reading the last sentence Mrs. Collins instructed her class to rewrite the sentences within their books in the correct format. In about 10 minutes the bell rang, signally that class and school was over.

“Alright class. Hand your books to the person in front of you.” Mrs. Collins called out over the noise everyone was making. When all the books were collected she then dismissed the class. Through the exiting crowd, she searched for Miya, but did not locate her. When Mrs. Collins was left alone in her classroom she sat at her desk, in front of the massive pile of her student’s books. She wanted to mark them right away so that she could relax later on.

The first book on the pile was Henry’s own. Mrs. Collins smiled, knowing that Henry was her brightest student. It was no surprise at all when he got a 100%. She marked a few more books until she reached Miya’s own. Marking her work was proving an issue, not because it wasn’t completed, but because she couldn’t understand what was written.

“What is this?” Mrs. Collins muttered under her breath. She saw simple words like ‘the’, ‘us’, and ‘body’ spelt incorrectly. They were spelt like ‘de’, ‘uss’, and ‘doby’. Words that were spelt with the letter ‘b’ were then spelt with a ‘d’ instead, and vice versa. Mrs. Collins couldn’t fathom what Miya had wrote. She then decided to look at her work from the beginning of the term. To her surprise, the spelling patterns were all the same.

“How is this possible?” she asked herself as she reclined into her chair. Just then a knock sounded at the door and Mrs. Collins looked to see who it was. It was Ms. Paige, the History teacher. Mrs. Collins invited her into her classroom with a warm smile.

“How are you Ms. Paige?” she asked.

“Better now that my last class is over.” She laughed.

“Same here.” Mrs. Collins agreed. “Well, it was until I picked up Miya’s book.”

“Miya Marshall?” Ms. Paige questioned.