Tick. Tick. Tick. Kenny watched as the clock on the wall of his seventh grade classroom moved closer and closer to twelve, it seemed to taunt him with its slow, unending ticks. His foot had begun to shake uncontrollably in anticipation, smacking against the tile flooring like the applause of a crowd. In about five minutes, when both hands of the clock met at the very top, the teacher would call out Kenny’s name and he would have to go give a speech at the front of the room. The speech was on the history of Chicago, he had always loved the city, but he found himself dreading it now as the countdown drew closer to zero. He hadn’t really prepared for the speech, it’s not that he didn’t have time, his teacher gave him almost a month, its just that it got lost in the daily tangle of life until suddenly it was speech day and he had nothing.

Tick, tick, tick. It would only be a few minutes now, and Kenny could feel the eyes of every student in his class beginning to bare down on him. His heart began to pound against his ribs and a cool sweat began to collect on his forehead, he wondered if everyone could hear his heartbeat as it screamed in his chest. Kenny took a deep breath and closed his eyes to calm himself, he knew it didn’t work but never failed to try it. When he opened his eyes again, it was time.

Tick, tick, tick, noon. Kenny felt sick as his teacher stood up and introduced him. Suddenly he became painfully aware of every cell in his body, each one screaming with anxiety, and there was a tangible pit in his chest that that seemed to be crawling up his throat. As he reached the front of the room he realized his fears had come true, a sea of eyes stared back at him expectantly and he was sure to disappoint. Two girls in the corner of the room whispered to each other and giggled, Kenny was sure they were talking about him, but what could they possibly be laughing about? Kenny began to tremble as he thought of what everyone in the room might be thinking about him, could everyone else tell how much he was shaking? Did they like his hair? Was there a stain on his shirt he didn’t see? He cleared his throat, sending the pit back to the bowels of his stomach to start its Sisyphean climb over, and opened his mouth to begin the speech.

Tick, tick, tick, noon. Christina sat in the back corner of the room, closest to the door so that she didn’t have to spend a single second in that cell of a room that wasn’t absolutely necessary. To make matters worse the boy that sat in front of her smelled terribly, as if he bathed in a toilet, she had often thought someone should say something about it.  Just then her teacher began to speak but her phone beeped so she didn’t listen. Her teachers said lots of things and they were hardly ever important, and besides it could be a text from Brad Dempsey, rumor had it he was looking for a date to the dance. It wasn’t Brad, but nonetheless Christina tapped away on her phone relentlessly, hardly noticing as a boy got up and walked to the front of the room, what was his name? Kevin? Keith? She didn’t care. She wondered if it would be too forward for her to text Brad first, she had his number after all, not that he had given it to her. She asked the girl sitting next to her what she thought, and they both giggled as they engineered what they deemed the perfect text, it was short, mysterious, and sweet. Christina hit the send button with no doubt that Brad would fall madly in love with her, it was only a matter of time.

Tick, tick, tick, noon. Billy sat slumped over in his seat, his arms cradled his head like a pillow as he searched for sleep in the void of his eyelids. He found that the cramped metal desk was somehow more comfortable than his bed at home, perhaps he could finally get some rest. A pungent smell lingered all over his body and clothes, he wondered if the other students could smell it too. No, he was sure they couldn’t, someone would have told him by now. Besides, even if they could, was it his fault that there was no washing machine in the small trailer he called home. The same trailer where his father got drunk every night and screamed at his mother until he passed out on the front steps, he wondered if that was how everyone’s parents acted, probably not. He finally began to drift into the shallowest of sleeps when the sound of someone clearing their throat jerked him right back to the classroom.

Tick, tick, tick, noon. The bleachers erupted as young quarterback Brad Dempsey scored the winning touchdown. He knelt on the grass of the end zone for a moment and let the cheers flood his ears. The crowd must have thought he was tired after what was sure to become a legendary play, he had just done a front flip over the defensive line after all, but really he was just pausing for the sake of suspense. When he finally did stand to meet his fans, the cheering turned to chanting as the united voice of the people yelled Brad! Brad! Brad! His best friends had even gone through the trouble of painting his name on their chests. Well, they spelled “D-E-M-P-C” as there were only five of them, but Brad had little trouble deciphering the riddle, he only worried that others wouldn’t be able to figure it out. From the sidelines a referee began to wheel a cart onto the field, and on that cart sat the most beautiful thing Brad had ever seen, the state trophy. As he approached the trophy he felt the pride of countless pats on the back from coaches and teammates, and it dawned on him that he would probably end up in the history books, the boy who single handedly won the state championship, right there between Abraham Lincoln and Christopher Columbus. It seemed like miles, but Brad finally reached the trophy. He wrapped his fingers around the cool brass and prepared to hoist it to the crowd, but before he could his phone vibrated in his pocket. Just like that the trophy vanished like smoke through his hands, and along with it went the crowd, the lights, and his glory. In its place he found the terrain of a classroom, a setting he had always struggled with, and someone was giving a speech. He hardly listened as he checked his phone, there was a message from a random number, one that he found creepy to say the least. No doubt it was written by some fifty year old driving around in a white van, he thought to himself as he deleted the message. When he looked up he found that two girls had begun to stare at him from across the room, although he couldn’t be sure, maybe they were looking out the window as he did sometimes. The speech ended as well, but the applause only served to remind Brad of his plight, he could still feel the weight of the trophy in his hands.

You would be offended if you knew how often people aren’t thinking of you.

Stop worrying about it.

– Isaac Russo