The hallways were wet and slippery. Shoes squeaked against the muddy linoleum. I battled my way to my locker. I spun the lock and opened it slowly so nothing would fall out. A small card fell onto the floor. It was a pale blue, like the sky before an ice storm. I picked it up slowly, carefully, like it was a small flower that would break if I held it too hard. I opened it to reveal small, perfectly curled handwriting. If I didn’t know better, I’d say old Mrs. Braxton, my English teacher, wrote me a note. It read:
“Dear Gracie Lynn, I just wanted to say you’re mighty pretty. That’s all.”
There was no signature, no name. Just a small, sloppy heart. I frowned. Mighty pretty? Mighty pretty? Some guy thought I was mighty pretty. Of all the compliments in the world, mighty pretty was the best this idiot redneck could come up with? I shook my head and set the note on the cold metal bottom of my locker. Then I grabbed my books and headed to my class, shutting the locker softly behind me.
Class was boring, as always. Ms. Taylor talked and talked and talked in monotone. I held my head up with my hands. It wanted to lay upon the desk, rest it’s weary eyes, relieve it’s confused mind. Mighty pretty? Who on God’s green Earth would think I was even the slightest bit pretty, much less mighty pretty? I was skinny and straight, my hair frizzed out like a porcupine, my face was plain, and I just wasn’t pretty. I wasn’t anything but plain. Plain Jane, they called girls like me. Plain Jane. Why would anyone think that any Plain Jane was pretty? Maybe he was blind or dumb. Probably dumb.
“Gracie Lynn!”
I yanked my head up, not realizing that I had fallen asleep. Ms. Taylor was standing beside my desk, ruler in hand. Her big brown eyes stared at me, her eyebrows making little checkmarks as her face wrinkled.
“You sleeping in my class, Gracie?”
I rubbed my eyes, trying to make sense of what was happening. Did I fall asleep? I didn’t remember falling asleep. Of course, thinking deeply about it, I didn’t think there would be flashing lights and sounds in algebra. Science maybe, but not algebra.
Her foot was tapping gently, but impatiently on the linoleum. I watched it, mesmerized. It made a small, pat-pat-pat pat-pat-pat sound that echoed throughout the silent room. I watched her, glancing from her eyes-shifting from frustration to confusion, to her ears-moving slightly as she clenched and released her teeth, to her mouth-mutating from grimace to frown, to her foot-still tapping its quiet little pattern, and back up to her eyes.
I started to open my mouth to say: “Yes, ma’am, I did fall asleep,” but a loud crash in the hallway swung everyone’s heads around like they were magnets to mayhem. I was grateful for the change of entertainment, and I sunk lower in my seat, so I wouldn’t draw any more attention to myself.
A series of loud voices, curses and a few squeaks of pain followed, and everyone rushed to the window on the door. Even Ms. Taylor crowded over to see what was happening. Over the tops of other student’s heads I could see a few police officers run down the corridor. I pushed closer to the door and saw three cops holding down a young black boy-maybe fifteen-and click handcuffs around his wrists. He struggled as they pulled him up by his shirt collar. They yanked him down the hallway and out the big front doors. I heard only the sirens as they left.
During lunch, that was all anyone could talk about: the arrest. Who was he? What did he do? Was it John Brown? Harold Becker? No one knew. Did he hit a teacher? Everyone did that these days. Maybe he killed one? No, they’re all here. None unaccounted for.
I watched the whispers fly through the air, twisting around the steam from the food on the lunch trays, dangling over everyone’s head. It floated from one mouth on a puff of air into an ear and out that mouth, another cloud of air. All students, male and female, were wasting their precious air, the only thing that was shared by all races, on gossip.