Juncture 1.7

All of the students in the room gave a sigh of disappointment that Mr. Fetter had figured out the problem that easily. For his part, Mr. Fetter didn’t look smug or glad about the fact that he had solved the problem so easily. As far as I could read his expression, he seemed disappointed that we hadn’t come up with a harder puzzle.

“Okay, so what is it?” asked Simon. He was presumably asking in case Mr. Fetter didn’t know, and was trying to trick us into telling him. I thought it wasn’t necessary, there was no way Mr. Fetter was trying to trick us. That seemed below him.

“The first criteria is this: When I ask you a question that has a yes or no answer, you answer with the opposite of the correct answer. Am I correct?”

“Yes…” Simon said, lengthening the word as if it would hold off the inevitable conclusion.

“Then the second criteria is that you answer any question that is not binary correctly. Am I right?”

“Yes,” Simon said.

“Excellent,” Mr. Fetter exclaimed, “And now that we are all mentally limber, we can begin class. Please take your seats, if you will.”

The milling group of students pulsated slowly toward the seats in the back of the room. I took the seat I had been sitting in previously, and Josie sat next to me. The next closest person was Jock, who took the seat directly in front of me. Everyone else sat closer to the front of the room than they were before. It seemed as though Mr. Fetter had won their interest.

“Now, if you could kindly tell me what you have been reading, we can get to work. We have a good amount of time left until the period is over, and I will not tolerate slacking off,” Mr. Fetter announced to the room. Kirsten raised her hand and I stopped paying attention.

Things inside my head had calmed down a good amount since Mr. Fetter had showed up. I could still hear the ghostly whispers of what had happened previously, but I had to focus to hear it with the same intensity as I had earlier.

“… We will have to find you a new environment to learn, since Mr. Hodgkins will no longer have you in his class. For now, you can go to the library during this period each day and work on homework. Of course, this is more of a gift than a punishment, so I am also assigning you three weeks of detention, starting tonight.”

I shuddered at the memory. I still had detention tonight, but I wouldn’t be digging myself any further into an irredeemable hole. With the luck I’d been experiencing since Mr. Fetter showed up, I could possibly even avoid the car. First off, I would try to find someone who could give me a ride back. That would be the best solution. If everyone left before I got let out, I would wait until the rain cleared up.

The car was the biggest problem I had right now. If I could bypass that, everything could go back to normal.

I hoped.

…

…

I pushed my focus outward, back to what was happening in the class. Mr. Fetter was writing long sentences up on the dusty chalkboard behind him. I assumed that they had to do with what we were supposed to be reading in class. It was some book about early modern China, and I got maybe two pages in before I had given up.

I tried to separate the letters on the board into words, but they were too small and close together. After several moments I stopped trying. Instead, I looked around at the other students in the class. To Mr. Fetter’s credit, most everyone except me was looking at the board with their books open. Some were even taking notes.

I looked over at Josie. She had a piece of paper torn out of a spiral notebook, and she had been doodling all over it. Swirly designs and fractal patterns covered the surface, sectioned off by the light blue lines crossing the paper. Currently, she was extending the designs onto the back of her hand.

If experience was anything that I could go by – and it wasn’t a sure thing currently – her arm would be covered in just a few minutes. After that, she would extend to the nearest surface she could use that wasn’t technically vandalism. That was usually whoever was sitting next to her at the time.

Sure enough, after several seconds, she reached out and grabbed my right hand, pulling it over onto her desk. I zoned out again.

...*cough*

Oh right. At this point I was sitting in the library, alone except for the librarian, a young, somber woman named Emily, but who insisted that everyone call her Ms. Carter. Hardly anyone acquiesced, but that didn’t stop her.

I had coughed out of boredom more than anything. It was the last several minutes of the period, and as everyone knows, those tend to feel just as long as the rest of the period combined. I had been staring at the book I was supposed to be reading for a while, trying to get the words to stay still long enough to read a page or two, but I was so angry that it was futile.

I looked back over to my hand. Josie had drawn a large eight in the center of the back of my hand, and had drawn lightning-like designs sparking out from it, spreading from the center to the tips of my fingers. She was right up to the last joint of my thumb when the bell rang, signaling the end of her art class. I pulled my hand away, picked up my bag, and joined the queue of people slowly heading for the door. I looked toward the desk in front, and saw Mr. Fetter looking at everyone leaving. He made eye contact with me for a split second, and I was startled by the bright color of his eyes. They were almost blindingly green, and I broke off the contact as soon as I had made it, and walked out the door.