I walk into the classroom to see a different teacher at the desk. Was Mr. Swaboda not here today? I look at the board to find that we have our state exams today. I had totally forgotten about them in the midst of celebrating my moms birthday over the weekend and finishing the piles of missing work I had. During testing the school required that a different teacher be in the classroom. I sit in my seat with the school-given calculators. “Celina, you’re not supposed to be sitting here.” I look back at Blake, the boy from my section (saxophones) in the school band.

Right. Mr. Swaboda had assigned our seats according to the first letter of our last names, aka our testing seats. Pilar, a girl I've known since elementary school, had originally sat in my place at the very front of the class, but since then has been demoted to a geometry class. Since I had mediocre eyesight, I asked Mr. Swaboda if I could sit in the empty seat one day, and I’ve sat there ever since. Me and Blake got on well, he’d occasionally remind me I was weird but other than that he didn’t seem to hate or dislike me to any extent. He was really the only person I talked to in the class. He was nice, and really good at the saxophone. He was the second chair in our section, beating juniors and seniors as a freshman. He had been practicing for Mid-state for the past few months but unfortunately for him, 2 days before he was going to audition, he cut his thumb. He was cutting something and the knife slipped. I feel bad for him; I couldn’t imagine putting in that much work on something like that and not be able to perform it in the end.

I moved back to my testing seat, with my calculator in hand. The teacher instructed us to put our backpacks in the front of the class. “No phones, apple watches, earbuds, or any electronics other than your chromebook. You will use the pencil I give you and my pencil only.” She has a thick accent that I don’t seem to recognize right away. She passes out our information to log into the test and a pencil for working out the problems. I hide the pencil I had already brought up with me in the pockets of my hoodie. She comes up to me and passes the #2 pencil and paper. It’s dull. I’m almost tempted to use the one I brought, it’s more finer and sharper and has a better erasure.

Unluckily, we end up having to wait for a few minutes when the girl in front of me somehow gets her charger stuck in her desk. They spend a solid few minutes
trying to break the charger loose, using pencils, pulling the desk, pulling backwards, pulling sideways, pulling the other way…

They eventually get the charger out of the desk. The teacher waddles up to the front of the class with a sigh. She reads aloud the instructions we get every year; “You are about to take the Tennessee Math Subpart 3 Test…” I zone out slightly until I hear her say “log in”. I put in the information and the screen to start appears.

As I finish the test, she picks up everyone’s papers and pencils. She leaves the classroom and Mr. Swaboda walks in. We only have ten minutes left of class so we just sit patiently until the bell rings.

© deterge the ramen