The next day at school was... definitely an exhausting one for me. It was the first exhausting day out of many more to come, but I would not realize that until much later in the year.
First class of the day was... well, it started out as Biology, but more people started playing with chemicals and mixing things together, and it was less like Biology and more like Chemistry.
I was paired with the most utterly random boy I'd ever met, aside from Chaco. His name was Gold. I think he was narcoleptic, because he would fall asleep every 30 minutes. Gold fell asleep while we were supposed to be taking notes on the characteristics of our 'specimen', a frog.
Since I was rather confused about what were supposed to be doing--everyone seemed to have a different way of doing it, or was ignoring it all together, and the teacher didn't explain very well what we were supposed to be doing--I just sat there, poking the frog with a popsicle stick. I would've taken notes on it myself, if Gold didn't fall asleep on the notepad and pencil. I really didn't want to wake him because, to be honest, he was much nicer when he was asleep.
Suddenly, he woke back up, screaming at the teacher to buy one of his 'Useless Anteaters' or 'Talking Blankets'. What did he think this was, a marketplace?
I heaved a huge sigh, "Mr. F, sir, can I please switch partners with someone else?"
The teacher heaved an even bigger, put upon sigh, "Does anyone want to switch with this test subj--err, student?" He looked around for any takers. Predictable... there were none. "Mmm, it doesn't seem so. You'll just have to deal with it."
"But Mr. F., I can't even--" That was as far as I got before I was startled by some screeching of Gold's. He dashed around the room, over to a station with chemicals which he poured into his mouth, and then straight out of the room shortly thereafter.
I heaved another sigh, crossing my arms on the table and laying my head on it. "I want to go home..."
"I'll be his partner, sir--" Someone said quietly.
"Ooh, dearie. It looks like you can work alone," The man said with a shrug.
I sat up again, with my head propped up on my hand, and just poked at the frog absently, as I looked around the room.
One of the students was causing some mischief it seemed, trying to force some sort of bubbly mixture down Dominick's throat. He spat it in the other boy's face, and told him to bother Blanky instead. And when the boy forced it down Blanky's throat, she passed out immediately, so Dominick took her to the nurse.
I suppose I could've been more helpful, but I was busy wallowing in self-pity.
"Hey, are you alright?" A girl with bright pink hair had asked. I didn't really take much notice to her before. Her hair was in two large pigtails, which were styled in two large twin drills. Another feature I noticed were her eyes. One was an amber colour, and the other was light blue.
I admit I took a double-take, before returning to my pity party. "I'm fine..." I sighed, "Just fine."
I saw a couple other students playing with chemicals and it made things all the more confusing for me. "I thought this was biology?" I asked.
"Biology lab, chicken." The teacher said.
"Oh..."
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The next class was math, and the teacher was just bizarre. He was a man who was about 40 years old if I'm being generous, who talked and dressed quite like a villain from a child's game. The most bizarre trait of all, though, was that he collected stuffed animals, and was playing with them when the class came in.
Upon a closer look, they were the same sort of stuffed animals I'd decided to stop playing with a year before then, in hopes that the other boys in the neighbourhood would decide I was cool enough to play with them. ... I wasn't cool enough, and they didn't let me play.
Veering off subject, my apologies. Math was my absolute worst subject, and the teacher did not make it any easier on me with how tough he was on everyone who didn't know how to do the problems. I struggled through the problems, and my anxiety was starting to get the best of me. All I could think of was everyone in class thinking I was stupid, and calling me names because I couldn't figure out an equation one one thing or another.
The teacher was calling out problems, algebraic problems, and I couldn't understand what was to be done. It was all foreign to me.
I would try to figure it out on paper, but when more questions were being asked, I would accidentally write down the numbers for those questions in the previous equation so I couldn't finish even if I tried. I was getting frustrated; to the point where I was sunk really low in my seat, red in the face, and near tears.
My emotional turmoil wouldn't get any better later in the day, because the next class was cooking. Normally I would find cooking to be a joy; I was never more at home than I was in a kitchen, but the teacher for that class happened to be a Mr. Gino Delisiozo, a rival of my grandfather's. The two of them were both pizza chefs, and both owned two of the most popular pizzerias in all of Rome. Delisiozo was rude, hot-headed, and in my opinion, terribly lazy.
As I was about to find out, he was also a bad teacher.
I walked into the class amongst the other kids, and saw Gino standing at the front of the class... I sincerely hoped that it was only someone who looked a lot like him, but then he opened his mouth to yell at Gold as he shoved some food into his mouth. "Questo non è consentito! Questo non è consentito! Questo non è consentito!" That is not allowed, he shouted over and over as he whacked Gold over the head with a rolling pin. Clearly this was the man I knew, already losing his temper with one of his students even though he hadn't even introduced himself.
What he was doing was already whipping me into a blind rage, and I don't get angry all that often. "Sir, you could have calmly told him that what he was doing was wrong instead of hitting him! Stop now or I am telling the principal what you are doing!" I shouted back at him in my mother tongue of Italian, as I didn't want the others to know what I was saying exactly.
"Wow, I've never heard you yell before..." Someone said.
Gino apparently recognized the sound of my voice, as he looked over to me and sneered at me. "He ate the ingredients, Aeolos. And you cannot tell me what to do. I am your teacher, not the other way around."
I scowled at the man, and remained quiet.
"You are going to be split into four groups and make a smoothie. Mango, Banana, Kiwi and Strawberry." Dominick, May and myself got put into the Kiwi group.
"...So, what are we supposed to do?" Dominick asked.
Gino held up a pamphlet titled 'How to make a Kiwi smoothie', which he had placed on the counter. "You are not good at reading, boy."
"Don't just hand us a pamphlet! You need to teach us how to properly use the appliances." Gino was just making me more and more angry.
"Seriously, aren't you supposed to teach us how to do it?" Dominick added in.
Gino already started busying himself making a pizza. Insolent man. "What?"
"You heard us. Don't pretend that you didn't." He apparently had not, or was just completely ignoring us.
Seeing that talking to Gino was a lost cause, I got started on the smoothie, while Dominick was talking to someone who came in. She seemed to be quite friendly with him already, so I just assumed they'd already known each other.
I turned in the smoothie I made, and after Gino graded it, Dominick set to work on his. I thought we were supposed to be a team? Well, he hadn't explained anything very well, so I see why Dominick would get confused.
"... I suck at cooking," He said, looking at the fairly lumpy smoothie that he produced.
If I were more forward like my friend Annabelle, I would have told him outright, Yes Dominick. You do suck. It wouldn't really be fair if I had said that, though. He wasn't bad at cooking, per say, but bad at making smoothies. I give him a smile instead. "Don't be so hard on yourself. You did good," I say.
He returns the smile. "Thanks," He says back to me. There was a bit of a pause before he spoke, so I suppose he could tell I was fibbing a little.
After making a quick pizza project, we all went to Lunch, where I sat with Dominick since Blanky got sick suddenly and had to be taken home. Dominick was being bothered by some girl who was obsessed with him, Analise, or Alice, or... well, whatever her name was. He was being bothered, she even smacked him and almost threw a dodgeball at him as well, so I stepped in to stick up for him.
Our last class for the day was Music, and I was in absolute bliss for the first half of class, playing on a ukulele I found laying around. It drew a small crowd, which I was happy for, but then a substitute teacher came in and put on High School Musical for us to watch. I only sat through 10 minutes of it before going out into the hall, and remained there until we were dismissed.
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