She sits in the quiet classroom, desks either side of her empty and quite. She is not alone, but in the noisy silence of scratching pens and turning pages and shuffling seats and the consistent inhaling and exhaling, she feels all too lonely.
Words, splayed out the page in front of her, forming words she has no energy to read, make out like nonsense words to her.
She wants to leave, but has no authority to do so.
Tapping fingers, ticking clocks, a sniffle of a winter cold here and there. She could hear every sound, every note, and they were far more interesting that what she should have been doing.
Sighs of the hard worker, chewing of the hungry nail biter, cracking and popping of joints of the fidgeters. She didn't want to be there. She didn't want the laughing eyes of her school mates on her back any longer.
What had she done to deserve this?
A giggle of a girl, somewhere behind her. She didn't know who was the cause of the noise, but she didn't want to turn around. They were laughing at her! She did nothing wrong.
Whispers, secretive words passed person to person, words not audible to her, who believed it was something she shouldn't hear.
"Stop it!" she yelled, whipping her head back. She had cracked the noisy silence, and now every eye was on her. The culprits of the giggles, sitting few seats behind, large, rosy smiles on their faces.
She ran out of the room, finally, a startled teacher screaming after. She had no authority. But that didn't stop her this time.
