I looked down at the blank sheet of paper on my desk. I wrote my name down on it Anterae. Yes, my mother did name me that and I don’t think you’ll meet another Anterae. I am always picked on by my name. I don’t really care what they think though because I kind of like my name. I’m glad I don’t have a clique name like Michelle. You can’t swing a dead cat by its tail around without hitting someone named Michelle.

I am sitting in one of those really small desks that were made for kindergarten or elementary school. It was too small for someone like me but because there were not any other seats to sit, I had no choice. It was one of those plastic chairs glued to a tabletop arrangement that teachers here tended to like because they were small and a lot more could fit inside of their classrooms.

I like going to school; just not this school. It is really overcrowded here with a mixing pot of students who all condense each other in the bathroom when they think that everything is private. This school I go to is so makeshift. I have gone to this school system almost all of my life but I can still tell every flaw and everything that is wrong. I try not to get too comfortable because it is just one more year then I will be out of school.

Then there is college, of course. But I will go somewhere far away. I’m not going to put up with this crap from this place anymore.

Everyone is so mean too. There are three fights a day at this school, mostly involving two black boys. Not to be stereotypical or something but you would think it would be against a white boy and a black boy. You would also think that with all of the hate crimes against black people that they would stick together.

I hate high school stereotypes. I have noticed that a lot of people force themselves into them to filter out some people just because they dress a certain way or because they participate in certain school activities. I am not going to force myself into any one of them. I am of all stereotypes and of none. It is childish and insecure when you think really hard and enough about it.

I look around me. I sit between these two brutes and in front of two pencil thin girls who gossip all of the time about who did what and which girl returned over the summer as a vixen. I try not to get involved in the gossip girls’ business and I try to ignore it and do my work instead. The two brutes talk of football and how big their dongs are. I try to filter that out as well.

As you can probably already tell, I’m quite antisocial. But things can be told without being spoken. I listen very well to people who take the time to talk or rant to me. I’m in a psychology class this block. I like psychology; I think it is quite fun. You can learn things that people don’t need to tell you. You know what people are thinking without even speaking.

An older man walks into class. His name is Mr. Peter. The two brutes snigger as he introduces himself. He is short for his age and quite skinny. His face is boxy with a goatee underneath his chin. He had brown eyes and a handsome face.

He passes out papers and asks everyone their names. He pauses when he comes to my name. “You are named after Cupid’s playmate, Anteros. Anteros punishes those who reject love,” I raised my left brow. How did this man know this? “I took a mythology class back in school.” He smiled. He had all white and shiny teeth. I smiled back but didn’t show my teeth because I have braces.

I looked down on the paper. It was a quiz-like test. How strange to issue a quiz on the first day of school. It wasn’t a really long quiz.

The first problem asked ‘How did you get this class?’ How did I get this class? That is quite a stupid question. I wrote down in cursive black ink ‘I signed up for this class because I find psychology fascinating.’ After a long summer of sleeping late and being on the computer, my cursive seemed to have increased its flaws.

Onto the next question: What do you see in this picture? Apparently, we were supposed to see something other than a splatter of ink in a small box. So I swirled the splatter up a bit to see a follow the leader game between children on top of a cloud. One of the children was falling off of the cloud. There was also another child, looking the other way. I wrote all of this down.

Number three: What do you want to do? I thought of all of the things I wanted to do. I wanted to rob a bank but my conscious told me not to put that one down. I wanted to fly really far away from this hell but I didn’t write that down. This was a really puzzling question. I wrote down ‘To get out of this school and into the real world.’

Onward to number four. Number four read: A says B is lying. B says C is lying. C says A and B are lying. Who is lying? This is a logic puzzle. I am very good with logic. If A was telling the truth, then B is lying about C saying that A and B are telling the truths. If B is telling the truth then C would be lying as well. C is obviously lying. As is A. So B is telling the lie. I wrote this down.

Number five said to solve this riddle. Hmmm… more logic. What can run but never walks, has a mouth but never talks, has a head but never weeps, has a bed but never sleeps? What runs? A human runs but they can walk. Animals can run but can’t walk. Water runs and can’t walk. In geography there is a type of water that runs out of a mouth. A river has a head and rivers do not weep. There is such a thing as a riverbed. I put down ‘a river.’

