Dreaming in Reality
Chapter 2
School began at 8:05; my first class was English. I got real lucky; the English teacher is the happiest person you'll ever meet. It's a great way to start off a day at school. Today, we have our papers on Canada due.
"Alright, now I'll take your papers please! Pass them all to the front of the row," Mrs. C said. Her real name is Mrs. Causewell, but everyone calls her Mrs. C.
I sat in the row on the far right-hand side of the room, third from the front. So, I took the stack of papers from the people behind me, put mine on top, and passed it to the person in front of me, who did the same. Last night, I had done most of the paper. We were instructed to do five paragraphs, and I had only written one before last night. It was assigned about a month about, too. So I had had to write four good paragraphs all in a matter of hours. Although I had had my entire bunch of information ready to go, it was still hard to put the information into a group of sentences that made sense. See, I was a procrastinator, and sometimes, it can get me into trouble. That was probably why I woke up so late that morning.
"Thank you," Mrs. C said when she had collected all the papers from the fronts of the rows, "I hope to have these graded and recorded by next week sometime, and then I'll hand them back to you. For now, though, let me explain tonight's worksheet!"
I slumped backward in my seat, getting myself into a comfortable listening position. The worksheet was on verbs: action verbs, linking verbs… that kind of stuff. English never really interested me; even with the way Mrs. C made it sound so fun. My favorite subject is Math. I like numbers more so than words.
Mrs. C handed out our worksheet and gave us the rest of the class period to work on it. It really wasn't that hard; we just had to go through a bunch of sentences, circle the verb, and write on the line whether it was linking or action. The catch was that there were about fifty sentences.
Fifteen minutes 'til the end of class, and I had gotten ten sentences done in a matter of five minutes.
Maybe I'll actually get this done before the end of the period, I thought.
When the bell rang, I only had five more sentences to go, so I knew I'd finish it up in advisor, a study period after lunch. That meant no English homework tonight.
My next class was the rotation class. In rotation, everyone had to take GYM every other day, and on the days you didn't have it, you'd either have Orchestra, Band, or Chorus; whichever you had chosen in those last few weeks of fifth grade. I chose Orchestra, and there's never been a day yet when I've regretted it.
I hear other people talking about their rotation class, and well over half the time I'll hear negative comments about it. They say things like, "Well, now I have to go to Band!" or "Ugh… I hate Chorus!" My friends laugh at me for actually liking Orchestra more than GYM, but none of them are in Orchestra, so they wouldn't know how fun it was.
Today, I happened to have Orchestra. So I walked from English to my locker, which was down the hall, number 39. There, I shoved my binder into the crammed space, and grabbed my music book. I had to quickly slam my locker shut, otherwise everything would fall out. When I stood up, I found myself face to face with another person.
"Hey!" Leann said, enthusiastically, "You pumped for Orchestra? Of coarse you are! You always are! You crazy person!"
Leann was one of my best friends. She was always overexcited, and funny, too. She had a darker shade of blonde hair that was about shoulder length, and blue eyes. So, of coarse, we all made fun of her for being a 'blonde'.
I laughed.
"Hi, Leann! What about you? Are you pumped for Chorus?" I said, sarcastically. Leann was one of the people who hated her rotation. She looked at me like I had just fallen from the sky.
"You really are crazy! Stupid!" She laughed, "No, I'm just kidding. Well, you go have fun in Orchestra!"
"Oh I will, and you have fun in Chorus!" I said. Leann rolled her eyes; we laughed, and headed off to our next classes.
To get to the Orchestra room from my locker, I had to go outside and through the school's courtyard. The room, B7, was in the basement of the school. So, I went down the short set of stairs, and then through the hallway to get my instrument from the storage room. On the hallway ceiling you could see pipes, and the walls were just cement, so it had the feeling of a basement, too.
When I got in the storage room, and had gotten my violin, I met another one of my friends.
"Hi, Maddie!"
Maddie looked up. She had reddish hair that was longer than shoulder length, but only by about a few inches. I was a little taller than her, but size is nothing when it comes to Maddie.
"Hi! How come you haven't been on your email?" She demanded immediately. I was always on my computer, but never seemed to remember to check my email. Maddie was always sending me emails, so she got all mad when I didn't check on my emails.
