Pencil Shavings

I had a math test. I was nervous, mostly because I knew that I hadn’t learned any of the things that were on it, but I knew that I should have known. 

I didn’t study. 

I walked down the hall with the lockers looming over me and the doors dissolving beneath the shadows. There was a group of people walking near me, but they shouldn't have been there. It was Saturday.

I got to my room, sat in an empty seat in an empty classroom, and I was handed my English test.

The test was practically unintelligible; the words were blurring together in a confusing frenzy, and the blanks were too small. I tried to write, but my pencil wasn’t really a pencil, but more of a pen, and I know that I'm not allowed to use pen on math tests. 

I didn’t study, so I didn’t know any of the answers. I looked around, and suddenly the room was full. Everyone around me was writing quickly, filling up the blanks and the essay lines. Everyone was writing the right equations and using a pencil, and I wasn’t.

I got to the section on the back of the page where I was supposed to match characters from the book to quotes. This I knew. 

I went to write, but my pen wasn’t working; the thick ink was falling through the cracks of my desk and staining my hands and my shoes and my brand new button up shirt.

Finally, I started writing again, erasing the stray pencil marks and the wrong answers, but I didn’t know what was right or wrong because I didn’t study, and I’m horrible at math. 

I tried to finish the vocabulary section, but it was over. My time was out. My Scranton was taken from my hands, and the pages with empty words and filled blanks flashed before my eyes. 

The bell rang. I stood up, threw my bag over my shoulder, and followed the crowd of students to my next class.