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Chapter Two: Ð α ყ ~ э ı g н τ |
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Shuffling out into the corridor, a few of the Juniors were last, due to their relative distance from the doors and last-second purchases from the vending machines. Out came the familiar faces of Kenny, Alex Venda, and Darin who were headed to one of their favorite classes for the day – Algebra Class. As they walked past the trophy case – the display of all of Oracle Prep’s success in competitions, validated by the sheer evidence of five and full shelves of gold and silver – they absentmindedly glanced over to the doorway, watching a car or two fly by. Going downhill was a bit of a rush when they were driving, but they were constantly spectated by the faculty so ensure the safe commute of all involved.
Their thoughts soon pooled into the mindset they were to attain for the lively class they had ahead of them. “Did you do the Math homework?” As Alex, his neck craning forwards a bit to look over to Darin or Kenny, expecting a response from both. “Nope,” “Nah,” They looked into the gym as they passed by the nurse’s office, briefly staring in long enough to see that she was busy tending to a student who had scuffed their knee in gym class. “Oh!” The male closest to the nurse’s office exclaimed as he abruptly stopped in his path. “Tell Mr. Boniello I’ll be right there,” “Alright.” “Sure!”
As the two taller figures headed towards the stairs leading up to the second floor, Darin doubled back towards the small doorway of the nurse’s office. “Hi, Nurse Lynn.” “Hey, Honey,” Came the kind woman’s response. Her eyes were alert yet comforting with the motherly nature she had applied to her job, day in and day out. Behind her silver-rimmed spectacles, her hazel eyes sparkled, observing the mocha-skinned boy noticing that he had a minute hole in the lower section of his sweater vest. Looking him over briefly, her lips curled up into an inviting smile, displaying her genial demeanor. She could tell that the boy was in an up-beat mood and was adequate in health.
As he removed his backpack with finesse, placing his other bag against the front of her chest-high desk, the metal echoed for a moment. “What’s up?” She queried, looking up from her papers to forward her full on the boy. She had come to know each and every one of them, and would be able to identify them; certain students had been attending longer than others.
“I’ve that form you wanted me to fill out,” He had bent over to the side to retrieve a folder from his black backpack, placing the folder on the desk level to him, and pulled out a few papers connected with a paper clip. Once he shook it free of the other flyers that were clinging to its hind, he turned it to offer the opposite end to her. She looked it over and took it between her perfectly manicured hands, pulling it closer to her and set it on her desk. Skimming through the two pages, she nodded in compliance, appearing satisfied by the information.
“You’re good to go, Honey!” Zipping up the backpack, Darin heaved it back onto his shoulder and contorted his arm backwards to slide into the other arm strap. “Alright,” He adjusted the large bag on his oblong shoulders and smiled, taking the folder off the surface and closing it, tucking it under his arm. “Thanks.” “Have a nice day,” She called after him as he turned out of the cramped room. “You too!” He replied after glancing over his shoulder.
The second bell rang, and he lengthened his stride towards the stairs, past the water fountain and the faculty bathrooms, and hoped up the five steps to the second floor. The clay-colored, brick walls flew past him, his brown eyes glazing over as he looked out the window. He took a mental note that the turf field – the venue for their soccer and baseball games – was clear of any obstructions. No strange figures looming overhead in the skies, no creatures trekking across the new field, appearing glossy in the sunlight which trickled across it. His pace slackened a bit, and he made sure to make his glance as inconspicuous as he could manage as a few other individuals who were lagging behind, late to their classes, passed him as well.
The two benches were void of the students lounging in their idle time, and a small wrapper from someone’s late breakfast remained. His nimble fingers wrapped around the plastic as he approached the corner to turn into the second level’s corridor. Careening over to the left side of the hallway, he closed in the space between him and the wall, the plethora of plaques displaying the alumni of the school staring at him in petrification. He glanced across the relevantly narrow into the doorway, door convex to the wall, and into Room 205, a brief thought flickering through his mind as he turned left into Room 202.
“And so,” He heard the familiar voice of his Algebra II teacher starting the class. As lively and entertaining as he made the class, the students also found that their lessons stuck with them throughout the day. It was an enjoyable class, to say the least. Darin entered, a few eyes drawn in his direction as he pulled the door closed behind him – its surface parallel to the wall in which it was indented – and advanced towards his seat. He passed the few columns of students and traversed through the seats, obstacles of backpacks and laptop bags.
Looking out through the windows to the compact parking lot, he approached his seat – two from the front – and was greeted by a number of familiar faces as he took his seat. The teacher paused for a moment to glance at his textbook for the conclusion of his recapitulation of yesterday’s lecture. Falling into his seat, he turned to face the students who called his name in the area behind him. He waved, his eyes focusing on the familiar face that was once devouring a chicken Caesar wrap. A goofy smile was presented in return, and Darin turned around, smirking from the contagiousness.
“If you look at page three-hundred and nine, the parabola presented in example one has a formula. The formula is in vertex form.” He transcribed the formula to the whiteboard behind him, not looking once as he did. His eyes were observing the attention of each student and targeted those who weren't paying full attention, while disregarding others who were capable of surviving the day's lecture on their own. The feat still astonished Alex as his eyes strained from behind his thick-lens burdens. Pushing them closer to his eyes, he observed with the equally distributed amazement he had for just about everything else in his life.
