One Bad Day

It was Monday, but I thought it was Sunday. I woke up late and dreadfully disappointed. The morning was cloudy and it had rained the previous night. The sky was still rumbling and I could tell the storm was not quite ready to stop. I dug around my closet for an hour looking for boots and all I could find was one sneaker lacking its mate and a pair of sandals.

Once I got outside I kept sneezing. I wasn’t able to dodge the puddles. One came up to my knees. When I walked into my class—a Study of the Holocaust—the teacher glared at my dripping figure, my soaked pants, my hastily thrown on clothes and my unbrushed hair. I scurried to the back of the room, my drenched sandals squeaking, and took my seat.

My professor was a vile woman who wore her hair in a tight bun, so tight that it pulled at her skin causing her eyebrows to rise sharply, giving her a sinister look. She was fond of slapping a ruler against the palm of her hand as hard as she could. She was fond of cracking it like a whip on the desk of a student who started to doze or couldn’t answer a “simple” question. Her voice, also, was like a whip.

She smiled, sinisterly, “Today, I have a surprise…Test.”

The word “test” she annunciated loudly. The room echoed. The desks shook. We all groaned. She slapped the ruler down on her desk, as I said, like a whip, causing the class to jump like a lot of frightened bunnies. “Enough!“ she ordered.

We obeyed. The test was a heavy packet of papers and it was dropped heavily onto our desktops. I had out one pen and one pencil. I finished the first three pages of the test before the ink from my pen ran out. My heart began to beat faster, harder. I tried to stretch out the remaining ink, but it was futile. It simply scarred the page, ineffectively. I looked up, the teacher was standing erect. Her arms were crossed and she stared straight at me. Was it my imagination, or was there a malicious hint of a smile on her lips? I had the sensation I was being laughed out--a screechy, high-pitched cackle.

I picked up my pencil and continued on. I finished one short essay question. The lead broke. Now, sweat was forming on my brow. I wiped it off, and reached for my sharpener, a shadow fell across my desk. “What do you think you are doing?” said her icy voice.

“I—I just need my pencil sharpener.”

“It is against the rules to go through your bag in the middle of a test.”

“Bu—my, my pencil bro—“

“I am not interested in your excuses. You will follow the rules or take a zero in my class.” She walked away, her heels biting at the linoleum floor.

I was helpless, sweating like a cornered animal. I looked at my pen. It was useless! Empty! Drained! I looked around frantically. I felt the teacher’s eyes on me. I heard her, inwardly cackling at me. I reached for the broken pencil lead, letting my pencil slide off my desk and slam, quietly, against the floor. I continued with the test, nothing but a pencil lead to write with. A trickle of sweat slid from my forehead onto the page, smudging what I had written. I ignored it and continued on, then…

The pencil lead broke, one half rolled off the desk onto the floor, across the room. I looked at what I had left between my thumb and forefinger. It was barely anything. I tried to write with it. It was too small. I tried to press it down with just my forefinger and drag it across the page—as if finger-painting. I just crushed it. I had a thousand tiny, ashen pieces of led and no way to manipulate them. I was short of breath. I saw the world filling with splotches of black. I was about to faint, and then…

The bell rang. “Time’s up” said the teacher in her curt, cold tone. I knew I was doomed.