I Suck At School

            Amy stumbles out of Mrs. Brampton’s class, muttering. After nearly an hour, the most part of it spent chastising Amy (mostly) and the other students about time-consciousness and punctuality, Mrs. Brampton had finally gone on to teach them poetry.

Amy is beside herself with something akin to rage. Her face is flush with colour, but so are most of the other students who are leaving the class. At least, she didn’t get any after-school. She couldn’t imagine another minute in a space with indomitable, rigid Mrs. Brampton.

Today of all days. Today. Perfect!

The walk to her locker is short, mostly because she stomps nearly all the way, swinging her short legs without care; Kosi is nowhere to be found, probably having one of her own classes. It does not bother Amy that she might be late for her own class—no one is ever early to Music class. Except you’re Travis.

Beautiful, magnificent, musical Travis.

            Amy cringes at the thought of his name.

            Travis is a boy who only recently transferred to Valley High. He had come from some polished estate uptown and from the excitement that had followed his arrival at school, it was evident that he was one of the rich kids who were home-schooled by private tutors because their parents didn’t believe they could get any reasonable education at conventional schools.

Every student at Valley High had hitherto flunked miserably at Music class and the few who were in higher levels had dropped it without a thought, opting for algebra and programming—no one willingly offered those courses, but everyone would rather offer something they would fail than be forced to learn music theory—until Travis had come along, and the school board that had previously considered scrapping Music from the curriculum had reinstated it as a compulsory course to be offered, claiming it was to turn out finer students.

            Nobody liked Travis. At least that’s what Amy told herself. Thankfully, she didn’t have to be in the same room with him for every class—only music.

Amy groans and slams the locker.

            The Music class isn’t really a class, it is more of a lesson, held at different locations depending on the size of the class. At one time, the students offering Music had been so much that they had held the classes in the gym.

Currently, the class is being held at a supplies closet that has been repurposed and stuffed full of musical instruments.

            Some students run past Amy, while she continues to walk at a leisurely pace. She hums an irregular tune and her books are clutched to her chest.

            “Hey, Amy!” a boy calls and rushes past her.

            “Hey.”

She continues humming. There is no point in engaging in a conversation with anyone. The walks to each of her classes provide her with momentary silence and relief from everyone—a brief respite, but it will suffice.

            As Amy gets nearer to the class, she can just pick out the notes drifting out. To say the music is discordant would be a mercy. This is everything music should not be.

A poster has been plastered upon the surface of the thick metal door, identifying it as the Music class. Several other posters have been put up on the walls by the door. They are about the school football team. Amy does not look at the posters, walking past them as if they were never there.

She pushes the door open without preamble and walks in without breaking stride.

            The sounds assault her.

The class is not small, but it is not large either. A cluster of twenty-odd students are in the room with her. At the front of the class is Mr. Bones, the music instructor. He is dressed in a chequered shirt and a pair of white trousers, and he has on a piano tie. He is weaving his hands through the air in such a synchronized manner that would be satisfying to watch if Amy cared about music or dance, and bobbing his head rhythmically with a pleased smile on his face, but Amy is certain that it is not the music in the class he is emoting to.

A large, black grand piano stands at the front of the class. Guitars are stacked up against one side of the wall at the front of the class and at the other side, there is a drum set.

            Amy weaves her way past two students who are talking excitedly with drumsticks in hands, and spots Travis at the front of the class, surrounded by at least three boys who are staring at him with an expression too eager to be discomfort.

Travis is talking rapidly and excitedly but Amy cannot hear what is being said. She does not wish to hear what is being said, anyway. Travis is enough for himself.

            Amy eases herself into a seat that is close to the door and sighs.

There is a recorder on her desk. Amy looks and notices that there is a recorder on everyone’s desks. She sighs again and continues to look around the class: a group of girls at the front are dipping their hands through their hair and laughing in falsetto.

Laughing in falsetto. Ha!

A boy beside her is beatboxing animatedly. Everywhere Amy looks, everyone is doing something apart from what they are supposed to be doing. Nobody besides herself, she has noticed, is sitting on their chairs. Everyone is either standing, leaning on the wall or sitting on the desks instead.

