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Day: Minutes

New teacher in our afterschool class. Under his direction the worst of them lined up, fell silent, chastized each other for breaking order. “Are you still our teacher?” they kept asking me, sizing up how much it would take to drive me away. They know they can do it, but they went to talk with a new student instead. The new teacher threw handball with them, his whippy body a giant echo of theirs. The winter light sent grey regrets: I snow soon. A plane passed overhead. I’ll be in California in two weeks. Suddenly I felt very very out of place.

* * *

At lunch a friend told me he was unhappy with his home life. I have a dozen eggs I bought three weeks ago, he said, and I’ve used maybe three. Certain indicators: eggs, greens, mail, laundry; a canary off its feed, the roommate neglecting messages.

* * *

Juan did math with me at his side today. Other boys were showing off counting in binary (Hey! FOUR! ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-EIGHT! I keep telling them not to take these numbers in vain…). I guess their enthusiasm was just too much to bear. Every time I spoke I worried Juan’s face would crumple and he would yell “Why she BOTHERS?!” to the other teachers. I held my breath. He made his own jungle of weird sixes and tangled eights, extracted the right sums, and calmly found his way out of again. I tried to hold myself the way he was sitting. I tried to anticipate the next move, to become unforeign. It’s like taming a wild animal, I keep saying, like coming close to a rabbit or coyote.

* * *

I’d like to ask you about your last name, and I’d like to tell you your lips are inviting: a drinking fountain in Barstow. I can’t keep my own away. But I can’t just do that. You don’t do that to someone you don’t usually talk to.

* * *

I think maybe I should give up on people.

* * *

A miracle: there was a yellow light in the oven instead of promotional literature and racks in their original plastic wrap, and Ms. L. was smiling. Maybe I won’t have to report the principal to the newspaper for wasting taxpayers’ funds after all. (Or maybe I should hold out until he puts microscopes in the science lab and opens the door of the unused TV studio.)

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