X + Y = My Actual Nightmare
School smells different here.
Here it is like everything else: foreign.
Like bleach and eraser.
Credit: andreanna paptheodorou
All of that is erased now.
I have come to the land where everything is possible.
Math is the first class of the day.
The classroom: too many posters, like a box lined with magazine ads.
The kids: arm in arm and laughing even though the teacher is speaking.
The teacher: fidgety and blackclad, impossible to understand.
Here’s another thing: I’m overdressed.
I’m in a stretchy black skirt, black tights, and a red bolero jacket.
At home, I would practically be in uniform in this outfit.
One girl is actually wearing plaid pajama bottoms.
Like I’m trying much too hard.
There’s this, though: a cute boy is sitting to the left of me.
I’m relieved to have a normal thought, just: this is a cute boy.
I let myself take a look at him sidelong.
He’s wearing a burgundy T-shirt with a line drawing of an old-timey diving helmet.
He looks like the world is exactly the way he expects it to be.
I’ve noticed that about the Americans in my new town.
So many of them look like they’ve lived lives empty of bad news, of unpleasant surprises.
the teacher says, flipping the longer side of her hair back, looking at a list.
Could there be more than one?
She waits, looking at me.
She’s expecting something.
My heart starts pounding.
“#######,” she tries again.
To me, she could be saying anything.
I took four years of English back home.
I watched all kinds of subtitled American movies and television shows.
Or so I thought.
Hearing English here, so fast, it’s impossible to understand.
She’s just written a problem on the board.
Does she want me to give her the answer?
I squint up at the equation.
I do know how to do it.
I walk to the front of the class, wind-tossed trees for legs.
I can feel eyes on me, and hear a few snickers in the back of the room.
I hear one girl say, “Check this out.”
I’m the “this.”
I should take some comfort that at least I understood that snickering.
I stand next to the teacher, waiting for her to hand me the marker.
Her badly dyed hair covers half her face.
She looks at me, confused.
Two guys laugh louder in the back, and one slaps another on the chest backhanded.
Still, the teacher says nothing.
I search my panicked brain for appropriate words, but all I can say is: “I do .
The whole room bursts into laughter.
A ripple goes over the teacher’s face, and confusion is replaced with pity.
She feels sorry for me.
“Oh, honey, no,” she says.
More words I don’t understand.
Finally, she picks up a book off her desk.
She asks, slowly and greatly exaggerating her syllables, “You .
I clench a fist and rub out what I’ve written on the board with the edge of it.
My insides turn to ooze and filter down to my knees.
c’mon let me melt and slither away in a liquid version of myself.
Preferably an invisible one.
I grab the book from her and make my way back to my desk.
Crying would make this so much worse.
Still, the shame comes in waves and threatens to pull me down into full-on sobs.
The teacher talks, but I can’t hear her, just the rushing in my ears.
Then she sits down.
Her desk seems too big for her.
She’s written a page number on the board, plus “17.”
She must have assigned problems.
He smiles at me.
I put my things in my bag.
The book is huge and barely fits.
I shove it in and shut the zipper over it.
I walk up to the desk.
The tears are right under the surface.
The teacher looks up again.
Thankfully, that word is a sentence all its own.
