The class shuffled in, laughing and cackling. Except a few, who were a bit perturbed at the events on the playground; Emeral in particular. She took her seat, glaring forward at the empty desk in front of her, ignoring all else.
Ritzer sat at the desk to her left, and smiled. "So’z, if'n I'm the champ'n of pull-ups that'd makes you—"
"Shut up." She snapped.
He closed his lips for a second and folded his arms. "Someone's hit deir time'a the month."
"Welcome back, class," Mr. Erst began, clapping his paws; "I hope you all had fun at recess. And I know you will all have fun for the next hour. It's math time!"
As one monster, the whole class groaned.
"Now I know you all just love long-division, and with that—err, hey...are we missing someone?"
The door to the classroom clicked, and a little golden-orange tiger walked in quietly, bombarded by eyeballs.
"Recess ended about three minutes ago, son, why are you so late?"
Emeral gritted her teeth at the terrier's remark. What was it with old people and thinking everyone was their son?
"Sorry sir," the tiger responded, "I guess I fell asleep in the tunnels. Didn't hear the bell."
The terrier pressed his glasses against his nose. "Well, all right. Just take your seat and we'll get started."
"Actually, sir, could I use the bathroom?"
Mr. Erst folded his arms, but that permanent smile never left his face. "Son, you had all recess to do that, now take your seat and we'll get—"
"Please, it's an emergency."
The substitute sighed, kids always took advantage of the stand-in. "All right, take the bear and you hurry up." He said with a gesture.
Ket made his way to the two bears sitting side-by-side on the filing cabinet by the door, and took the blue one by the yarn sewn onto its sides.
"Now then," Mr. Erst began, after a heartbeat's pause, "as I was saying, according to Ms. Hupp, you were working on long-division. I assume you all did the homework she assigned?"
Panic erupted.
"We weren't supposed to do homework!"
"Yeah, it was optional!"
"We had homework?"
"My brother took it, I swear!"
"Now, class," the terrier put up a gnarled hand, speaking softly against the noise, "Ms. Hupp informed me that she's holding off the math homework until she's returned tomorrow. But I'm still supposed to go over the material, and I happen to be an excellent math teacher. That's what I used to teach in high school." A smug expression beamed below his mustache.
Emeral raised her hand, "Mr. Erst?"
"Yes?"
"May I use the restroom?"
The teacher sighed. "Is it an emergency?"
"Yes...my tummy hurts," she said, hunching forward with her arms wrapped about her torso, and stamping her feet.
"Shouldn't you go see the nurse for that?"
The class giggled.
"No I...I just have to...to go." At Lonely Oak Elementary, one learned very quickly to never go to the nurse with a tummy-ache, unless one wanted to hear the phrase 'well then go poop!' in a tone that was as embarrassing as it was ridiculously silly, given that the clinic assistant was an owl.
"Very well, but I'll not have any more of these interruptions, understand?"
The class nodded as Emeral went to the pink bear, and then out into the hall. It was quiet, mostly. There were some muffled noises coming from the music room, and it sounded like another class was watching a video as she passed by its door.
She approached the restrooms. They were single-person. Originally only the faculty could use them, before this hallway was remodeled two years ago due to increased enrollment. The bathrooms had no locks on them. Legend had it a boy jammed the lock and barricaded himself in for a week—which was probably more like half a day at most—and as a result they had to remove the locks, since there was no other way in like the other restrooms.
So the classes of the fifth-grade hall came up with the Bear-System: two bears, a blue or green for boys and pink or red for girls. When a bathroom was occupied, the bear went on the handle. Mr. Wiggin, one of the funnier teachers, in fact the only male teacher in the whole school (besides the coaches), actually wrote "occupied" across his boys' bear's forehead.
Emeral hooked her bear upon the handle beside the blue bear, as if to let them talk, and then paused for a moment. She looked both ways once, and then again. Then, very quickly and quietly, she opened the boy's door and slipped inside.
Unlike the other restrooms, these were kept fairly clean. They didn't reek of some invisible smog or odiferous perfumes. She could see the urinal from where she stood, and ignored the amber-colored contents, probably left behind by more than one boy. She had seen a trough-style one before, when she and a few other girls snuck into the boy's restroom of the third-grade hall a couple years ago. Back then, they tried to figure out just exactly what it was. Of course now she knew, because she knew about the differences between boys and girls, and of course she had to be the one to explain it to the others. So awkward and embarrassing.
