GERARD'S POV:
Most kids say school is a prison. A hellhole.
But it's not.
School is a zoo. We are all the animals, being watched, and controlled by the fairly untrained zookeepers. The zookeepers are the teachers. They stalk us like we will attack any moment, like we are getting ready to pounce. The classroom is a cage. School must be more like a zoo than I realize, because it smells in here. I mean, it really smells in this cage.
What animal am I, you ask? Why, I am a gazelle.
Gazelles live in the jungle, always getting hunted down and preyed upon by vicious lions. But they can never get me because I am too lean… too quick. I run away at the last second, sparing my face from being batted and sliced by those huge paws.
Who are the lions? Everyone else. I always was their target. I will always be their target. I seem so vulnerable, so easy to break, and I am. But I am too keen to get eaten by the lions.
Gazelles don't get eaten. At least, not this gazelle.
Today, I am trying to be a well-behaved gazelle, so I sit quietly and restlessly twirl my pencil in between my first and second finger. Sighing conspicuously, I glance at the clock. To my obvious disappointment, the minute hand only moved 1/60 of a fraction since the last time I saw it.
For the mathematically challenged, it means it has only been one minute.
One. Long. Dreadful. Horrid. Minute.
Zookeeper Freeman goes through a whole other speech on how this Punnett guy developed the Punnett Square to predict the genotypes of *blah, blah, blah*.
Okay, so the whole, "being a good gazelle" plan isn't working out. I decide on breaking the silence.
"Mr. F, can I go use the restroom?" I ask, bouncing my knee up and down.
The zookeeper glances at my knee, and then stares back at my restless face. He finally realized that he forgot to answer, so he shook his head to 'snap out of it', I guess you could say. "Sure, yeah, that's fine."
Idiot.
I grabbed all of my belongings, and sighed greatly when the door shut behind my back. As to why no one noticed that I took everything to the bathroom with me, beats me.
I walk to the entrance that had no zoo monitors and walked straight out without hesitation. I must have walked forever because I when I got home, school was about to be dismissed without me.
You didn't actually think I was going to the bathroom right?