The hallway was empty, except for one girl. She walked quickly across the linoleum-tiled floor without making a sound. It was a gift; even in boots she was silent. And as she stalked silently through the halls, she had only one thought in her mind: Where is room 122A?
Her green eyes flashed in frustration, and she ran a hand through her long black hair. It was the first day of school, and she was lost. Well, not the first day of school – school had been in session for almost a month. But it was Anna’s first day.
Anna had decided to go to school when she first moved here. She’d signed up to be a freshman at Rosemont High School so she could get the whole four-year experience. She figured two months would be plenty of time to get everything in order, but apparently she’d been wrong. It seemed like every time she got one document in, they wanted three more. It had been a lot more trouble than she’d expected, and she hoped it’d be worth it.
Anna scanned the numbers over the doors as she scurried down the hall. She didn’t want to be any later than she already was – not that it was her fault. She’d been both nervous and excited about her first day of school and decided to come a little early. She’d ended up at the front doors twenty minutes before class even started.
But when she went into the office to get her schedule, she found that there were still some papers she had to fill out – something about an emergency contact. She spent over half an hour trying to explain to a very strict and unyielding office lady that she didn’t need one of those. When it became clear she wouldn’t be allowed to leave until she’d given them a name, she finally resorted to just making one up. By the time she was done, she was almost fifteen minutes late to English.
As she neared the end of the hallway, Anna stopped running. She was now standing outside of Room 122A. This was it – her first class. Anna smoothed down her hair and took a deep breath. Slowly, she opened the door.
It wasn’t the way she expected it to be. In her mind, she’d pictured a classroom full of students sitting quietly at their desks. The teacher would be standing up at the front of the room, tall and thin and probably wearing a severe black dress. She’d be giving a lecture to students who would be diligently taking notes. Everything would be nice and orderly and calm. That’s the way it’d always looked in those old movies she’d seen – wasn’t that how it was supposed to be?
Instead, what she saw were students talking loudly to each other – a few even shouting across the room to carry on conversations. Half of the students were still standing, and almost no one was looking at the teacher. The teacher, for her part, was standing at the front of the room, her fat, round face smiling warmly at a piece of paper in her hand. It wasn’t quite chaos, but it was close. The strangest thing was that the teacher didn’t even seem to care how her students were behaving. In fact, she seemed almost oblivious to the whole scene.
Anna stared at the woman in disbelief. She had on a long flowing black skirt with bright pink, blue, and purple flowers plastered all over it. And she’d paired the monstrosity with a neon-pink shirt and gaudy blue necklace. As she squinted down at the roll sheet, Anna thought she looked friendly enough, but completely clueless. So this was her English teacher, Mrs. Boyd.
“Michael Thomlin?” Mrs. Boyd asked hopefully, the smile never leaving her fat face. A skinny red-haired boy slouching in the front glumly raised his hand, and Mrs. Boyd smiled even wider. “Oh good. And last – but certainly not least!...Jessica Williams?”
A hand was raised in the back, but Anna couldn’t see who it belonged to.
“Good. Well, I’m glad you’re all here today. Shall we begin?”
Even though the class finally started to settle down, Anna still stood next to the door, fighting the urge to just turn around and leave. Clearly, she hadn’t been noticed yet; it wasn’t too late.
She stood there awkwardly, trying to decide how badly she really wanted to be in school after all. Mrs. Boyd looked around the room one last time, finally spotting Anna. She was clearly startled by the sight of an unexpected face at the door. In an instant, however, the smile was back.
“You must be our new student!” she said with what sounded like relief. “What was your name?”
“Anna Ellington,” came the flat response.
“Oh yes. Anna. What a pretty name. And how do you spell your last name?”
As Anna spelled her name, Mrs. Boyd wrote it down on the roll sheet.
“Well, it’s great to have you in our class! We’ve been reading The Odyssey. We’ve already read the first four chapters, so you’ll have to read those and catch up as soon as you can.” She stared at Anna expectantly for several seconds before a look of realization suddenly passed across her face. “Oh! I’m so sorry. You can sit in that desk there, next to Summer.”
Anna followed Mrs. Boyd’s chubby finger towards the back corner of the room. The desk Mrs. Boyd was pointing to was next to a delicate-looking blonde girl. Anna slowly made her way towards the empty seat. As she sat down, she heard Mrs. Boyd talking to herself.
“Sometimes I think I’d lose my head if it wasn’t attached!” As she laughed merrily at her own joke, Anna grimaced inside. She had the feeling Mrs. Boyd was right.
Anna heard a light laughter and looked over in Summer’s direction. She was smiling at Anna, seeing her look of concern.
“Yes, she really is this weird. But don’t worry, most of the other teachers are normal – not like this.” She smiled reassuringly as she reached down into her backpack and pulled out her book.
“And don’t worry about catching up – we’ve been reading the same six pages for almost a week now!”
Anna just stared blankly at Summer. “How can you take a week to read six pages?” she asked incredulously. Surely, even the worst reader could do better than that!
“Well, she doesn’t really remember things and apparently never writes them down. Every day, we start at the same spot – we only move on if someone gets really bored and tells her we did this already.”
