But it’s Friday afternoon and it’s trigonometry and it’s not as if I’m magically going to understand everything to do with triangles and tangents by paying attention in the last fifteen minutes of the class anyway.
Honestly, I don’t think anyone is paying attention even though everyone is quiet and facing the blackboard.
There are probably fifteen other girls besides me in this small beige-painted concrete and cement classroom where I sit in the back.
We’re all slumped over the hard, wooden desks, with our chins in our hands.
We all have tight braids either flowing down our backs or draped over our shoulders, tied at the end with a mustard-colored ribbon. We all wear a starched white blouse and a mustard-yellow skirt that touches the tops of our knees. Except I have a black chunky sweater on because I’m a sunshine girl and the inside of St. Mary’s feels like winter.
We pair our uniforms with knee-length white socks and polished black Mary Janes.
Our notebooks are lying open in front of us and our butts are planted in chairs as hard and wooden as the desks.
From time to time, we squirm and adjust ourselves in our seats because I’m guessing the wood is digging into our asses.
At least, it’s digging into mine.
So it should be really hard to fall asleep, right? Or daydream.
But I’m doing both until I hear a sound.
Psst…
It’s coming from my right. Slowly I turn to find my neighbor, over in the adjacent row, trying to get my attention.
It’s a girl I’ve seen before.
Around campus, in the cafeteria and in the dorm building where every student who goes to St. Mary’s stays, but I’ve never talked to her.
Because no one talks to me here.
I’ve actually tried very hard to get them to talk to me or even smile at me or just wave their hand at me by waving mine but I haven’t been successful. I can’t even get my roommate, Elanor, to say hi to me.
So I don’t know what this girl, my neighbor with blonde hair, wants from me. But as soon as our eyes meet, she motions her head toward something.
Biting my lip, I look at what she’s pointing at.
It’s a piece of paper.
It’s sitting at the edge of my desk, folded over twice to make a little square.
For a second, I can’t comprehend what a piece of paper is doing on my desk. Confused, I look up from it and focus back on the girl. She widens her eyes at me and gestures at it with her chin again.
What the…
Oh.
Oh!
I finally get it. It’s a note.
She’s passing me a note and she wants me to open it.
Got it.
Immediately, I go to grab it but stop, my hand suspended in midair. I look up and see that the teacher, Mrs. Miller, is busy solving a weird-looking equation on the board. So I’m safe there.
But why is this girl writing me a note?
