Lullabies

Two.

“What is the name of the 79th element in the periodic table?” Mrs Bolswick asked, striding purposefully through the maze of desks that had been placed four neat lines throughout the room. Her strict voice bounced off the walls, reverberating through every inch of my brain and effectively making my head throb.

Mrs Bolswick was one of my least favourite teachers. To say I hated the woman would probably be the understatement of the century, trust me when I say the feeling is mutual. She loathes the fact that I get placed into her class every year and calls on me at every opportunity she can in hopes that I’ll request a transfer out of said class. I never do. Messing with her is too much fun. Which is why it probably wasn’t one of my smartest ideas to take my phone out in the middle of class and start texting Hayley, I mean I didn’t even hide it under the desk. I resisted the urge to slap myself for the stupidity.

“Miss Hartwood,” she began scathingly. Her eyes sweeping up and down my slouched form with a fiery expression, she glared as those unnaturally black eyes came to rest upon the purple device that I was clutching between my palms. “Maybe you’d like to regale the class with whatever is so important that you see fit not to pay attention.”

Her blood red lips stretched back into what I think would have been a smirk, although it was hard to tell since her face seemed to be stuck in a permanent scowl. I rolled my eyes at the challenging tone in her voice and stood up, reaching my hand out to the guy who had been seated next to me.

He was hesitant to take it, I bit back the annoyance that was burning through my blood stream and fixed him with what my mother would call a film stars smile. “Mind giving me a hand?”

When he finally slipped his hand into mine his palm was sweaty and before I could change my mind and let go of his hand Bolswick spoke up from behind me.

“We are waiting,” I looked at her over my shoulder, giving her a sickly sweet grin and nodding my head like a good little student. I lifted my leg up, getting my boot situated on the wooden top of the stool before using sweaty guy’s hand to propel me up. I ignored the wolf whistles that sounded around the room as they saw a little more leg than I’d hoped they would. I was dying to say something sarcastic, like how it would probably be the only naked part of a girl they would ever see but I really didn’t want two detentions today.

With a deep breath in through my nose, I stepped up onto the lab table with multi-coloured flecks in bizarre patterns all the way through it. I often spent the whole of my science lessons staring at this table, trying to see objects within the flecks, much like kids do while gazing up at clouds.

I glanced around at the entranced students who were gazing up at me, my old and irrational – or so my mother told me – fear of people staring at me flitted through my body. I closed my eyes, the phrase that my mom had drilled into my head since the tragic night of my 2nd grade Christmas Nativity play.

I had been Mary, all dressed up in the blue and white outfit, so excited and wanting to please my mother. But the moment I stepped up onto the stage, the lights shining down on me so brightly that I couldn’t see the faces of the crowd I clammed up. My throat tightened so much that no words would escape it, one thing did escape it through and that was vomit that I spewed all over the crowd of faceless people beneath me.

“Grace,” She had said as she dragged me out of the hall, I was sobbing and apologizing for humiliating her. “Stage fright is irrational. All those people want to see you do well and by not delivering your lines correctly and professionally you are disappointing them.” Then she’d strutted back into the school building like she owned the place. I knew that I had to possess some degree of confidence to be able to do anything remotely worthy of my mother’s attention and from that day forward I strived for it. Well up until high school when she became a little too much to handle.