Shredding Ice

chapter fourteen

Sunny was not having a good week.

He'd gotten up extra early that morning to do his hair (meaning he definitely did not go to sleep the night before because one did not just do Sunny's hair) and halfway through, realized he was out of his favorite hair product. The product that was the main contributor to managing his curls.

So now his hair was more of a tangled bush than the tight, corkscrew-curl afro he had wanted. It wasn't horrible, really; he'd spent hours with a comb through his natural hair. But the curls were frizzing more and more throughout the day, weighing down into his eyes so he had to push them away every few minutes. He even had a clip to pull them back but it really wasn't doing much.

Sunny had a lot of hair.

One of his fabric hair bands may have helped, but he didn't have any on him. He'd spent so much time trying to fix his hair that he was almost late and ended up rushing out the door. His dad had promised to pick some of his hair product up from the store though, so he just had to get through the day.

Ms. Poppy was not helping him get through the day. She had just assigned a new project that included an essay and a presentation. Sunny wasn't one to get nervous in front of crowds, but it was a lot of work that he convinced himself he didn't have time for. He'd much rather spend his time at the rink.

English had never been Sunny's best subject. He got impatient during the readings and only paid attention to dialogue, so his reading comprehension sucked. The only good thing about English that day was he was leaving straight after.

Sunny sat with his legs straight out under the desk in front of him, hitting his heels over and over against the grey carpet (rumor had it the carpet was actually blue and needed extreme cleaning). His hands were lost in his hair, pulling it taut away from his forehead.

He'd been moved to the back row of every class because of kids behind him who couldn't see—which, yeah, he understood—but Sunny was already in a bad mood. Having to move didn't help. 

Ms. Poppy, though, didn't have to put him in the back because she had moved him to a special desk only two weeks into the school year. It was at the end of the second row, furthest away from the windows, and surrounded by no one. He could describe every poster on the wall beside him perfectly, down to the tiniest tear in the bottom left corner of the Warning: Deadlines are Closer than they Appear poster.

There were few enough people in the class for her to keep him on his own little island. That didn't stop him from occasionally blurting comments or questions, or just mumbling his thoughts to his desk. Speaking out loud helped him to remember what he wanted to tell his friends later on.

He couldn't help it. Ms. Poppy's commentary bored him so he needed to add his own. It usually had nothing to do with what she was actually talking about, but just something he was reminded of. The topics from the class activities were much more boring than what he came up with.

"I'm giving you two weeks to write up a proposal on your research prompt. It must include your research question, at least two valid sources and what you intend to accomplish in the paper," Ms. Poppy said. She slowly walked across the room and set a hand on the desk of a chatty cheerleader, who suddenly was less chatty.

"Two weeks. I have to get the routine down in two weeks. Axel, axel, double, extend and glide through the curve," he whispered.

Coach Stern wanted him and Amelia to pull out an old routine for the weekend's competition; it had gotten them near perfect scores in the past but they hadn't used it in over a year. He was having trouble remembering it.

"You can turn in the proposal online. I'll post the assignment before the end of today." She looked up to the clock hanging over the smartboard. "Pick up a rubric on your way out and you can go early."