“Baker?” Ms. Evans droned over her English class, already thoroughly irked by the answer she knew was coming. “Tom Baker? I don’t suppose you bothered to complete your report that, I might add, is already a day late?”
Snapping back to attention, Tom lifted his head up from his desk, trying not to look too conspicuously like he wasn’t paying attention, even though he most certainly wasn’t. He’d only just returned to his full size in time for third period, and already knew there’d be plenty of work to make up in the afternoon for what he’d missed. Drifting off in this class was hardly making an already more-or-less failed day much worse.
“Uh…” he muttered somewhat guiltily, swallowing a lump in his throat. “I’m going to take a look in my backpack.”
At least this wasn’t a lie, because he proceeded to do just that as reached for his backpack and began idly rooting through the assorted binders and crumpled papers. He was, indeed, taking a look in the backpack. The chances of actually finding something useful, namely his essay, were almost nothing, and Tom was careful to omit this from his wording. This was primarily owed to the fact that Tom hadn’t even started the assignment yet. Though rare, technically truthful wording in the face of a lie was something he was able to do when focusing all of his energy into actual conscientiousness. Even knowing he’d have to deal with the consequences sooner or later, and probably sooner, it was a miniature victory for the boy.
Trying to buy himself some time now as Ms. Evans eyed him suspiciously, Tom lugged a hefty folder of old worksheets onto his desk and began to thumb through them as though searching for the paper he knew wasn’t there. Taking his time, he watched gratefully as his teacher returned to the lesson, leaving him to his own devices. Good.
Closing this folder, Tom drew a second one from his backpack and began repeating the process. He scratched an itch on the back of his head and plucked a tiny morsel of chewed gum out of his hair, still stuck there from the ride to school when Emma had inserted her hapless brother’s inch-and-a-half body into her moist gum bubble.
After being reluctantly released from his sister’s handsy care, he’d made a pit stop in the gym locker room to shower the gummy residue and throaty odor of his sister’s tongue off his body. It was lucky that the gum stayed its same size as he himself regrew to normal height, meaning it simply became a matter of finding the tiny remaining flecks of it and picking them out of his hair after washing off. He knew he’d probably be finding stray, sugary bits stuck to his scalp for the next week or so.
As he sat in English class now, reflecting on the embarrassingly repugnant acts his sister had committed on him simply with a piece of her used chewing gum, Tom paused. He clacked his jaws together, at last arriving back in the moment with full awareness of his body after such a distracting morning, and came to a sad revelation.
Without having realized it, even with no one around to police him, he was still chewing on the entirely flavorless ball of gum Emma had shoved into his mouth after spitting it onto his body from between her own lips. In his haste to shower and reach class, he’d completely neglected to spit out the vile lump of hand-me-down rubber his sister had “gifted” to him as a replacement for brushing his teeth.
Panicked, he gulped, accidentally swallowing the thing whole.
“Baker!” Ms. Evans snapped with more emphasis, yanking Tom out of his revolted reverie. He looked up and nearly fell backwards in his chair. The woman was suddenly standing directly before his desk, leaving him with no cover now. With her black hair tied back in a taut bun, crisp suit and skirt hugging her hips, and steely blue eyes trained unrelentingly on her target, even looking up at her from a normal height was enough to make anyone weak in the knees. “Class is over in one minute. Any progress?”
The vulnerable teen felt all eyes in the room on him, most of them belonging not to concerned peers but thoroughly entertained audience members. While the members of the class didn’t necessarily dislike Tom or even harbor ill will towards him, they nevertheless were aware of just how legendarily bad Tom was at defusing guilty situations. It was like a racecar crash: unavoidable and, secretly, a massive, terrible pleasure to witness.
“Not… really,” Tom piped up. He feigned being as put together as he could, though in reality he hadn’t been thinking clearly all morning. That was to be expected, though, considering he’d been wrestling in a slipper, popping giant gum bubbles, and riding around in backpacks with hardly a pause for coherent meditation.
“I’m not seeing that essay in your hand,” she commented, glancing at the papers in his folder.
“Yeah, it’s uh… not in here,” he gulped, stuffing the folder back into his backpack.
“I see,” Ms. Evans said, nodding resolutely and crossing her arms. A pen, perched between her fingers, was twirled from one to the other without stopping. For a moment, it mesmerized Tom in this silent moment of truth, but his attention was quickly earned back as the period-ending bell rang. Though clearly irritated to have missed the fireworks, most students were eager to escape the stern woman’s dominion and rose quickly from their desks at the musical toll.
“Sorry,” Tom muttered, unable to make eye contact with the woman. He remained stiffly in his chair, knowing he had not been given permission to escape his teacher’s scrutiny yet. After another thirty seconds of hustling and pattering feet, the room was empty save for the guilty student and his interrogator.
“I suppose it would be a waste of time for me to try and find out whether or not the paper is even done to begin with,” she said curtly, tapping her black heel-clad foot against the carpet. Relieved to have avoided this question, Tom simply clasped his hands politely atop the desk and said nothing. Drawing a lengthy breath, Ms. Evans added: “So today, I suppose I’ll just cut to the chase and ask you what, precisely, it is that you think is so much more important than your work for this course?”
Though he didn’t let it show, at this simple line, Tom felt as though all his limbs had simultaneously atrophied.
He put up with a lot in his life. Constant toying by his siblings, strict discipline by his mother, and consistent teasing by the closest people he had to friends in this school. Most of it he’d learned to deal with pretty well.
But this particular question, he knew, was his bane. Tom would have given anything to be asked something else, no matter how much of a guarantee its lack of truth would be. Anything would be preferable. He already knew there wasn’t a way to avoid this line of questioning now that Ms. Evans had opened it up, but all the same, he made a desperate attempt to evade.
“Y-You mean…” he began pitifully.
“You know exactly what I mean,” Ms. Evans snapped, placing her hands forcefully onto the desktop and earning a flinch from Tom as she leaned in closer to his face. There was no escaping now. “Just tell me what it is you were doing last night that prevented you from completing the assignment.”
Mind racing, Tom felt his brow warming with the sheer effort to speak something that wasn’t a truth or a lie in technicality. “I was… doing other homework.”
“Not good enough,” the woman responded. As the anger rose in her voice, granting her cheeks a rosy hue, it was clear she wouldn’t stop until she had a satisfactory answer, no matter how much prying it took. “You’ve had plenty of time to write the paper, and everyone else has homework every night too, yet you’ve continually delayed. I want to know what’s been keeping you from your responsibilities.”
“I… I…” Tom fumbled. Ordinarily words came to him with such ease, even if most of them were lies, but right now, his tongue was knotted hopelessly up. The real answer to her question, above all else, couldn’t be made known. It just couldn’t.