My pencil was broken. Again. Gritting my teeth, I removed my bottom from the tiny plastic chair with some effort (they seriously need to fix those annoying preschooler-sized seats) and, raising my nose to add a sense of dignity, marched over to the sharpener. Absentmindedly twirling the writing utensil to perfect my tip, I hummed a bit of Lily Allen's "Everything's Just Wonderful". Then, cautiously looking around to keep away the stalkers (if I had any), I removed my pencil, blew off the dust casually, and maneuvered my way around several annoying obstacles, including desks, my classmates, and someone's Elmo lunch box.
I sat down again. Brushed my dirty-blonde hair out of my face. Okay. Time to pulverize this test like it was a sausage and I was a starving fat guy. I absolutely despise math, but even I knew how to determine whether numbers were less than, greater than, or equal to one another. Piece of cake. Hmmmm. I could use one of those right now. This guy named Moocho lives right across the street from us, and my God, you should taste his Italian cream cake. Yum.
Focus, Contraire, I commanded myself, viciously gripping the pencil, trying to make it bend to my visions.4820 is greater than 4820.3. 47239 47837. Bored, I drew little Pacman faces around the greater than and less than symbols.
Six minutes and thirteen seconds later (I was wearing a stopwatch), it was over. I flipped my test over and squinted at the empty back, trying to think of a rhyme for foyer. Clicking my tongue between my teeth, I headed down the alphabet. Boyer, coyer, doyer…
Something slid onto my desk. It was a piece of paper, cleverly folded up to a miniscule little rectangle. I unfolded it and recognized the handwriting: It was a message from Hayley, a girl I'd met yesterday at the first day of school for the year. She seemed pretty cool; she wanted to be a video game designer. She was half African-American, with big brown eyes and a crooked smile. "Hey Contraire," the note read, "inspection, haiku, obstacle, orange."
I grinned and quickly scribbled back, "Inspection = intersection. Not sure about haiku, but there's always Raikou… you know, the Pokémon? Obstacle's trickier, and I couldn't come up with an actual rhyme, so you'll just have to accept Popsicle as a slant. And Hayley, orange? Really?" I folded it back up and tossed it back in her direction. It landed on her desk… my old friend Kate taught me to have awesome aim. Hayley's eyes widened. She looked back in my direction. I nodded. She unfolded the paper. I watched her read, mouthing the words aloud as she did so. She tends to do that.
You might think it's weird, seeing as I've only known Hayley a day and I already know her handwriting and a few of her habits. But really, I'm just observant. And, oh yeah, did I mention that I can read people's minds? But only when I'm feeling devious.
Lawyer. I constructed a rhyme on the back of my test about a lawyer named Charlie who lived in a mansion with a foyer. He ate oats and barley. It was a pretty epic rhyme, actually.
The bell rang. I dropped my test off and hurried down to the cafeteria for lunch, in the hopes that they were serving enchiladas again.