"Oh, yeah… I forgot… I'll try to remember tonight!" I replied.
Then we walked back to the classroom talking about random things, as always. By the time we got there, only about thirty seconds later, we were laughing about who-knows-what. We sat down, got set up, and tuned our violins. That's what the first five minutes of class is for, setting up and tuning.
Five minutes later, class truly began. Mr. Henderson told everyone to quiet down. Tuning can get really loud. We started class tuning, in which someone stands up, and plays their 'A' string first, and everyone will play along, listening for abnormalities in their pitches. The person then plays their 'D', 'G', and 'E' string. The violas and cellos will play their 'C' string after that. As soon as everyone's satisfied, we started to play our music.
We played music out of the book for most of the class period, with some jokes here and there made by Mr. Henderson when students playing bases complained about having to stand up all the time, and little things like that. Orchestra was one of my favorite classes for that reason. Mr. Henderson was really funny.
About three minutes before the bell rang, at nine fifty, Mr. Henderson told everyone to pack up. We put our instruments in their cases, and took them back to the storage room. Right after I'd put my instrument away, the bell rang. I went back outside and through the courtyard, to my locker. I had come back from Orchestra empty handed, rather than with my music book. I usually just leave my book with my instrument, to pick up after school.
Next, I had Science, my least favorite subject. I yanked my book out of that jam-packed mess of a locker, and shut it quickly, before anything could fall out.
Mental note: clean locker after school! I thought to myself.
After that, I shoved my way through the crowded hallway, to get to room 26. When I got there, I found my seat and looked up at the board. On it, there was the plan for the day. It said that we were going to correct last night's homework first, discuss it, and then review the test on plants that we'd taken yesterday.
I got out my homework and red pen. The assignment last night had been a double-sided worksheet. It had just been a fill-in-the-blank or multiple-choice kind of thing, so I'd gotten most of it done in class.
"Good morning, everyone! Red pens?" The teacher, Ms. Lynda said. Everyone held up their correcting pens for her to see.
"Excellent! Nobody forgot theirs?" She looked around, "Alright, now we can begin… Number one: 'What is the process that plants use to make food named?' Let's see, Jake, can you answer that for us?"
"Uh… isn't it like, Photosynthesis?" Jake said. He was one of those kids that liked to show off. He was one of the 'popular' kids at school, and thought he was so cool.
"Yes, good job, Jake!" Ms. Lynda complimented.
As soon as we'd got the paper corrected, had our scores recorded, and discussed it, we started to review.
"Kiera and Lizzie, will you pass the tests back, please?"
Lizzie, a tall kid with shoulder-length, dark, curly hair, and I went up to Ms. Lynda's desk and got the tests. As I was handing out papers, I found mine. I'd gotten a 98, an A!
Soon, Lizzie and I had finished giving everyone their paper. Ms. Lynda then went up to the front of the room with the answer key. She went over each section of the test, and asked us if we had any questions about ones we got wrong.
When we were done, we put the tests in our binders. Ms. Lynda then gave us our assignment for tonight. We were to do questions one through thirty on page 322. It sounded like a lot, but that was before I actually opened my book and looked over the assignment. It was basically like last night's worksheet. A little less than half of it was multiple choice, then some fill-in-the-blank, and only three essay-like questions.
In the span of the rest of the class, which was about fifteen minutes, I had gotten all of the multiple choice done, and some fill-in-the-blank. Then the bell rang. Everyone clumsily got their papers together, shoved them in their binders, and walked out of class.
All right! One more class, then lunch! I thought. The day always goes by pretty fast.
Back to my locker again. This time I didn't get too lucky; everything jumped out at me. My coat was the main cause of the problem, followed by my backpack. They were hogging all the room for my books and things. So I took my coat, wound it into a tight ball, and shoved it in my backpack, also making that as small as possible. Before I put it back in the locker, I got the stuff I needed, just incase my plan didn't work as well as I hoped. I still had to slam the door shut, but I got all my stuff to stay in my locker this time.
Afterward, I looked down to check my watch.
Only a minute!
And I still had to go all the way across the school! Grabbing my stuff off the floor, I stood up and ran.