She could feel her cheeks reddening, but there was no backing out now. And if she got caught, she'd be more of a target than Ket could ever strive to be. She knelt down quietly and peeked underneath the stall. She could see Ket's tattered shoes, hovering just a few fingertips above the floor. She took in a silent breath through her nostrils, and made the diagonal walk to the door of the stall, and knocked quietly.
She heard him gasp in surprise.
"He-...hello?"
"Shh, it's me."
"Em...eral? What the heck are you—"
She shushed loudly. There was a moment of silence, and then his feet hit the ground. Clothes rustled, and then the sound of his zipper, and finally the toilet flushed. After it settled, silence pervaded once more.
"Well?" Emeral asked rhetorically. "Open the door."
The jamb clacked and the door swung in her direction. She pushed it against the wall and gazed back at the agitated face of Ket. Ket... What's his last name?
"...I, I saw you on the playground." She said softly, moving the door back and forth a little.
"So?" He asked tonelessly, "Why are you in here?"
"I saw what happened." She stepped forward, letting go of the door, and extended her hand to grasp his shirt. "How bad is—"
"Hey, hands off!" He pushed her approach away.
She nodded. curling her fingers and then pulling her hand to her chest. "Fair enough," she said patiently. "Can I at least look at it? You don't have to take your whole shirt off this time, just lift it so I can see what they did."
He stared back, mulling it over for a second.
She pleaded him again.
Without a noise he turned his chin up and to the side as he lifted the shirt up, just enough for her to see the wound.
"Ugh..." She growled as she bent over to peer, "I can't believe they put sand in it. Don't they know anything about infections?" She looked up at him, and his closest eye stared back. "I guess not. Ritzer barely knows how to tie his shoes..." Her humorous pass fell on deaf ears. She closed her lips, and straightened up. "All right, come over to the sink, let me clean it up."
"It's fine," he said dropping his shirt.
"Oh. I guess that means you're gonna see the nurse?" She asked expectantly.
"No."
She closed her eyes and took him by the wrist. He followed her without much struggle. "You boys and acting like nothing's gonna happen to you." She said as she wetted a paper towel, "It's a wonder you make it to be teenagers."
The damp paper towel pressed against his ribs. He flinched, flexing his gut and stepping away.
"Oh come on, don't be such a wuss!" She teased sweetly, "It's just water, you handled the alcohol just fine."
"But it's...cold..." He replied.
She dabbed it against the wound, cleaning the sand from it. "Well deal with it," she muttered. With the wound free of grime, she wetted another paper towel—warm water this time—and put a few drops of soap onto it and very gently massaged that in. Finally, with a dry piece she cleaned the soap away along with bits of scab.
He started to let the shirt drop.
"Hang on, one last thing," she said, and reached into the pocket of her jean-shorts. She pulled out what looked like a stick of gum, and opened one side of the paper. It was a band-aid. "Racecars this time." She said, flashing the image with a smile, and proceeded to affix it to his gut. "But I guess I'm a little late now. No sense changing the others." She crumpled the paper and threw it in the trash. She looked him over, and let out a huff of satisfaction. "Good?"
"...Good," he replied, his shirt finally slack.
She smiled at him, and nodded. "Good. Now, wash your hands and come back to class, and...don't tell anyone I was in here," she pleaded.
"I won't," he replied with a bit of reassurance in his otherwise malted voice.
"Thanks." Without thinking, she leaned forward, raising up onto her tippy-toes, and wrapped her arms around him—and also pressed her lips against his.
A flurry of little bubbles rose from her feet, tickled up her legs, wiggled up her sides, tingled by her heart and fizzed and popped at her cheeks and the top of her forehead. Then she opened her eyes, staring directly into his, and realized what was happening. She balked, stumbling backward and hitting the wall. She stared at him, mouth open.
He looked back; lips ajar, a little pale and confused.
"I..." A frog croaked from her throat, and very quickly she ran to the door, slammed against it bodily to open it, and slipped outside, shutting it behind her. She leaned against the tiny space between the two bathroom doors, panting, eyes wide, heart racing, cheeks flushed against her white fur.
A beaver-kid sitting out in the hall paused with his fingers in his mouth after just biting off one of his nails with a muffled glick.
She regained her composure, if only a very little bit, and took a deep breath. She began walking, but after two steps turned and pointed at him, as threatengly as she could; "Tell no-one."
The boy, eyes following her and hand still fixated within his lips, nodded his head up and down very slowly.
* * *
Five more minutes...Just five more pure, coconut-flavored, torturous minutes...
"And that, children, is why I always think of 'fractions' as 'rational numbers', because when you say 'fractions' it sounds hard but rational numbers are very easy..."
