All Saints

I looked at my increasingly hostile, first period class.  The pale, visibly shaking girl was actually at school that day.  Despite her heavy load of medication, her dark eyes continued to glare at me while her body palpitated.  Her friend had made it for her one day of attendance a week as well.  They were usually together. 

"We'll quit talking and pay attention," the friend implored, "just don't make me sit somewhere with people behind me.  It makes me very uncomfortable." 

The athlete that had been expelled last year for robbing half of the student body entered the room well after the bell had rung, calling to other students and cackling jovially with his friends.  He stood laughing and talking with no intention of sitting down.  When I told him to get a late pass, he got in my face, then threw the pass on the floor in front of me. 

My OCD brat balanced with his stomach on the seat of a chair, arms on the ground and legs extended into the air.

 A third pale girl that sat with the shakers turned her head.  I saw that she was crying again. 

"Don't LOOK at me!" she said abruptly and left the classroom. 

I asked the smart girl to change seats so that she would quit talking.  She stood up defiantly, hitting me in the shoulder with her shoulder as she walked past me... the way guys do when they want to fight. 

"Did you see that!!!!" the athlete screamed, laughing loudly.

My Ethiopian special ed. kid balanced on the back legs of his chair, sans pencil, paper or any other type of provision.  He hadn't put pen to paper in weeks.  I was getting a lot of pressure over his failing grade.  The parapro assigned to him sat off to the side, engrossed in his Kindle.  He glanced up at the board for a second.

"I think you spelled 'roto' wrong." he informed me.  I hadn't.  He went back to reading. 

No, I do not work in an insane asylum.  Just an ordinary high school.

"My dog Gus is dead."

The text startled me.  I was riding in Alec's car, on the way to a going away party.  It was from my ten year old dog whisperer, Warren.  I hadn't received a text from him in about six weeks.

I sat on my sister's front steps, handing out candy when I spotted Emily.  She was wearing a puffy muscled Batman suit without a mask, her head poking out curiously. 
"Emily, it's me, I used to be your Spanish teacher." I said, fearful that shouldn't recognize me in costume or worse, remember me at all.
"Welcome back!"  she loudly and clearly.

I grabbed her and hugged her, not ever wanting to let go.