I almost forgot to post a blog today! I had to pull something out of my archives again, with such little time remaining before midnight! This is an interesting take on the academic classroom:
Bethany knew she was not worthy of a novel. Nothing extraordinary had happened to her in her seventeen years, nothing truly noteworthy. She was nothing like the brave heroines Austen wrote of, or even the woman in the attic of Jane Eyre. She was nothing more than a better-than-average student with a knack for sniffing out competition, which was precisely what she did as she entered her AP Literature class at seven fifty-eight that Monday morning, her twelfth and final first day of state mandated education.
There were thirteen students in the room when she entered, but the number did not affect her – she had never put faith in luck or superstition. Sheer talent and excellent planning always won out in the end, she knew. Bethany took a glance around the room, wondering who she would have to conquer this year in order to become the top dog.
Three boys sat in the far corner, their eyes a bit too bloodshot to be sober, their clothes a bit too ragged to be new. They wouldn’t last long, Bethany thought to herself. The Monroe twins, Bethany noticed, looked almost unhealthily tan as they chatted loudly to each other. Surely, that amount of self-tanner and hairspray had had an impact on their mental capacities, and Bethany didn’t worry about them. Two girls, Eliza and Arianna, while different in every aspect of physical appearance, mirrored each other’s anxiety from across the room. It was obvious that they had not chosen this class of their own accord, and they were worried about the workload and the level of difficulty it would require. Bethany had seen too many people like them before; they would be happy to simply pull C-minuses in this class. No problem. Two more people sat completely silent on opposite corners of the room, writing quickly in spiral-bound notebooks, as they usually did. Allison and Stuart, while possibly smarter or more talented than Bethany, posed no threat either. They were disturbingly shy, and cringed when others made contact with them. They evaded group projects and class participation points like the plague, she remembered, from classes they had shared in the past, and she smiled. Oscar, who typically only left the chemistry lab to go to the bathroom, and if he’d had a choice, not even then, peeked at her anxiously from behind a lab manual.
Lyle saw her gazing over the classroom from his seat, front and center, and smiled a very cocky smile. He knew what she was doing, because he had just finished a similar sweep of the talent pool. Bethany groaned inwardly, remembering their two-week long dating fiasco last year, when she had still thought of him as competition. She’d quickly learned that he was all talk and no walk, which suited her just fine. He got by with repeating what other people said in creative ways and smiling too much. She could top that easily, she knew.
Knowing she’d been standing in the doorway for too long, Bethany took a seat next to her lifelong best friend Claire, who was, while incredibly bright, too self-conscious to really succeed. She made a great sidekick, never thinking about taking the spotlight for herself. It was for this reason that she and Bethany had remained friends for so long. She greeted Bethany with a simple smile and “good morning” before turning back to a conversation with her boyfriend Tom, who had adopted the nickname Sawyer their freshman year and subsequently stopped answering to his real name. It was a tendency that irritated Bethany, but out of respect for Claire, she refrained from expressing her opinion, to his face at least. He was about as bright as the antique lamp her parents kept in their living room, which they didn’t even keep a light bulb in, out of fear of damaging it. It was nice to look at, but didn’t prove to be very useful, much like Sawyer.
The bell rang seconds after their teacher, Ms. Barrett, walked in and demanded the class’s attention. She was young, Bethany noticed, possibly only twenty-four or twenty-five, but she exuded confidence in everything from her perfectly curled blonde hair to her pressed black pantsuit. She wore a hot pink shirt under her blazer, and the collar and cuffs showed, perfectly starched. Bethany smiled to herself; this would be easier than she’d imagined. She was already plotting how she would introduce herself when someone appeared in the doorway and her plan promptly fell apart.
“I’m sorry, Ms. Barrett, this is my first day. They just fixed my schedule,” he said, smiling a quick, bright smile, his teeth perfect and white. She returned the smile, something Bethany hadn’t been expecting.
“It’s my first day too. I understand. Please take a seat.” Either Bethany had pegged Ms. Barrett wrong and the teacher was less strict than she’d thought, or Bethany had just met her match. She sincerely hoped for the former.
He walked toward her, and just for a second, she forgot about the competition. He had curly dark brown hair that fell just above deep green eyes, and a day or two of stubble, just enough to be intriguing without being scruffy. He wore faded jeans and a black t-shirt under a tan blazer, looking too grown up to be a high school senior. She forced her gaze back to their teacher.
He sat in the chair directly in front of Bethany, and twisted to greet Claire. Bethany scowled, wondering how he knew Claire’s name, and how she knew his. Liam. His name echoed in her ears.
