Arthur was brought back to consciousness by the feeling of a cold wetness on his cheek. He slowly opened his eyes and realized that his head was uncomfortably laying in an open notebook on a wooden desk. But why was his cheek wet? Notebooks aren't wet. Desks aren't wet. The sharp realization that slobber is wet caused him to snap his head up, slinging tendrils of saliva in the process, suddenly realizing where he was…
The windows of the fifth grade classroom had far too much bright sunlight streaming in, causing Arthur to blink hard before he could see properly. Through sun induced spotty vision he tried to make out the chalkboard at the front of the room. It was covered not only with the day's lesson written in large letters, but Arthur could see his name in the corner with a few check marks next to it. That was not a good sign.
With his mind still trying to figure out how he got that last check mark, Arthur turned his head toward the teacher for what seemed to be the millionth boring time. This time what Arthur saw made his heart skip a beat. The teacher, with hands on hips and horn rimmed glasses at the end of her nose, was staring straight at him, waiting. A sinking feeling in his gut more than his peripheral vision hinted that the other kids in the class were staring, too.
However, not entirely all of the twenty-seven kids were staring at him from their respective seats around the room. One had yet to pool enough saliva on his desk to wake up. A couple more were looking out the window, too distracted to bother with class at the moment.
They were looking outside, past the basketball hoops that lined the far side of the empty playground where the other children usually didn't play with Arthur. They were looking past all the painted lines across the cracked cement which marked out spaces for several other games Arthur was also regularly left out of at recess. They were looking toward the other side of the fence, where the normally empty street was made interesting by two black cars parked with men suited in black waiting nearby. The men were wearing sunglasses and appeared to be looking at the school building, perhaps even directly at Arthur's classroom.
But Arthur was not looking out of the window. He was transfixed by his fifth grade teacher, Mrs. Washington, who twisted a new scowl on her face that slid her glasses so far down her nose that it was not entirely obvious how they still hung on. She did not seem surprised that he didn't know what was going on. “Well Arthur,” her voice rising as if she was asking for the second time, “what is the answer?”
Arthur slowly began to look around, trying to figure out what she may have asked him while he was still unconscious. Scrawled in the middle of the board, the day's lesson seemed to have been about birds and trees or something. There were a lot of blanks left to be filled in. Perhaps something from his notes would save him!
Unfortunately, the pool of Arthur's saliva had soaked through his now ruined notes. The only things left of what he had written were extremely creative doodles of jet airplanes, explosions, and silly clowns with crossed eyes. It seemed doubtful that this moment could be any more embarrassing. Of course, if he could have seen the red pressure marks on his right cheek and the lock of stray hair on the front of his head sticking straight towards the ceiling, he wouldn't have doubts at all. This moment could not be any more embarrassing.
“Give me an answer,” demanded Mrs. Washington. “Now!”
Arthur couldn't even remember how he got the last disciplinary check mark and he was about to get much worse. Nothing about the day's lesson could be summoned to mind. He stared at the smears on his notebook. Beneath one of the cool explosions drawn on his paper there was a blur of something about hawks flying south in October. It was a better answer than nothing at all. Maybe. Perhaps it was at least better than not trying? With a face full of confidence, hoping that would make everyone forget he had just woken up and thrown slobber everywhere, Arthur gave his answer. “Well, of course the answer is that hawks fly south…”
Before he could finish his sentence, Mrs. Washington's mouth stretched into a toothy of-course-it-is-not-the-answer grin that caused Arthur's tongue to seize and the rest of his brilliantly improvised answer to remain unsaid. Arthur was doomed. But just then…
The classroom door was thrust open with great gusto and two men wearing black suits and sunglasses entered with exaggerated strides. Paying little attention to Mrs. Washington, the first man in black quickly scanned the room and inexplicably settled his gaze in Arthur's direction. The second man, posed in action figure stance, watched the rest of the class with his right hand hidden inside the lapel of his suit coat from where all the other stunned kids imagined he could whip out a deadly weapon at any moment.
“Thank goodness we've found you, Arthur,” the first man in black declared as he strode further into the room. “The world is at stake. You're needed elsewhere!”
To be continued…
Asleep On The Phone 