"and though they make no sense

these are the moments

we'll remember for the rest of our restless lives."

-the matches, "the restless"

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a/n: post-high school insanity. basically, some of my favorite moments from my four years in high school, but in story form. enjoy :)

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To try and learn about the Muslim world and lifestyle during history, we played Monopoly. This edition of Monopoly, though, is new. It’s not on the shelves at Toys R Us; you can’t get it off of eBay. It’s an AHS original, made by the freshmen in Mr. Shemeth’s world history class. Our property squares are supposed to include icons such as Tiananmen Square and other places of interest that we learned about in our textbooks, but our group decides to mix things up a little. Just a little.

“Okay, here we’ve got this rock, for sale for $200,” Greg says, scrawling the word ROCK across a tiny square on our board. He looks up at us to make sure he’s got our approval—we nod—and continues. “Now, here’s the special strip. You can blow up Greg’s house, Allison’s house, Zach’s house, Dean’s house, or Corey’s house, each one for $500. If you roll doubles—Dean, make sure you put this on a CHANCE card—then you get to blow up two houses.”

We’re on a roll, but Mr. Shemeth ambles over and ruins our fun.

“You guys can’t do that,” he tells us bluntly.

“Why not?” Greg asks innocently, adjusting his camouflage army hat, which is covering his smoothed-down Mohawk.

“These,” he says, splaying his hand across our board, “aren’t Muslim-related icons. Where are all the things we’ve learned about in class?”

“We haven’t learned anything in class,” Zach mutters.

“No, this is an original Muslim rock,” Greg insists, pointing at our ROCK square. “You can’t get this beast in America. It’s all Muslim, all the time. It doesn’t get more Muslim than this.”

“You need to put academic, historical things on your board.” He hands a pencil to Greg and tells him to erase our work and start over. Greg looks up at him, dismay clouding his face. He opens his mouth to make another retort, but is suddenly cut off when Kelcey’s voice cracks through the air.

“Oh, my God, Travis just jumped out the window!”

Mr. Shemeth turns on his heel and focuses on an open window. He gasps as his eyes widen and his puffy cheeks lose all color. He scurries to the window, grips the pane, and peers outside. We all try to stifle our giggles and keep the wool over our history teacher’s eyes, and we’re doing a pretty good job. Shannon is wailing in the back of the room about how much she loves Travis, and Corey is standing next to the phone, asking if he should call the main office.

“Yeah, yes, call the main office, tell them to call 9-1-1, tell—”

“Hi, Mr. Shemeth!” Travis takes this opportunity to jump out from underneath the teacher’s desk, his arms and legs spread out and jutting into the air like a starfish. “How’s it going?”

He sighs, trying to regain his composure. “Go to the office, Travis.”

“What? Why?”

“For faking your own death.” We all burst into laughter that’s loud enough to momentarily drown out the bell signaling the end of class. Still cracking up, we abandon our Muslim Monopoly boards, gather our books and backpacks, and head out to lunch.

“See ya tomorrow, Shem!” Travis waves and closes the door behind him.