Hidden Fame

Class I: Algebra II

Class I: Alebra II: Chapter III

The teacher looked up from the computer where her thin spindly fingers had been expertly typing at a million miles an hour.  For a moment, she stared me up and down, inspecting my appearance.  Her face twisted up in disgust.

"Can I help you?" She questioned in a cold, haughty voice, the way librarians always do when you were about to return an overdue book.

"Yess, well, I'm a new student here at Knightley High, and I was told that this was to be my new homeroom.  Are you Mrs. Thompson?"  I stated, raising my voice and trying to make it as nasally as possible.  

She nodded her head, scrunching her nose up once again as she heard my voice.  But instead of welcoming me like a good teacher should, she stood up and regarded me like a possible suspect for a crime.  

 "Name?" She asked,beginning to pace while checking a clipboard of names.

"Lily Marguerite Stephans."  I felt like I needed to include my middle name because of how formal she was being.  I hoped that she did not normally do this to new students.

"Age?"  

"Well, I'm a junior this year, so sixteen years and five months old, ma'am."  Now I was just feeling intimidated as she drilled me.  She could be in the military!

"Reason?"

"I am required by law to go to school?"  I guessed, not quite sure what she meant.

"Don't sass me."  She stated, squinting her eyes.  "Now let me rephrase that.  Reason that you are coming to this school now, in your junior year."  

"I just moved here from L.A."  

This made her grunt, as though everyone from L.A. was automatically a slacker who had no brains at all inside of their ugly brains--or at least in my case.

Of course I already knew that she though I was ugly, but I hoped that she also considered that the fact I was so ugly and nerdy-looking might mean that what I lacked in looks could be made up for in brains.  She did not seem to even consider this, however, and she just assumed that I was somehow born without either looks or brains, even though most people normally have one or the other, or maybe a mix between them.  

Before I put on my disguise, I knew that people would look at me differently after it was on, which was exactly why I had decided to put it on.  Now I hoped that I would be taken seriously as a student rather than as a pop star.  

I had always been focused on my schoolwork because of the simple statistics that i had learned at a young age from my tutor: stardom rarely lasts.  One day I could be on the very top, and then the next day you might hear that I was universally hated because someone started a rumor about how I killed a puppy.  

A wrinkled, boney hand in front of my glazed eyes brought me back to earth, pushing aside dreams of attending Harvard during the day and singing at Carnegie Hall at night.

"Hello?  Lily?  Trying to talk to you here, so kindly come back from your fantasy world for just a moment so that I can talk to you, please."  She  sounded seriously frustratedwith me, and I knew that visiting my fantasy future right in front of her was not the wisest move.  I felt like she could stare through my soul, and I was sure that she could see everything that I was thinking about.  I quickly cleared my mind of all of the bitter thoughts about her that were scattered through my mind at the moment.

"Anyway, now that I have your attention, let me tell you some rules for my class.  As you might know, my name is Mrs. Thompson, and I will be you algebra teacher.  I expect one hundred and fifteen percent from all of my students, and anything besides that will be scorned.  Detentions will flow like honey in my class if you and your classmates do not learn that talking is not accepted at all in my classroom."