An Insomniac's Guide to Anxiety - Book 1 of the Life is a Disorder Series

Chapter 5 - Send Them to Australia if They Break a Rule

Allison Davis

I had vivid nightmares. The majority of them were all very different. I only had one recurring dream in my entire life.

However, after my first day of teaching, I was exhausted and had no energy to avoid sleep like I normally did. I fell asleep in a bed for the first time in a week. Caitlin and Maggie, of course, didn't realize that I didn't sleep. They probably just assumed I went to bed after them and woke up before them.

As I drifted off to sleep, I was back in my classroom with Ms. Clarke. She was throwing wads of notebook paper at me and booing.

That was as bad as my nightmares got that night, thankfully. At least I wasn't still scared when I woke up.

The following morning, I made coffee and poured three mugs of it before the other two got up. Maggie cheered. "Thank you, thank you, thank you. I slept horribly last night."

"How come?" Caitlin asked, a note of worry in her voice.

"I don't know. I was just worried about school, I guess. It's weird being the new kid," Maggie explained. I frowned.

"Have the kids been nice to you?"

"Oh yeah, of course. Ms. Clarke set me up with a nice guy and he introduced me to his friends. I've been hanging out with them and I really like them," Maggie assured me. "I'm worried about band. But I'm excited for Creative Writing today."

"Me too," I admitted. Creative Writing was why I had really become an English major. Writing was my passion. "I'll see you second period, I guess."

Maggie smiled.

***

"What's a cliché?" I asked, grinning.

"An overused topic or idea," a junior in Maggie's class listed off like a walking dictionary.

"Correct," I said. "When is a good time to use them?"

"Never?" Cyrus grinned at me and I smirked. He was apparently the boy that had taken in Maggie to his group of friends. He seemed like a nice boy, though I couldn't imagine him being the top pick to show a new kid around school.

"Wrong. There are times to use clichés and that's usually when you can't find an alternative route. As in, if you were to go down the other path, so to speak, it would be utterly ridiculous and not fit in with the story at all. Also if you foreshadow something, it's a general rule that you should follow through.

"But, breaking clichés is one of the best ways to write and live. For example," I smiled slyly and climbed up onto the desk of a boy in the front row. He jumped back in surprise, nearly knocking his chair over. Some people stood up in alarm and others cried out.

Maggie grinned as though she'd been expecting this. "What teacher have you ever seen to teach from standing on a desk?" I yelled triumphantly. I clicked play and a video of a teacher yelling at students about not allowing pomegranates started on the screen.

"This teacher tells students how to teach in a negative and positive ways, using pomegranates as an example. It's actually really funny to watch because she demonstrates the wrong way..."

"No, no, no pomegranates!" the squat teacher exclaimed in the video. The class roared with laughter.

I didn't come to the ground after the video finished. I leapt to my desk and stayed elevated from the floor. "Alright, so," I stated. "I've broken a cliché of teaching from the floor. What clichés do you guys want to write?" Some few people raised their hands slowly but I shook my heads. "No, write them down. Write a short story that breaks a cliché and hand it in next class. You'll have the rest of class to finish. I suggest you pull your laptops into your laps though." I chuckled. "Now that I'm up here I don't want to come down." For the rest of the period I walked across the desktops of the students, watching them work. Maggie looked delightedly at her screen, smiling as I passed over her desk.