I awake in the morning from one nightmare to begin my next. I’d barely slept a wink last night due to the tremendous amount of homework I was assigned the previous day and the stress of completing it all accurately. Pressing, the snooze button twice, I stop the acrimonious caterwaul of the alarm clock that rests on the nightstand next to my head. It rings again in what feel like two seconds, and I’m forced to get up to face another dreadful day in the nightmare called school.

I get up racing around the house after realizing that the alleged two that appeared on the alarm clock was actually a five and the bus would be rattling down the street in less than seven minutes. I search around my room for a pair of clean uniform pants and come up short. I stagger out of the house, left shoe in hand and hair all over my head. From the start, I can tell that this day will be horrible.

I miss the bus, so my mom, in the driver’s seat of the car, fusses at me the whole way to school. I’m late so I must serve a lunch detention today and to top it all off, I miss breakfast and my stomach is already growling. I can barely hear the teacher over the caterwauls of my stomach, and by the end of second period, I feel as if I’m one of those little kids that comes on television late at night begging for donations to pay for their next meal.

After serving the lunch detention, I race to the lunch line in hopes that there will be more gumbo. To my surprise there is, and I sprint to try to make it there before it runs out. The dress code scout, Ms. Dufrene unfortunately spots me and notices that I’m wearing the wrong type of sweatshirt and gives me a dress code.

“Could this day get any worse?” I think to myself and just to my luck it does. The bell rings and I miss out on the gumbo. I slump to class to face a test that’s about to kick my butt, stomach still tossing and turning from the lack of food. I begin the test by writing my name and the next thing I know the bell for fourth period rings.

“Did I sleep through the whole test?”
To my non-amazement, I did and right in front of my face, the teacher slaps a big, fat, red zero on the page.

“What could I have done to possibly deserve this,” I think to myself, red in the face and upset, on the way to fourth period, but I can think of not a single thing. Once again I’m late and am forced to sit in the very front of the classroom of the teacher who suffers from a horrible case of halitosis. The entire class my nose burns and I am able to complete no work because my eyes are watering and I cannot see. Pounding and in a scramble right now, my head feels as if it’s about to burst. I lean my head back and try my hardest to relax.
Finally, the teacher takes a seat at his desk and I begin to watch the clock as the hands move and reach the point where I’m finally released from this nightmare called school. With the hour hand a little past the two, the minute hand a little past the four, and the slower-than-molasses second hand just passing the twelve, I wait with this last-bell-of-the-day-please-ring look on my face. As I sit in my seat silently, closely listening for that glorious sound, straining my ears to hear every tick and tock, struggling to suspend the scream storming up my sternum, I begin to sweat. The sweat races down my face as if it were a track star running a relay and I sit, continually watching the second hand jump from each little black notch like a frog jumping from lily pad to lily pad. It moves past the nine, past the ten, past the eleven, and my hearts starts pounding, sort of creating the sound of a horse’s gallop. Finally, it reaches the twelve, the last bell of the day rings, and I’m free.