The quiz was done. The brutes finally quieted as I got up from my desk and walked over to Mr. Peter to turn in my work. The gossip girls gossiped quietly about ‘how that girl got her quiz done so quickly’. I waited awhile as Mr. Peter put on his reading glasses on and read my paper. He smiled and nodded. “You won’t find this class hard at all, you’re smart in logics and you won’t let others pressure you into failing with them.” I smiled back and walked over to my desk.

One of the brutes leaned over my way to get my attention and tapped their paper on number five, indicating that he wanted to cheat. I shook my head no. He wanted to be friends now that I had something he didn’t. It’s funny how humans aren’t too far from animals. Clearly now he was begging for the answer. I ignored him.

A boy in front of me with deep red that clearly had to be died sat in front of me, he was finished second. Next it was a boy wearing a shirt with a 6-point buck followed by the gossip girls who had to have cheated off of his paper. Then there was a girl dressed in all black who was a wrist-slitter, then a boy wearing thick-rimmed glasses, a black girl who had a pouty look on her face, a natural red haired boy, and one of the brutes and then the other brute boy.

When everyone was done with the tests, Mr. Peter handed out the tests with the grade in bright red ink with a comment on them. I already knew what mine said. Plus he added a ‘keep up the good work, Anterae.’ The two brutes looked at their comments disappointingly then later sniggered at how horrible they were. They obviously didn’t care. The two gossip girls had gotten one of the logic problems correct. It was the lying letter one. They looked angrily at the boy they had mocked the answers of.

I looked at everyone’s second number. One of the brutes wrote eight guys playing football, the other wrote the same thing after scribbling out the answer he first put about cornhusks. The gossip girls wrote different answers. One of them was about flowers, the other wrote of a kissing booth. The boy with the thick-rimmed glasses interpreted it as a city on clouds. The wrist-slitting girl said the blob was a bunch of knives. The hunter boy said it looked like a few ducks flying in the air. The black girl wrote that it looked like a grassland from a mousse point of view.

Mr. Peter nodded at each of us and instructed us to bring out a notebook. He said that this would be our journals and that every day we would write in it about anything that pleased us, angered us, or we felt should be noted. He also said that in order to read other people, we should first learn how to read ourselves.

As we wrote, he checked absences. I learned what every ones name was by this. The brown haired boy that sat to my left was named Henry and the other blonde haired brute was named Ron. The blonde gossip girl was named Patricia but she preferred to be called Patrice. The other blonde girl was named Michelle. The hunter boy was named Billy. The wrist slitter was named Lillian and wanted to be called Lilith. The boy with the glasses was named Ted. The black girl was named Tabitha.

I wrote about being home schooled the first four years of school and how great it was being able to do things that needed to be done in my own time and how good it felt not having to worry and rush yourself. “Life was intended to be long. I believe we should pace ourselves and worry less.” Mr. Peter made everyone read their journals aloud and after every one, he told us what our problems were. My problem was that I looked back and that if I continued thinking this way that the present would run up behind me and nip my hide. Not one person was flawless.

The gossip girls read theirs next. They wrote about what else gossip. Mr. Peter told them not to worry about what others were doing and worry about their own mistakes. Henry wrote of football and how he would make it to the tops. Mr. Peter told him that he should be more aware of what he was getting himself into. Ron wrote about how stupid everything was. Mr. Peter said that he should be more open minded and actually read into things before calling them stupid. Ron mumbled under his breath “Peter is another name for wiener.” Billy read about him opening a door for a girl he liked who ignored him and didn’t even bother to say thank you. Mr. Peter told him he needs to stop letting people walk all over him like a doormat. Tabitha wrote about which boy she liked was richer and that she would ask the rich one out. Mr. Peter said that just because someone is rich doesn’t mean that they are happy. Last was Lilith. She wrote about how her mom threatened to take her to an asylum because of a certain habit she had. Mr. Peter told her that she needed to get rid of the habit.

The bell rang and everyone poured out of the classroom except for me. I had to gather my things. This class wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. Mr. Peter smiled at me and said bye as I walked out of his classroom. I smiled back.