The teacher's thin lips pulled up into a comical grin as he spotted Alex's customary reaction, and he glanced over to the column of seats closest to the door. As he briefly glanced through the arrangement of students, he tugged at the tie on his neck. "Can anyone tell me what the variables 'h' and 'k' stand for?"
While the relatively dull part of the class briefly skipped by, the lively Mr. Thomas Boniello threw up his arms emphatically as a student answered a question. The class erupted in compliant laughter as the teacher turned to the board to fill in the values for the different values and instructed them in ways to go about solving the problem. Before Darin sat Drue, who was commonly the mutual victim of the front of the classroom. He tapped and whistled and often drew Mr. Boniello's attention from the lecture. Walking across the length of the board, the mathematics teacher heard the rhythm growing behind him and froze. Playfully turning around, he looked down to Drue and then to those seated around him, shuffling back to where he had come from, and then the drumming ceased.
With calculating eyes darting back and forth, a smug smirk spread across the fantastic man's lips. He hopped back into the invisible field of activation for the boy's beating and hopped back out, the rattling soon to die down once more. All the students watched in avid attention as the feat continued for a few more moments, their smiles slowly growing with the continuance. As he hopped over what he estimated to be the invisible space, he continued his teaching by stretching over the interval as if it were a deep, dangerous chasm that he dared to stand at the edge of.
They got back on topic after a brief conversation of a recent event in sports, which consequently stirred up a few more conversations. With the students bracing themselves, he had them perform a few problems on their own with the guidelines he had set for them. As they neared the solution to the second problem, the bell rang and they were dismissed with a cliff-hanger to resolve tomorrow.
Gathering their things, they funneled into the already flooded hallways, students twisting through to go either with the flow of traffic or against it. As they neared their next destinations, they saw a lot of familiar faces along the way, some busy speaking with one another. With the what was left of the day’s load lighter on some shoulders than other – relative to the respective strengths or even how many books they had in their backpacks – their paces picked up as the tension in the air pinched at their skin, and the clamoring of the bell rang over all the monotony. As the last of the students filed into their classrooms, some rooms similar to the ones they had just sat in for about forty-some odd minutes, others completely different, they approached the seats and plopped down where they had the many days before.
The teacher before them differed for each classroom, some actually in a classroom while others were in a chapel, seated in pews and lectured from a teacher who strutted up and down the carpeted aisle, while others were seated at slate tables and watching a recent alumnus of the school educate them further on the chemical reactions and equilibrium.
In a mesh of both Juniors and Seniors, Room 204 hosted the mass of the school’s desktops for lower-schoolers to use, along with the standard, overhead projector and the smartboard located against the wall opposite the mass of the students, adjacent to the whiteboard. A brief prayer was offered in graces of the beginning of class. Some students removed their laptops from the bags beside them while others brought out spiral notebooks – old fashioned and more reliant of the less-distracting note-taker.
The voice of the teacher droned on while the clicking of keys upon keyboards signified the class’s activity – it may have not been appropriate participation or actual activity that required much attention of the students, but there were fewer sitting with their head engulfed by their arms than in other classes.
Leaving the unexciting teaching space, uninterested students and a short and rounded “teacher” as well, some of the Juniors who were just at the two tables during lunch were in the Chemistry Lab, Room 106, opening their notebooks and watching formulas manifest on the board before the explanation of the compounds and imperial formulas. As they scribbled down side-notes on comments the timely-complacent instructor made, they then grabbed their notebooks and swarmed around the apparatus that had been set up at their desks to construct the lab.
As long as it seemed, the school day ended with the bell that had resounded so many times that day, taunting them with the knowledge that there was always a class after that bell. But, at this calling of dismissal, after the lecture of the day had ended and the classes had gone silent in respect of the end-of-the-day announcements, they were released from the confines of the rooms and bled into the hallways once more. This time, the masses of students – short and tall, wide and narrow – were swimming all in one direction: towards the main stairway. From there, the students on the second floor would step down the five steps to veer left into the main lobby, or turn right to head down eight more steps and then turn once more to go down four more, headed into the locker room. On their way down, they would either pass by individuals climbing the stairs to go to the locker room, or fellow students who were swimming along their ways to merge in path to file into the locker room. Some took the alternative route to the back of the locker room, which entailed going through the double doors outside to the pathway underneath the patio.
The field was shining glorious as it always did. As dress shoes clomped awkwardly against the asphalt beneath them, they passed by brown bins which consisted of sports equipment [javelins and shotputs for the track team, soccer balls for the soccer team, and baseballs and lacrosse balls for - well, you’ve got the clue].
As they convened back into the locker room via another set of heavy, metallic double doors, these much larger than the ones granting primary access into the back of the school, students when to their lockers and would lounge about the school until they were picked up, go to participate in their Spring Sports, or went about their business elsewhere. Juniors, in particular, were usually sprinkled about these three options, but – seeing as how the Spring Sport Season just started up – most were involved in sports.
Of course, Redacle City and its dilemmas could not wait for practice to be over.
 Montferer - Maestro · Fri Apr 15, 2011 @ 04:08pm · 0 Comments |
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