before. “I can’t wait to read about another thrilling baseball episode.” The room had changed. Her voice chased the coffee smell out of the room. My head was filled with nothing but the blonde girl beating the poor boy next to her with a baseball bat. I laughed in spite of myself.
“What are you laughing at?” The girl on my other side always scrunched her nose when she talked to me, as if I smelled of a sandwich with a bit too much mustard. She was very smart, but perhaps too likeable. Sometimes it seemed like she molded, as jello does, to whatever sort of person to whom she spoke. I put on my complacent smile and shrugged my shoulders. She had already turned back to her computer. How long had I been thinking?
“Well, I find baseball interesting. Frisbee’s not, but…” the other boy’s voice trailed off into a series of murmurs, probably about some string theory of baseball or some other incomprehensible statement. He was the quiet smart one. Most days, he didn’t grace us with responses to our questions, but when he chose to do so, his answers were sharp, quick, and final. He was something of a god to the class – often, people agreed with his answer merely on the basis

that he proclaimed it was correct – and his word was as good as that of the leading literary critics of the time.
This same boy had a large cowlick on his right side, and I could never quite help but stare at it. He spoke again. “What sort of story are you writing about?” He dove for the computer of the blonde girl. He missed horribly; clearly he wasn’t any good at baseball. The blonde girl easily pushed him back away from her screen.
“NO! This is a private reflection! You can’t just jump in and read it!” She covered the screen desperately with her hands and arms; her skinny limbs covered nothing, but her flailing hair blocked us all.
“Would you stop? I’m trying to be deep here.” This voice came low from the end of the row. The fifth boy was off on his own, writing some deeply provocative and insightful message to the world about his own experiences. I think I liked his writing the least, although he was something of a funny writer. He spared one more second to glance at all of us with a