A dark-skinned girl with pigtails up front is holding a recorder to her lips and miming as if singing karaoke. The class is chaos.

Amy is just about to rest her head on her desk when a clap resounds through the class. Everyone, momentarily stunned, looks to the front for the source of the sound.

Mr. Bones stands there, no longer waving or weaving his hands. He seems to finally want to begin the lesson.

            “Settle down,” he says in an oddly feminine voice and claps again. Amy groans out loud.

            Travis and his eager company all settle down with something akin to reverence, while the rest of the class obey the orders as if they are sieving it through water. When everyone has finally settled down, Mr. Bones claps again.

            “Excellent!” he says. “Let us begin.”

Throughout the class, Amy’s thought patterns oscillate and diffract, and even go completely out of the lesson being taught in the class.

            …What does Derek look like now? It’s been quite some time since we saw…

            …Will Derek still remember me?

            …Why is Mr. Bones still teaching?

            …I never really liked the French…

            …Why am I here?

            …That B clef kinda sus…

            …Is it time already?

            …I wonder if Derek…

When the bell sounds, Amy gratefully picks her books and hugs them to her chest and walks out the class, not sparing a second for Mr. Bones or his music.

Amy pulls on the hood of her jacket as she leaves the class. Her books are still clutched tight to her chest, but now, one of her hands swings freely.

She locks the books in her locker and heads to the cafeteria with her bag with The Avengers’ stickers plastered over, slung lazily over an arm.

She spots Kosi first and Kosi waves a hand excitedly to invite her. She sighs and heads over to the table; a boy so dark he could have crawled out of a coal pit sits on one of the chairs. There are only three chairs and Kosi and the boy sit in them.

            “Hey, Kosi. Hey, Michael.” Amy says half-heartedly and slumps into her chair.

            Michael looks like he has just chewed on something bitter. “It’s Mike, Amy. We both know this.” He says with a frown.

Amy throws her head back and closes her eyes. “Sure thing, Michael.”

Michael opens his mouth in protest and closes it again. He turns his face away from her, fuming.

            “Looks like you’ve had a memorable day,” Kosi says and bites into a sandwich.

            “Oh, you don’t know the best part of it,” Amy says and groans.

            “Oh? Pray tell.”

            “I’ve got another class.” Amy says and whips her head to look at Kosi, wide-eyed. “I’m gonna die if I have to take one more music class. I’m at my end here!”

Kosi looks at her like a child throwing a tantrum and stretches a sandwich to her. “There, there.”

            “Shut up, Kosi.”

            “Hey, I’m trying to be supportive here.” Kosi says between laughs.

            “I’m sure you are. Thanks for the wich, anyway.”

Amy receives the sandwich and bites into it. She moans. It’s so good.

            “Speaking of, Amy, where’s your food?” Michael asks.

            “Mush ‘av vogoden eid,” Amy says through a full mouth.

            “What was that?”

            Amy swallows. “I really didn’t want to come to school today, but my dad was home—”

            “Isn’t he always, though?” Michael interjects, but Amy continues in a louder voice. “Point is, I was late for school, and I forgot about food.” Another bite and a satisfied moan.

Kosi looks at Amy for a brief moment and continues chewing. Amy stares around the bustling cafeteria, wondering…

She has not felt the need to look away from her food or their table in so long. She has not exercised the curiosity to stare at other people in the cafeteria for a long time now. Even though she has lived in this county for some time now, she has made no friends besides Kosi and Michael.

The other students do not really avoid her like a plague, but they would rather that she did not always hang out with the two only black kids in the school, one of which was well on her way to being valedictorian again.

            A moan escapes her lips and she closes her eyes, working her mouth around what is left of the sandwich.

Her eyes open again and she adjusts the glasses sitting atop her nose. She stares now at a group of students that have, against school rules, pulled more chairs to their table to entertain their large group. Scott is there. She knows this without even really looking.