“But that’s stupid.” Anna said before she could stop herself.
“Yeah, I know. But there’s a lot less homework this way.”
Anna sat there a minute, a sense of bewilderment sweeping over her. This wasn’t what she’d signed up for at all. How could it be so different from the movies she’d seen?
Anna reached into her backpack to get out her own book but stopped; something Summer said had struck her.
“What do you mean most of the other teachers are normal?”
Summer looked back at Anna and laughed breezily.
“Well,” she explained, “some of them joke around, or sometimes forget things, but no one’s as bad as Mrs. Boyd. And none of the others repeat the same lesson three days in a row!”
Anna nodded uncertainly and went back to looking for her book. She was at least glad they were reading The Odyssey. Ever since it had been translated into English, it had been one of her favorite stories. She still read it from time to time, even though she had memorized almost the entire poem by now. She smiled to herself as she realized that this meant she wouldn’t have to work too hard in English at least – especially if they kept reading the same parts over and over again.
When the bell finally rang, everyone threw their books into their backpacks. Anna was surprised at how fast everyone managed to get their things together and leave the room. Even Summer was gone before Anna had the chance to leave her desk. She tried not to be disappointed; Summer was the first person to talk to Anna at school, and she’d been hoping they’d end up being friends. She shrugged – there was always tomorrow. Anna wondered idly why everyone packed up so fast. It must be because they were going to classes they thought were more interesting – or at least more normal.
She had six minute to get to her next class, but Anna got there in three. When she opened the door, she was surprised yet again. It seemed she was in for a lot of that today. This time however, it wasn’t the teacher
who startled her but the room itself. It was different from any classroom she’d read about in books or seen in movies.
The room was about the size of two classrooms put together, and the door she’d come through was at the back. As she looked around, she saw the room was filled with what looked like raised tables, each with four chairs. The tabletops were thick black slabs and looked like they’d been set on top of wooden cabinets. In the middle of each table was a sink with a long, curving faucet.
Anna looked up as she heard the door open at the front of the classroom. A tall, thin woman walked in wearing a black blazer and skirt. She put the briefcase she’d been carrying on the desk and started taking manila folders out. This was more like the teacher Anna had been expecting. She looked down at her schedule and saw that the teacher’s name was Ms. Harle. Anna approached her.
Ms. Harle looked up from her briefcase and smiled brightly at Anna.
“Hello.” Ms. Harle said.
“Hello,” Anna replied, already feeling much more at ease with this teacher. “I just transferred to this school, and I’m in your biology class.”
“Oh, you must be Anna. Nice to meet you.”
Anna smiled appreciatively. “Nice to meet you too.”
As Ms. Harle started rifling through her briefcase, she explained to Anna, “I have a seating chart in here, and as soon as I find it, we can see where there’s a spot for you.” She shuffled through some papers until she found the one she was looking for. “Ah, here we go. Let’s see…why don’t you sit over there?” She pointed a pink-painted nail towards one of the cabinet-tables.
“Thank you.” Anna said and walked towards a table on the right side of the room.
As she approached, she saw that the seat faced away from the teacher. This is odd, she thought. Was it supposed to face the wrong way like this? How would she take notes? Impressed by her own cleverness, she decided that she’d just have to turn the seat around.
Anna was still marveling at the strangeness of the room when a girl walked over and pulled out the chair next to her. The girl was tall and thin, with sky-blue eyes. She dropped her backpack on the ground with a thud and turned to Anna.
“Hi!” she said brightly. Then, her face darkened and she asked, “You haven’t always sat there, have you?”
Anna tried to hide her smile as she replied, “No. I’ve just started going here. This is my first day.”
“Oh, good.” the girl said, obviously glad she hadn’t just failed to notice Anna for the past month. “So where’d you move from?”
“Oregon.”
“How is it there?” the girl asked politely.
“It was nice, but I needed a change. There’s too much rain for my liking.”
Anna noticed the girl seemed a little surprised by this and she wondered why. But clearly, she’d made a mistake. She decided it was best to get off the topic as quickly as possible.
“My name’s Anna. What’s yours?”
The girl brushed a strand of crimson hair out of her eyes. “Carmine. Carmine Zwaanstra. My parents thought it was exotic – I hate it.” she informed Anna, rolling her eyes.
Anna wasn’t quite sure how to respond to this. After a minute of silence, she’d decided on “I’m sorry,” but was spared having to actually say it by Ms. Harle’s starting class.
“Ok. As I mentioned yesterday, we have a lot to do. I have six pages of notes that we’re going to try to get through. Then, if we have time, we’ll go ahead and start on the next section.”
Anna stretched down to her backpack and pulled out a notebook and a pen, feeling much more at ease. The class was quiet, the teacher much more businesslike and in control – this was more like it. She turned her seat around and set her notebook on her knees. She was surprised when she looked up to see so much was already written on the overhead, and she began writing as fast as she could to catch up. It wasn’t until the teacher slid the words up that Anna realized that they had been written on little plastic sheets ahead of time.
Chapter 3: Lunch
You Were What You Eat Page 3