the end of the line.
“Excuse me,” I said with mega politeness to the one girl who wasn't laughing at me. It was the one named Lester who was in the form room when Miss Horse embarrassed me. “Is this the class for English Lit?”
“Yes, it is. I'm Holly Lester.” She held out her hand, so I shook it, although I was half-way expecting her to start making fun of me, too. She didn't, though, and she seemed nice, although she had kind of a perpetually worried look on her face. “Did Mr. Krigon rip a strip off you?”
“Rip a strip? You mean yell at me? I'd like to see that!” She looked even more worried, so I toned my Brave Emily act down a bit. “Naw, he was actually very nice to me. He said he gets parents on his back if students don't all look the same, so he asked me to play along. Mondo boring, but you know how parents can be. I told him I would, although I'm going to be really PO'd if my holes close because of the stupid 'one set of earrings' rule.”
“Oh.” She looked at my ears, and her eyes got kind of glittery. “You have five earrings in each ear! That's...that's...”
“Coolio?” I asked, glaring at the two evil girls at the head of the line.
“Erm...I guess.”
“Trust me, it is coolio. So if this is the English Lit class, why are we all standing outside rather than going in?”
Holly looked kind of scandalized, like I asked her to dance naked down the hallway or something. “We always queue up before class.”
“Oh, another one of those stup—” I stopped before I said the rest of the word. After all, just because it was her country, she wasn't responsible for the rules. She probably just didn't know that there was a much more reasonable way to do things. “Eh...silly rules. OK, so we stand around and wait for the teach to arrive. I'm copacetic with that. Maybe you can fill me in on what you guys do for fun. Those of you who aren't evil minions of Satan, that is,” I added, shooting another glance at the girls who were poking each other and pointing at us. I was annoyed for a minute before I remembered that I didn't care what they did.
“Fun?” Holly asked, like she'd never heard of the word. Maybe she hadn't. She didn't look like she was overflowing with yucks. I tell you, Dru, I've never seen anyone who looked like such a scared rabbit. I just bet you that the evil girls had picked on her, too. I think I'm going to take her under my wing. Clearly she could use several million points on the cool scale, and since I know cool, I will just have to show her how to use it to handle the Snarky Sisters.
Where was I? Oh, yeah, so she says, “Fun?” like she didn't know what I was talking about.
“Yeah, you know, like what do you do during your study periods? That is, study lessons?” I figured I'd better not get into the whole period/lesson thing around her, in case she thought I meant Mister Monthly Visitor.
“We study.”
“I mean, when you're not studying? Don't you guys have like a cool room where you hang out with all your friends, and put on makeup—” Well, OK, scratch that. “—and gossip, and stuff?”
Her eyes got even bigger. “No, we don't.”
A teacher, a little round butterball of a woman, rolled up. I smiled at Holly just before the teacher opened the door. “Well, we'll just have to change that, won't we?”
I thought her eyeballs were going to pop out of her head, but luckily La Femme Butterball herded everyone into the room (in a nice, orderly queue—excuse me, but I'm an adult, not a kindergartner!). I followed Holly to the back of the room, and stood like a nice little drone next to a desk until the B-ball told us we could sit.
Is it any wonder our four-score-and-seven-years-ago forefathers decided they'd had enough of this sort of totalitarian behavior? Hello, we're in the twenty-first century! Let's get with the times, people!
We all sat. I was just flipping open my mini tablet when all of a sudden the Butterball opens up her mouth and starts bellowing at the top of her lungs. “GOOD MORNING, CLASS. IT'S NICE TO SEE SO MANY FAMILIAR FACES BACK HERE THIS YEAR.”
I stared at her for a moment, then glanced around the room.