Short Story: Math Class

Connie Chang, 13
Massachusetts

She lets the words bleed onto the paper, ink spreading, blood on snow, a dark splotch becoming bigger and bigger until it covers the whole line with words, dark words, bug-like words, hateful words. She lets her sentences become paragraphs, disjointed remarks, cynical quotes, scribbles with no artistic ability and poor aesthetics on the side but with emotion and power that compensates, more than enough. She fills the barrel with water.

She closes the notebook and looks around at the place, the only place she feels safe, not violated, not molested by cigarette eyes and disgusting booze breath. She hates the feeling of vulnerability, but everyone like her is supposed to be submissive, passive. She thinks they are right but then again they're wrong since she has a brain, an actual brain. She's not stupid, she's strong, she's intelligent, sharp as a sword, but senses duller than a blunt club like the ones they used on her.

She hides no scars. She possesses no bruises outside of the mind.
Her name was lost, so she calls herself herself. With italics. Like that. She's cool, composed, the opposite of conformist. She never loses her head, takes things to the heart "“ and delivers. Intelligent. Outside of home, that is. But once she gets back she had three jobs to deal with, one of them at a slaughterhouse of creativity, one of them at a degrading bar, one of them as a victim of voice. She's too humiliated, has too much pride to become weak for a moment. She had no support except for herself, has no insurance, no money, nothing. She's at the top of her class but that means nothing to her, she's got talent but that's nothing because she isn't pretty enough, isn't determined enough.

The hell? Who are you to judge? I have enough determination in me to lift a horsecart, I have enough prettiness to beat the living out of you, if that's what you mean. I can wield a claymore of the tongue, no shield, just plain sword and attack. Who cares about you? she thinks. You'll end up a 17-year-old train wreck, juggling a home life and a deadbeat boyfriend and some cheap job as a cleanup girl. But maybe she was judging too much.

"So to find the x-intercept "

She knew about all this already, she'd learned it in fifth grade, moved onto high school in middle school, college exams in ninth, real world crap in eleventh and twelfth, and now where is she? A lifetime of hard work, world-worn looks, silent molestations. There is no god, there is no her.

"Please tell me the answer "

She looks around at the class, realizing that maybe this isn't too safe a place. The students aren't paying too much attention, they're screwing around again, the teacher who's not paid enough is trying to restore order. He's going into his 60s in his 30s. She trails off and looks at a knot of talking, laughing, giggling boys and a separate knot of girls who snort and exchange secrets and rumors and glance at the boys. And then the
outcasts. Herself, other losers.

She thinks about this and scribbles it down in third person, since first person is too personal and second person is alien to her, a foreign language. She realizes that life isn't pretty and that her case isn't odd. She's not an odd duck. She's a normal duck. But she wants to be odd, she knows, and she finds this out in the middle of math class, in the middle of flying paper airplanes and giggles and snorts and mean looks and airheads and stupid people who will get nowhere because they're so close-minded. She comes to a total revelation, an enlightening of the mind and of the posture.

She leans back in her chair and surveys the room again, a small, invisible smile gracing her for the first time in what feels like years and probably is. She doesn't need to put in that much work, she's not generating enough momentum. She scribbles this down in her book and comes to terms with herself, wrestling with the comments from the others but keeping the baseball cap on her head low and her messenger bag "“ sewn together with sweat "“ hanging on her chair and her creativity and her writing in her head and her hands. She keeps her artistic side to herself since that's going to get her places.

The class ends and the pretty girls get up and leave first, followed by a group of loyal boys. She looks at their backs, sees how they swing arrogantly, trying to prove that they're stronger and tougher. But then she knows that the girls have backs that move too rigidly, too straight, too normally, too materialistically. The outcasts are the ones with slumped backs, bad bones, downcast eyes. I am one of those outcasts and I don't know what to think of her, and when I enter into the hall I double back and go through the other door, peek out, see her exit.

She leaves last, turns to the teacher and waves, lifts his mood, doesn't notice me, leaves, leaves with a strong back, the only back that the teacher and I will find to be places in 20 years. Her back is proud now, head thrown high, not fake like the arrogant boys' and the empty, almost hopeless girls', but genuine, with a new sense of accomplishment in those musky 45 minutes of math class. And I can't help but marvel at her change.

Artwork by teen contributor Angela Simon