1. Sedate
Gray-white walls, the front wall blue with a whiteboard. Posters plastered on the walls of science-related things. Black-topped wooden desks, some covered by laptops, pens or pencils, some fully covered by objects, some empty. Two chairs at each desk, most being used by students clad in green shirts and khaki, blue or black slacks, some empty, devoid of usage. A white projector hanging over the whiteboard, projecting a slideshow of science-related things.
Chemistry class by Mister Joel Morales, pale-skinned man with dark eyes framed by black glasses, balding but a black beard graying from age. His nose was slightly hooked, holding his glasses up. He stood near the front, explaining the train tracks- a method of converting one unit of measurement to another, occasionally facing the students.
It was cold in his class, causing me to pull my light blue windbreaker jacket closer to my body. My red uniform shirt stands out against a sea of freshmen, one year my successors. My black-slacked knee bounced slightly out of boredom and anticipation of finally standing and moving. But my mind wasn’t bored.
Time inched on slowly, like a snail inching on a leaf, how it often felt during school. Even in one of my favorite classes, time still inched slowly. It did not help that the train tracks lesson included math, a subject I despised with a passion, although I’m good at the subject.
“Anyone able to work on the following question?” Mr. Morales asked, facing the students once again and holding out a blue dry-erase marker. Everyone stayed silent. No one moved. Nobody wanted to answer, wanted to stand and answer the question, risking the embarrassment of not getting the answer right.
I stood, walking up to him and grabbing the marker. Facing the slideshow-projected whiteboard, I read the question: convert 92 millimeters to meters over the course of 7 years.
I wrote, listing out the numbers I needed, then created the train tracks like Mr. Morales showed us. 92 millimeters goes on the front of the train track. 100 millimeters over 1 meter on the second track. 365 days over 1 year on the third. A sole 7 years on the last track.
Mr. Morales said that we had to multiply all of the numbers and divide it by 7 to get the meters. It was easy if I had a calculator, but I don’t. So I worked on the question with long multiplication, like I remembered learning back in 4th grade.
92 x 100 x 365 x 7
23,506,000
23,506,000/7
3,358,000 meters was the answer. I looked at Mr. Morales. He smiled and nodded. “Correct,” he praised. He faced the freshmen and clapped his hands in front of him, back to the wall as I went to sit down with a smile. “Did you all see how she found the answer, without the use of a calculator?”
Quiet murmurs. Then one of the boys remarked “She’s just smart?” I rolled my eyes.
“‘M not that smart,” I told him. “I just remembered how to do long multiplication.”
A girl with freckles on her nose faced me. “But why do that when you can just look it up on your phone?”
I shrugged. “Didn’t have it in my pocket.” But that was a lie. I had my light blue phone shut off in my back pocket, sticking out a bit. “It’s just instinct.”
She rolled her eyes and turned to the front, head down at her phone. I wondered, for a moment, if her freckles were real, biologically hers, or if she just drew them on. But fake ones often had a smudgy kind of look to them, like they were done in a rush. Hers look real. Then again, I only saw them once on a deer, once on a man at the store and once on a friend of my sister’s.