Yeah yeah, sounds great. End class already!
Emeral had already practically bored a hole in her forehead with her index finger's nervous massaging. The worst part of it was the stasis of it all; and the one place she didn't want to look seemed to be the only place she could look.
Rini served as a good distraction, whether she meant to be or not, if only for a moment. She always had to leave five or ten minutes early since she was in Patrols. She had a habit of making noise during her preparation-phase: zipping and unzipping her backpack, retrieving the orange sash and light-brown hat, and tying her long hair into a ponytail.
But that was three minutes earlier, this was five minutes and present.
"Now, before the bell rings I have just a couple of announcements...as you leave, if your parents purchased one, please pick up a PTA-packet and Student Directory—they have your names on them—and deliver them to your parents." Mr. Erst pushed his glasses against his nose, "Also, Ms. Hupp has told me to pick the next student for the Get To Know Me Presentation."
The Get To Know Me Presentation was a fancy and roundabout way for saying show-and-tell, since Ms. Hupp could not seem to get over the first-grade teacher's routine.
"Let's see here now, she's given me the list...Miss Kessler, you did yours today so I guess I'll just go to the next one down." The terrier stared at the piece of paper for a moment, adjusting his glasses. He spoke, pronouncing the name as best he could: "Mr. Ra-shunn?" Silence. "Is Mr. Rash-ann not present today—or am I not saying that right?"
The students exchanged glances. One stirred from an apparent nap—it was late-from-recess kid. "I'm here, sir. It's pronounced Rah-shawn."
"Finally decided to join us, hm?"
The students chuckled and quietly murmured across desks.
"I was listening the whole time sir; rational numbers are fractions...long division is just a conversion to decimals..."
Mr. Erst sighed disappointedly. "Son, I'm going to make a note of your behavior to Ms. Hupp. I know you kids like to take advantage of the substitute teacher, but that's no excuse to misbehave so blatantly."
"But I wasn't—"
"I've heard enough Mr. Ration," he said, screwing up the pronunciation again, "I just hope you put more effort into Get To Know Me. It is for a grade, remember."
"...Yes, sir," the tiger said quietly, sinking into his chair.
"Now everyone, line up at the door it's just one minute to bell."
The stampede commenced even as Mr. Erst was speaking; dozens of feet shuffling and kuffle-ing across the stained, blue carpet to the backpacks dangling like sides of beef in a meat locker.
Emeral felt like eyes were on her, crawling over her like little bugs, tickling her shoulder blades and the nape of her neck. She was paranoid; felt like everyone knew what had happened, had seen it on the television when she walked back into the room, and then had to run back to get the bear she forgot.
But everyone was in their own little world, no one really noticed her agitation. Not even Ritzer.
Just get out of here. Ring, bell; ring!
"Here's your Directory."
Emeral gasped with a start. Her best friend stood humbly, extending a plastic bag that had her name on it in masking tape: BRILLIAN, E. "Oh, th-thanks Lyza," she said, quelling the shake in her paw as she took the packet of PTA material.
"I feel sorry for Ket." Lyza said "First he gets bullied out on the playground and now he's gotta get up in front of the whole class and let us 'get to know him.'" Her nose wiggled, and she absently brought her fingers up to squeeze it still. "I almost feel like giving him a big, big hug, don't you?"
"L-listen," Emeral began, glancing at the young tiger just now getting up from his desk, "Can we not talk about Ket?"
"Oh...okay." Lyza's ears swiveled, "How's your stomach?"
"It's still pretty bad." The bell rang. Holy cow, finally! "I really gotta get home and take some Tums."
"Haha, you and your mespidine," Lyza said, botching the word. She kept pace as they melded with the crowd in the hallway, "It must be nice to know what to take when you're feeling certain kinds of sick. But sometimes if you take it and you're not sick it can make you sick. Like a couple months ago, I had this raging itch all over my whole body, and found out—"
"Hey, sorry, but," she rested her hands on her friend's shoulders. "I'll see you tomorrow, okay?"
Lyza glanced away, hiding an impulsive frown by pretending to be distracted, and then smiled. "Sure, maybe we can draw in the sand more. Laters!"
Outside, Emeral approached the door to a little red car and hastily pulled it open. She hopped into her chariot, ready to return to the haven of her room. She planned to partake in a little Kidz Bop, inside a dark closet, with the covers over her head, and Timber-bear in her arms. Thumb-sucking was also a good possibility.
"How was your day, dear?"
She slumped forward, lifted a paw into the air, and pointed straight ahead. "Drive."
