Blossoming Madness IV

Ms. Moore begins class with a truly terrifying sentence;

“Good morning class, I trust you all have your monologues memorized and prepared to present?” 

“Uhm, Ms. Moore?” Meghan tentatively raises her hand.

“Yes?” she turns swiftly causing her multiple layers of clothing to fly out around her giving a bat like appearance. Or maybe that’s just my bias.

“Uh...well, you see,” she stammers, “You only just gave us our, uhm, monologues last class so we, you know, only just started memorizing them?”

Ms. Moor’s glare hardens. 

“Yes, but if you were serious performers wouldn’t you already have them memorized?” 

Her cold eyes sweep over the rest of the class as we all shift uncomfortably in our seats. All of us except Andrew. Practically beaming he boldly raises his hand.

Ms. Moore curtly nods in his direction while the class holds their breath. 

“Well, with all due respect, Ms. Moore,” he begins, “Since we’re only in high school shouldn’t we be given a bit more time than the ah, serious performers?”

“Out.”

“I..what?” Andrew looks at me, confused.

I shrug. Hell if I know what goes on in the crazy lady’s head.

“You heard me,” she turns towards her desk and pulls out the grading papers, “Out in the hallway. You get a zero for the day.”

The class fills with muted outrage at Andrew’s treatment but no one speaks up this time. He puts his pinky in mine and squeezes. I sigh but squeeze back and then look up at him while he stands and he’s still grinning.  I am friends with a bloody madman.


Suddenly I become light headed and my vision goes blurry. I try to stay stationary in my seat as the room begins to spin and come in and out of focus. I take one deep breath after the other trying to keep my focus on the pencil on the floor infront of me. After what feels like forever I regain my body again and look around to judge how much time has passed. Ms. Moore is having a word with Andrew at the door. I haven't been out of it too long. Thankfully everyone is too busy scrambling for lines to have noticed my fit.

Ms. Moore then sends Andrew out into the hall and class begins once he leaves the room. It is sure to go by painstaking slow with Andrew gone and this obvious lack of memorization from the students. Each shaking pupil is anticipating walking up one by one to present their partially memorized monologues while Ms. Moore is gleefully preparing to slowly slaughter each grade. 

The first victim is called.

“Meghan.”

Please let her know some of her lines, please, please, please I beg the fates with my mind.

She stands there anxiously twisting her fingers and bitting her lip while we all wait for Ms. Moore to call out,

“Audience ready?”

Yeah, like we have a choice.

We all nod, each worrying about their own monologues. I see some papers crumpled under seats while their owners frantically try to record the words in their minds.

“The let’s begin,” she says, smartly stacking her papers, clicking her red pen of terror, and fixing her eyes on poor Meghan.

“Uhm, should I, uh, slate?” she inquires with her head bowed.

No response.

“Ok, well, uh, I’m Meghan Davis and I’mdoingamonologuefromIntotheWoods.”

“Excuse me?” Ms. Moore asks tightly.

Meghan looks up with a guilty and terrified expression on her face and says,

“I said,” she takes a deep breath, “I am doing a monologue from Into the Woods.”

The entire class groans.

“So,” Ms. Moore says while rising from her chair, “you mean to tell me that you chose a monologue from my least favorite musical and planned on presenting it to the class?”

Now she is standing directly in front of Meghan (who is shaking) with her arms folded and her glasses preparing to jump off her nose. Meghan’s head is bowed allowing her blond hair to cover her brilliantly red face.  Her body is so hunched over that her arms could practically touch the floor. 

“Yes.” she says in an almost inaudible voice.

“And you thought that that was OK?” 

Ms. Moore begins circling around the frightened girl like a shark moving in on their prey. Her voice is calm and eerie, the water before an attack.

“Mm-hmm” Meghan squeaks, trying to edge away from her.

“And what, exactly, did you think your grade was going to be if yo-”

The blaring fire alarm suddenly cuts her off in mid threat. Ms. Moore's wrinkled face twitches in irritation. The tension is swept out of the room as we all rush to the door. I see Andrew casually leaning against the wall across the hallway and he is still smiling at me as I exit the class room. Behind me are Amanda and Samantha who are trying to calm Meghan down. I joust my way through the lazily moving crowd until I’m right next to him.

“Why are you smiling? I ask, “The monster could be plotting your death as we speak!”

I gesture towards the almost empty class room.

“The fire drill will probably disgruntle her into forgetting that she even sent me out here, no worries buttercup!” He says this, not even looking at me.

“Oh come on. You have that much faith in her age?” I question, punching his arm jokingly.

He turns his head to mine yet another grin growing on his face. Andrew grins an awful lot and unfortunately, I knew what this grin meant; a bet.

“You wanna bet?” he challenges.

Called it.

“You are so on!” I reply, “Five bucks says she fails you for the day.”

“Yeah, well my talking money says she will completely forget.”

We shake hands to seal the deal. Then, Andrew looks around, realizes the hallway is almost empty and starts running towards the doors while dragging me along with him.

“Quick! Before the fire consumes us!” He yells.