Entry 10

Ellen and Scott would not let me go to school on Friday and kept me on the couch, drinking fluids, the entire weekend. By Saturday my temperature was normal. On Monday, they decided I was healthy enough to go to school, though not to march in band this week. They sent me to school with a note in hand.

John drove us as usual, but when we pulled into the parking lot, he looked at me in concern. “Are you sure you’re ok for school today? I can still take you home.”

“I’m fine,” I answered crossly. Scott, Ellen, and John had been hovering over me for days, waiting for me to relapse. However, I had felt fine the entire weekend. I felt perfectly healthy and did not remember being sick, though everyone was trying to convince me I was. It was very strange.

“If you need anything you come find me,” John reminded me for the thousandth time.

“I know,” I responded as I had every time he reminded me. “You can check up on me at lunch, but please don’t try to track me down in the halls between classes. And if you step a foot into one of my classes, I will kill you myself.” John laughed his hearty laugh and leaned over as if to ruffle my hair. However, at my glare he knew better. I had spent all morning straightening my hair. I did not need him messing it up.

We got out of our car. John went off to his morning haunt, and I went to the band hall where all of the band kids normally spent the morning. I half expected for them to be fake somehow. I was still partly convinced that my fever delusions were real. However, my friends were as normal as they had been when I had last seen them.

They all gushed over me, asking how I was and if I felt better. I waved away my friends questions, saying I was fine. My friends concern touched me and did not annoy me as much as the repeated questions of John and my foster parents. My friends, after all, had not been badgering me for days. When I said I was well, they believed me, unlike John, Scott, and Ellen.

I went to my morning French class. To my relief, I was not too far behind. John had spoken with all of my teachers and brought home most of my work. The school work had been the only thing keeping me sane during the long hours at home. Though I had missed a few classes on the subjunctive tense, I did not feel too far behind. French was perhaps my best class. I generally knew what was going on. The same could not be said of Algebra II.

Though John had promised not to check up on me, I saw him glance into the window of one of my classes. I made a face at him, and he just smiled. What he was doing out of class I had no idea, but John was a favorite among his teachers. If he had asked them permission to go to the nearby Subway, they would have let him. It was the combination of athlete and valedictorian that won them over, I think. Not to mention his winning personality.

My day went about as normally as any day at school might, though Algebra II went differently. My teacher went through the homework process as usual; however, when she explained the new lesson she did not teach in her usual style. She taught in a style very similar to John, or at least the style John always explained problems to me. John’s tutorial always helped me understand in a way that my teacher had never been able to convey. However, today I understood the lesson as my teacher explained it. In all my years of math, understanding during the lesson had never occurred.

“Was it just me or was that lesson taught differently?” I asked one of my friends from the class as we headed to our next lesson.

My friend glanced at my oddly and then smiled. “Yes it did feel different,” she responded, but something about her answer felt wrong. I could not place my finger on it, but she said no more. That in its own way was odd. She was not a chatterbox but she usually would have had something more to say about a change in teaching style.

Was it that something was wrong with the world, or was something wrong with me?