I rose from my seat and sauntered over to the front of the room towards her. The entire class had gone pin-drop quiet.
Ava still looked a bit caught off guard by my stance, but she straightened up and gave me her best toxic smile. “I said,” she annunciated with venom practically oozing between her teeth, “that you’re a total skank.” She boldly cocked her head to the side, seeming to size me up. “You really are pathetic, aren’t you?”
A handful of the students sneered and laughed under their breaths. Something under my skin crawled, and without permission from my brain, my body took over. I smiled back just as wickedly as I strolled right up to her. “Funny, I could swear your boyfriend said the same thing about you at Jake’s last party, considering the fact that he had his tongue down the throat of that blonde from Jefferson High and not yours.”
Ava’s eyes practically bulged from her skull as the entire class gasped. I even got a chorus of “Oooohh”s.
“You bitc-”
“Sticks and stones, sweetheart. Don’t throw what you can’t take in return,” I said. “And a piece of advice, verbal diarrhea isn’t attractive on anyone.” I closed the distance between us. “But I have a feeling that if we took a look into your own Little Black Book that we’d discover that a lot worse things have been in your mouth other than your words.”
Now, the whole room was filled with “Oooohh”s, before cutting abruptly short as footsteps trotted into the room behind me.
“Good morning, class,” replied an unfamiliar, rather handsome man. By the restrained grin on his face, it was obvious that he had overheard my last statement. Ava cast me a lethal glare, and my insides churned. And just like that, my mind finally seized control over my body and a wave of nausea hit. Did I honestly just say that to Ava?!
The man walked over to Miss Garrison’s desk and pointed to the blackboard behind him. “As you can read, my name is Mr. Salzmann, and I’ll be your substitute for the day. So, take your seats, and knock it off with the death stares,” he remarked. “You guys can all return to your ‘9-O-2-1-Oooohh no, she didn’t’ drama after class. Got it?” He laughed, and the warm chuckles from the other students helped ease the tension as I retreated to the other side of the classroom and took my seat again.
Mr. Salzmann started his lesson plan, but my attention span had already been spent. I could still see Ava out of my peripheral vision giving me the stink eye.
“Okay,” announced Mr. Salzmann after his lecture, “I’d like to hear some of your thoughts on the subject. Anyone have an opinion they’d wish to share?”
Fellow classmates chimed in with their opinions, and our substitute turned to the blackboard to jot down some of the key points. Against my will, I turned to look at Ava as she motioned something out of the side of my vision. She returned my stare, poking her tongue into the side of her cheek and moving a closed fist in a horizontal motion. Seriously? Was she twelve? I rolled my eyes with a forced laugh like it didn’t bother me, but I could feel a stirring in my gut boiling up into my chest. My grip tightened around my pen to the point that the plastic started to bend.
Just as Ava unscrewed the lid off the drink on her desk, I tossed my pen down on my desktop with a little more force than I intended. Suddenly, Ava’s water bottle seemed to be ripped clean from her hands, splashing its contents all into her lap. She shrieked as she leapt up from her seat, and Salzmann handed her the lavatory pass so that she could go get cleaned up. The other students started to buzz about with whispered remarks and Salzmann had to usher everyone to quiet back down. I couldn’t help but find some mild satisfaction that karma seemed to play in the matter, but something icky told me it was more than a lucky chance.
The class quickly regained order, and the newfound calm seemed to be too much for me, because I couldn’t fend off the lethargy sliding its way into my fatigued limbs. I hadn’t slept in days. Reveling in the darkness found behind my eyelids, I could hear the chatter around me fading into the background.
My body instinctively jerked, forcing me out of my approaching dream state. I couldn’t sleep now. Not in the middle of class! God only knows what would happen. I couldn’t risk levitating in front of everyone.
But relief was short-lived as my eyes shot back open. I wasn’t in English. I wasn’t sitting in my desk. I was suddenly standing upright…alone. Outside.
Don’t panic.
Don’t panic.
Dried leaves and broken twigs cracked beneath my feet as I staggered forward, greeted by nothing but a chorus of chirping insects and an eerie screeching I prayed was only an owl. Did owls come out during the day? With the storms coming into the area, the sky was dark enough that it looked like twilight. But where was I? How did I get here? There were trees as far as the eye could see in every direction. That wasn’t saying much though, because visibility was pretty much nonexistent outside thirty feet with the thick embankment of fog rolling in.