That cream-coloured skin and upturned nose, and that haughty air that could be smelled from a mile away, Scott was what you’d call imposing. He wasn’t large—he was very nearly the smallest in the class—but he carried himself with such an air of importance that it became quite difficult to tell who was bigger. Scott and ‘the boys’ made a habit of constantly nitpicking, and never about the right things.

Amy really didn’t want trouble, and she certainly didn’t go looking for it, but trouble was in the form of a boy named Scott, and he always found her.

            There is a barrage of sudden laughter and Amy turns to see another group—a smaller one, of about five or six students—doubling over, and then composing themselves the minute they are aware of the attention of the cafeteria on them.

            Amy turns back to their table and finds Kosi writing furiously in her notebook; Michael is staring intently at her.

            “What?” she asks.

            Michael does not answer, and continues to stare. He does not look like he is ashamed at having been caught staring. It is a new trait he seems intent on cultivating, but neither Amy nor Kosi approve of it.

Michael is a class ahead, and takes every opportunity that will present itself to remind them that he is in a higher class than the both of them, even though they are all technically the same age. He is still staring and Amy is beginning to feel uncomfortable.

            “Michael!”

            “Amy,” he says with a bored expression on his face.

            “You’re staring.” Amy says. “It’s weird.”

            Michael stares at her for a moment longer and inches his face closer towards her. “Why is it weird?”

            Amy scoffs in incredulity and shoots him a disgruntled look. “You know it’s weird. Don’t try to justify yourself.”

            Michael does not seem in the least convinced, and continues as if he has not heard a word she has said. “What should be the identifying tag for weird? Where do we draw the line? What is weird, and what isn’t?”

Amy groans.

            “No, Amy, I’ve got to know…”

Kosi has lifted her head up from her writing and observes the conversation with something akin to boredom. Petty squabbles were not her forte, and she didn’t intend on taking courses on them now.

            “If she says she finds it weird, then you should stop it, Michael.” Kosi says. It is clear from her dismissive tone that she wants the conversation over.

Michael huffs and turns his face and Amy stares at the table. For the past few days, Michael has been acting like this, staring at her for longer than should be termed normal. He also suddenly has this habit of randomly popping out of thin air, and then fading back to nothingness again, as if he was never there.

It wasn’t natural. Amy could’ve sworn that she’d once seen Michael materialize out of a wall beside her, but she hadn’t really been conscious of her surroundings, and when she’d asked him about it, he’d shrugged and told her to be more aware of her surroundings. He hadn’t tried to explain, and Amy had left it at that, but recently, it seemed more and more obvious that Michael was stalking her… or at the very least, something was going on with him.

She’d make mental notes to ask Michael about it, but would forget. At least, that’s what she told herself. It wasn’t that she was scared of Michael, quite the contrary. She just never really had the time to sit down and talk with him.

            She lets air out through her mouth. Calm down, Amy. Chill.

Michael huffs a little while longer, then stands abruptly. “I’ve got to get to class.” He says and slings his bag over his back. “Later, Amy.”

            “Later to you too, Michael,” Kosi says after him, but he continues walking on. She mutters under her breath about boys and children, then glances at Amy and they both begin to snigger.

Amy looks in Kosi’s direction now. She is scribbling away in her notebook again. Vaguely, Amy wonders what exactly Kosi is writing. She is almost always writing or reading something.

Amy has been friends with Kosi for so long that she could speculate about what Kosi was thinking, never actually knowing. Knowing was for telepaths and magicians and Kosi. Maybe Amy simply wore her emotions on her face, but she seriously doubted it. If that were the case, every single person in the school, including God bless her, Scott, would also know what she was thinking.

Now that would be a nightmare.

            “You’re staring, Amy.”

            Amy is instantly caught aback. “I—uh—wait—wah… I—I wasn’t staring.”

            “You know you’ve gone red, right?” Kosi says without lifting her head. Amy tries to speak, but only a gurgling sound comes out of her mouth.

Finally, Kosi lifts her head from her writing, takes one look at Amy who is attempting to cover her face with her hoodie, and sighs.

            “Amy,” she calls.

            “Yes?” Amy’s reply is muffled through the fabric of her cloth. Kosi gently pulls it down.

            “How long have we been friends for?”

