Chapter Four-- Standing on Two Left Feet

A daze would maybe be the best word to use to describe my mentality. I had agreed with Julie, to stand against Stephenie. The major problem with this plan was simple:

I could barely stand against a spider, let alone Stephenie!

  Groaning, I figured I’d better just talk to him. If I didn’t, who knew what chain of events would unfurl? If I did, the universe could very well end. It was one of those infamous “Lose-Lose” situations…

  I drifted into first class, and took my seat behind Anthony. He turned and smiled.

  “Good Morning, Bells!” he said.

  “Morning, Anthony.” I mumbled.

  “You’d never believe this.” He started. I was braced to hear about Stephenie, and prepared to grovel about it in the future. “I asked out Stephenie. You know, that cheerleader friend of yours. Dude, she actually said yes! I must not be as much of a loser as everyone thinks.” He explained.

  He really didn’t have any clue, did he? I couldn’t help but look at him. He was smiling. Happiness radiated off of him, to contradict my aura of failure.

  My face softened, even as rage and embarrassment tightened in my throat.

  “Aw, that’s awesome, Anthony.” I said. I tried to smile genially, but I think I might have failed.

  “You don’t seem that happy, today.” Anthony noted. He patted the top of my head, and turned to face front again.

  “Study hall in the library next class.” He whispered over his shoulder, just as Miss Elanor arrived.

  Miss Elanor was actually the art teacher. I wondered vaguely what had happened to our business math and accounting teacher.

  “Uh. Hi. I’m Miss Elanor…” She said. She was a nervous, small teacher, around thirty years old. She had strawberry blonde hair and bright green eyes. Today, she was wearing a pair of jeans and a tee shirt that depicted “Starry Night” by Van Gough.

  “Hi.” Anthony said.

I laughed a little, and then became embarrassed by myself.

  “Anthony, nice to see you.” Responded Miss Elanor. “You too, Isabelle.”

  My face flushed a little. She never called me Bells.

  “All right, as you can see your teacher is kind of absent. So. I’m here to make sure the lot of you don’t wreck the place and start a revolution.” She smiled, triggering giggles from the whole class. Reaching into her bag, she soon produced colored pencils and small sheets of paper.

  “Have at it. I’m giving you some time to be creative. Nobody needs this subject, anyway.” Miss Elanor proclaimed. She sat herself on the teacher’s desk, and crossed her leg over the other.

  Chitchat and rustling of papers filled the room. All I could think about was my annoyingly low ability to say what I mean. I’d been formulating sentences in my head to say to him, but like rubbish first-draft essays, they were all discarded.

  From the back of the room, a boy rose. He had long, greasy black hair, but only in the front, covering his left eye. The back was short and spiked out. He was wearing a black trench coat, and giant black pants with green stitching and silver fastenings and chains. He started lopping towards the door, and it was creepy to watch.

  “Eric! Back to your seat, class hasn’t dismissed.” Miss Elanor declared. Eric opened the door, and walked out anyway. He stuck his head back through, briefly.

  “Screw that. I hate everyone in this damned class!” and with that, he slammed the door shut.

 

Author's Note

If I learned anything,
I've learned that absolutely everything is symbolic
and that the three forms of irony make reading better.

Reviews

[Justin Tobey]

Interesting!

I'd have to agree with Serendipity about the Eric thing. If there's something significant about that, it should continue in that chapter, or at least have some kind of explanation to it. When you write stories, it's important that everything that happens is important, even if it doesn't seem it at the time. Maybe this will be important later, but there should at least be some kind of reason to satisfy the readers' curiosity, even if it isn't true. So long as it convinces the readers, it'll work.

My other critique is this sentence. " 'Nobody needs this subject, anyway.' " I think it's natural that an art teacher may not like such a boring subject, but I can't imagine a teacher out right saying that another teacher's subject is useless.

Don't let those things dishearten you, though. I just thought I'd point them out first. I really did enjoy this chapter, and I admire the dialogue. I've always had a terrible time with conversations between characters, so I can appreciate the good job you did with it. Keep it up!

[Wildfleour]

van Gough. - Van Gogh

"Alright, - All right,

(Print type different for the last sentence).

Okay, Katie, I think Eric storming out does not make sense here. We know nothing about him or what would motivate him to do something like that.