In my freshman year of high school, my favorite class was World History. The subject matter is not why I liked the class (history is so yesterday), I liked it because I had an awesome teacher.
My teacher would use an old fly fishing rod as a pointer and would draw a little meter on the board to indicate his present level of anger toward his delinquent students. He was generally full of personality, and I appreciated him for it.
I was, unfortunately, one of the students that got on his nerves and contributed to his eventual decision to put the class under a system of assigned seating.
He strategically arranged quiet girls around the boys who would frequently talk and distract other students. I'm not sure if he did this on purpose, but he buffered me with two girls who also had red hair. He put one in the chair beside me and one in the chair behind and suddenly all of the redheads in the class were concentrated in one location.
Neither one would speak to me. They performed their job dutifully.
One day it was revealed that we were going to have a pop quiz. I groaned and took out a pencil as the quiz sheets were passed around.
I received my sheet and hunkered over it. I read problem one.
Hmmm.. I have no idea. Pass. Next question.
I read the second question. A vague memory of some distant lesson flickered across my mind. This was shaping up to be a pretty difficult quiz.
A moment later, my teacher pushed hastily past me down the aisle of desks. I wasn't sure what he was doing, so I kept working on my quiz.
He started to pull the redheaded girl behind me out of her chair. He dragged her through the rows of desks and out into the clearing in the center of the room.
What.
What was happening?
Had she been cheating? This seemed like an odd punishment for cheating.
She just lied in the center of the room.
Had she passed out? The quiz wasn't THAT hard. I mean, this is a little dramatic for a freshman history quiz. Just take the grade, lady. You'll still probably do better than me.
Then she began to shake.
I didn't know what I was seeing at first, but when my teacher ran over to the phone he said into it that one of his students was having a seizure.
We watched with our hands over our mouths as our classmate seized in the center of the room. It wasn't a strong one, but it was still hard to watch. It was about a minute before our teacher decided to take us into the hall.
We lined up against the wall of lockers outside of the room. No one really spoke. We were all too shocked and confused by what had happened.
Two people with black bags came running down the hall and into the room. Our teacher went in with them and closed the door.
We stood in continued silence.
Then I felt something on my shoulder. My typical reaction would not have been as visceral, but I was a little freaked out by what I had just seen. I jumped to the side.
The other redheaded girl had started to feel lightheaded and tried to rest her head on my shoulder, but now, since I was no longer there to support her, she began to fall.
She slid toward me down the wall of lockers. Her head banged against the locks and handles that protruded from them and then cracked loudly against the floor.
She laid motionless on the ground in front of me.
Everyone turned around to see me with this girl unconscious at my feet.
"THEY'RE DROPPING LIKE FLIES!" I exclaimed, pulling my shirt over my mouth like some sort of makeshift SARS mask. My brain struggled to find an explanation. Of the many plausible options, it landed finally on the hypothesis that my school was killing off the redheads.
"BIOLOGICAL WAREFARE! OH GOD! I'M NEXT!" I began to get a bit hysterical. I truly did believe that I was next on Death's collection list.
The girl gurgled below me. I hyperventilated into my shirt.
A few of my classmates had more rational reactions and knelt down to help the girl up. Her eyes rolled in their sockets. She mumbled incoherently.
I couldn't take it. I wormed my way out of the crowd and burst through the double doors that led to the courtyard in the middle of the school.
I ran in erratic circles, my shirt still stretched tight over my mouth. I yelled nonsense to anyone that might hear.
"TELL MY FAMILY I LOVE THEM. OH GOD, I CAN FEEL THE SPORES EATING AT MY INSIDES! I HAVE NO REGRETS! WELL, I NEVER GOT TO SEE THIS SEASON'S FINALE OF 'FRIENDS', BUT OTHER THAN THAT I AM REGRETLESS!"
I did a few delirious laps before I finally collapsed in a grassy patch, resigning myself to my fate.
--
I survived that day. So did the other two girls, but THEY didn't get a week of detention for being disruptive.
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