            Amy’s forehead scrunches in concentration. “Today is a Monday, so, nine years, three months and seventeen days.”

            Kosi gives her an exasperated look. “A long time. We’ve been friends for so long, Amy, and you know the one thing we both know is that whenever you lie, or are surprised, or embarrassed, or flummoxed, you go red.”

            Amy has covered her face up with the hoodie again. Her muffled voice now passes through the fabric. “Flummoxed. I like that word.”

            “And—” Kosi makes her voice a little stronger, and pulls down the hoodie form Amy’s face. “—you know that I know that you know that you have something you want to say. So come on…” Kosi’s hands land on the table and intertwine, “talk to me.”

Amy looks into the dark, mesmerising eyes of her best friend. The stare Kosi levels at her is probing. Inquisitorial, but not questioning. Amy likes the calmness that they exude, and the way it puts her at peace. Amy thinks Kosi could probably make a living off looking at people. It’s exactly the kind of stuff people with too much money would do.

She holds Kosi’s gaze now, and stares into those tranquil depths. She is testing herself, pushing against her limits intentionally.

No one can hold Kosi’s gaze for long.

            Five seconds pass and Amy is still staring into those eyes. She cannot breathe; it is like the world has gone still. Kosi inches an eyebrow. Amy fidgets and squirms in her seat. Ten seconds.

It’s too much. The feeling is too intense. Amy wonders, somewhere in the back of her mind if anyone would ever be bold enough to face those eyes. Whoever faces them, though, Amy decides, has her respect. She can do it no more.

            Amy breaks out of the trance like she is breaking above the surface of water. She looks down and draws a breath in a long gasp and shoots it back out of her mouth with a whoosh. She plops back on her seat, defeated.

            She draws closer to Kosi now, inching her face towards hers. “I don’t know. Does Michael seem alright to you?”

Kosi’s face is impassive. “He’s a boy. Are they ever?”

            Amy is immediately flustered, caught off guard. “I didn’t—you—” her voice descends to a whisper and she brings her head lower and closer to Kosi’s, “you know what I mean.”

Kosi brings her head level with Amy’s, “Do I?”

            “Look, there’s something going on with Michael, I know it.”

            “Is that why we’re whispering?”

            “We’re not—ugh.” Amy rises and speaks normally now. “Michael’s been acting pretty weird these past days. Since we started this term, actually, and I’m telling you about it because you seem to be unaware.”

            “Am I though?”

            “Yes.”

            “Am I though?” there is a smirk on Kosi’s face. She looks so young now, but Amy is not fooled. It is just one of Kosi’s many traits. Her nondescript, but individual ability to look older and younger at any given time and in any given circumstance.

            Amy scoffs. “Yes! You’re always writing something or stuck in the library or something. You usually don’t notice these things.”

            “The library is the best place to spend one’s time, but fair point.”

“Also… I was kind of hoping you’d maybe know what was going on with him. You’re older than him—”

            “—By minutes,” Kosi interjects.

            “Same thing! You’ve known him longer than anyone else and he’s your brother.”

Kosi says nothing. Amy groans and pulls at her hair. “Point is, something’s going on with him, and I don’t just mean how he’s suddenly too interested in me.”

            “Amy…”

“You should ask him.” Amy gets up to leave. Her bag is sill slung over her shoulder. “Just saying.” Then she is out of the cafeteria, leaving Kosi alone to her writing.

            Amy’s other lessons pass in a blur, Amy not completely sure if she is conscious all through them.

The Math teacher comes immediately after recess, tossing Amy into deeper depths of despair. Twice, the teacher calls her name to have her answer a question, but Amy’s mind is too pre-occupied and she does not respond immediately.

The English class is no better and Amy dozes halfway through the class. Eventually, the day comes to an end and Amy slaps her bag on her back and slogs through the streets, unsettled by a weight she cannot fathom, and a knowledge she cannot perceive.

            She does not walk home with Kosi and Michael today; she tells herself they must have after-school activities, which to be fair, they have been having for some time now, but she cannot place this dread settling in her stomach.

She plods on, heading home with a grim resolve to sleep through the unnerving feeling.