Changing the Future

Chapter 29

The rest of winter break flew way too quickly for my liking, and soon enough, I was holding my thousand page chemistry textbook in my arms while Leah and I walked to our professor's classroom. Joe and Pete were already waiting for us by the door, devious smiles on their faces.

"You don't want to sit up in the front today," Pete told us as we walked into our classroom, the four of us making our way towards our seats.

"What did you guys do?" Leah asked suspiciously, counting eight rows back from the front before finding seats for the four of us.

"You'll see," Joe said, causing Pete to snicker.

I rolled my eyes at the both of them, setting my backpack between my legs and taking out my spiral notebook. I finished copying down the notes from the textbook while the rest of us waited for class to start.

As the bell rang signaling the start of class, Dr. Atomos ran in from the side door, his white hair sticking up like he'd stuck his finger in an electrical socket. Papers were flying out of his briefcase, and his tie had come undone, leaving it draped over his shoulders. His shoes were mismatched, and when he set his briefcase down, he accidently knocked over one of his beakers, causing for the glass to shatter against the floor.

"Are you all right, sir?" a girl up front asked, the boy next to her having walked down to the floor and started to clean up the glass with the dustpan and a broom.

"I'm having a bad day," Dr. Atomos said bitterly, his fingers flying as he tried to tame his hair and redo his tie.

"Wife threaten to leave again?" some boy behind us asked.

Our professor glared up at the offender. "Class, you may all thank Mr. Grayson for your homework assignment tonight. I want all the questions on pages 682 through 750 completed by tomorrow."

A cacophony of groans filled the room. Some people even waded up paper and chucked it at Wilbur Grayson, muttering curses under their breaths.

"Ugh, sixty-eight pages of homework," Pete said, his nose wrinkled in disgust. "And since there are about twenty questions per page that means..." he trailed off for a moment to do the math before saying, "1,360 questions?! He's joking!"

"That's going to take me forever to finish," Joe groaned, slamming his head repeatedly against his textbook.

"Note to self," Leah said, writing this down on the top of her paper. "Have Grayson on cleanup duty for next week's pep rally."

"You better splurge for that confetti cannon and the streamers," I said, flipping to page 682 and beginning to skim the questions. I exhaled through my nose, highly annoyed at the type of questions Dr. Atomos had assigned. Of course he punished us with the hardest chapter in the entire book.

"Definitely. I'm going to miss cheer practice because of him."

I paled. "Schist, I have a volleyball game tonight. Coach will kill me if I'm a no-show."

"Then you better get started," Joe said, scowling as he began working on the homework while Dr. Atomos continued setting up for today's lesson.

Finally, class started, and the four of us were forced to stop working on the massive homework assignment we'd just received. The sad thing is we haven't even got past question five; the math alone for some questions could take up an entire page, meaning this would be more time consuming than I originally thought.

Two and a half hours later, when Dr. Atomos began his demonstration of the most precise titration I'd ever witnessed, smoke began pouring from the doorways. Our professor was blissfully unaware of the smoke, continuing to talk about the equipment we'd need to measure the information as accurately as possible while scribbling down notes on his tablet, which were displayed via projector.