June

I am in Wilder’s classroom, sitting in a desk that is slightly askew from all the rest. There are people here and there chatting quietly, but for the most part the room is empty and nobody seems to be working. Wilder appears at the side of my desk and leans over, close to my face, smirking at me. I feel like I’m supposed to be asking him a question, so I ask when I should give him my extended essay so he can mail it. He tells me, with an unusual amount of sarcasm, that if I had been paying attention I would know that extended essays were due months ago, but we can’t mail them until Andrew turns his in. I am severely annoyed by Wilder’s ignorance; if he had been paying attention, he would know that Andrew is on a ski trip and won’t be back at school until next Monday. I inform Wilder of this, with less attitude than I had been aiming for, but nonetheless Andrew seems to be in a lot of trouble over this, and I’m worried.

I roll my eyes and pull an apple out of my pocket.

Suddenly Andrew bursts in the door saying “Sorry, sorry, sorry,” over and over again. He is moving briskly, but Wilder moves slowly enough to counteract Andrew’s speed. “Sorry, sorry, sorry,” Andrew keeps saying, to nobody in particular. I try to tell him that he has nothing to be sorry about but he just looks at me and tells me again and again, “Sorry, sorry, sorry.”

I grab his sleeve and pull him out the door because Wilder’s room has suddenly become unbearably crowded. The hallway is also crowded, but I just elbow my way through the brightly dressed freshmen lingering by their lockers. I am trying to talk to Andrew about Big Event, because that’s where we are trying to go. I tell him that Big Event is going to be especially warm, and I ask him why he’s wearing long sleeves. I also tell him that I’m glad it’s June and we can graduate soon. He nods his head. But he’s still apologizing repeatedly to me; at least, I can hear him telling me “sorry, sorry, sorry” but his mouth is not moving anymore. I realize that we’ve been walking forward this whole time but we haven’t moved at all.

We appear to be on a road trip. Andrew is driving; Holly is in the front and I am in the back with Kellen. Suddenly she demands to stop, and is unusually snappy with us, so we decide we had better stop, even though we are running late. We pull into the parking lot of a department store, and Kellen rushes inside as Andrew and I get out to stretch our legs. It starts to rain. We see a crowd of people standing underneath a gigantic statue of an ant but it looks a bit unstable to me, so we find a picnic table underneath some trees. As we sit down, everything around us disappears, and suddenly I find it very hard to concentrate on anything Andrew is saying because I am so amazed by the infinite grass fields that surround us.
Andrew begins to tell me about some freshman girl that has taken an interest in him. Her name actually consists of five names, and I feel slightly sorry for her, and wonder what her parents were thinking. Trying to describe her, he holds his hand down to his waist: "She's about this tall." I vaguely wonder if he is crazy - she couldn't be just three feet tall - then decide that he must mean three feet taller than the picnic table. Suddenly I think of the time, and as soon as I stand up, we are back in the parking lot of the department store. I look in the glass doors and I see Kellen waiting patiently on the floating escalator that will carry her to the door. Somewhere along the way she has lost her pants and hasn't noticed, but I decide not to tell her because we would lose time while she tried to go back and get them.
Now I am in Mr. Wilder's classroom, sitting in the desk that I sat in last year. There are a few other people in the classroom, talking quietly. Wilder comes over to me and demands, "What makes you angry?" I am puzzled by his question, and he repeats it three times before I shrug and pretend to be captivated by a poster across the room. He leans down next to my face, and says quietly, "Do you get mad when the little girl on your team doesn't get enough points?" Now I am even more confused, and I slip out the other side of my desk and ask him what I can do to get out of here.
He tells me he has dropped his DVD player outside, and he wants me to go get it. I walk outside and I see it laying on the grass, in pieces. Looking out to the street, I am frightened by a gigantic ant, possibly the statue that was in the department store parking lot, who is chasing a crowd of screaming people. I fumble to pick up the bits of DVD player, when off to my left, I see my old ballet teacher, Miss Sandy, walking towards me. She looks angry, and she is foaming at the mouth. I begin to run. I stop along the way to pick up an open physics book lying in the grass (I'm positive it's mine), and even though I'm running and Miss Sandy is walking, she is gaining on me. Finally I reach the door, where the janitor lets me in with a smile, then disappears.
I walk into my room, where there is a party going on. Wilder takes the DVD player out of my hands and starts a movie. As I sit on my bed, I notice Andrew cuddling a three-foot long sock bunny. I realize that the stuffed bunny is the girl he was telling me about, the one with five names, and I wonder if maybe he's been overworked and that's why he's acting so strangely.