ELTHAM HIGH SCHOOL ANTHOLOGY   

It’s just another Tuesday at school, the teacher clearly explaining what to do in her loud booming voice just so she knows we’re listening. I can feel my eyes struggling to stay open and I’m searching for a distraction in the room to keep me awake, there’s nothing. Not even someone whispering into one another’s ears constantly making sure the teacher isn’t staring at them. Nothing. Everyone looks the same as I imagine myself to look like, hand on my cheek, head tilted to the right, mouth open and occasionally yawning. I have my pen in my hand and I decide to distract myself by colouring in the square of my margin of my white blank paper with ruled blue lines on it. Everything around me feels like it’s in slow motion and the clock mentally feels like it’s taking five seconds to tick one second. I look up and the teacher’s stopped talking, my eyes shoot to the whiteboard just hoping she’s written something that gives me clues on what we are studying but there’s nothing… I look to the person sitting to my lefts work, I get a glimpse of what they’re writing but not enough for it to make sense. I’m a few words into reading it and they’ve obviously noticed me because they’ve moved their arm over their work so I have no possible way of seeing it. I can’t ask the teacher for help because at the start of the lesson the explained that she wasn’t feeling well so she was going to speak once and didn’t want to be repeating herself. I can start to feel sweat running down my face from my hairline, I’m clenching my hands around my drink bottle, I don’t understand why I’m so stressed. My eyes suddenly race towards the teachers direction and I realise she’s looking at me. She raises her forefinger and moves it slowly back and forth to tell me to get up and walk over to her, I stand up as quietly as I can and screech my chair backwards with the back of my knees, I cringe my face and look around me, there’s 24 pairs of eyes just staring at me. I’m told to go outside and calm down so I open the door and look for a place to sit, I put my headphones in and slide my back down the wall until I hit the ground. I close my eyes and take long deep breaths until I feel a cold drip of water hit my arm, I open my eyes and there’s nothing on my arm or anywhere around me. I rest my head back against the wall and look to my left, I realise a big bright garden bed of purple and white flowers. I tug on one of them and its long thin green stem rips apart, I lift it to my nose and its smell is amazing, it smells like one of those grape scented erasers. I sit it in my lap and study it, it has a bright yellow centre meeting a dark purple petal that fades out to white.