True Story: Pt. 3

He awoke with a thump. This confused him because normally his kitchen table didn't go "thump," and neither did his bed. These were the two places he expected to be after fainting, but it wasn't where he seemed to be at the moment. He opened his eyes to look around, which didn't help much. He was still dazed and his vision was blurry. He tried to get up, only to discover that he was strapped down tightly. His heart dropped down to his feet. He had been slightly worried before this point, but now he found himself panicking. His breaths were short and shallow as beads of sweat began to form on his forehead. Thankfully, he discovered that whoever had tied him up left him the use of his arms. He wiped the sweat off his brow.

"Oh, you're awake," said a wispy voice. It sounded very distant and echoed thinly as his head spun with the effort to focus on it. "Listen, I know you probably won't be happy about this, but it's just something we had to do." The more he listened to the voice, the more it became vaguely familiar.

"Mom?" he asked.

"Yes dear?" she asked in reply.

He tried to take another look around. Doing so, he found himself tightly strapped with a seat belt in his mother's car.

"Where are we going?" he asked.

"To school, dear. Your father and I talked and we agreed that it was best for you to still go even though you fainted. I know it might seem unfair, but we just don't want you to struggle if you get behind in school work. I hope you understand."

He sighed, partly out of exasperation and partly out of relief that he wasn't being kidnapped.

As they arrived at the school, his mother was doing what all mothers do best: worrying.

"Are you okay? I just feel so bad about making you do this. The more I think about it, the more I think that we should have just let you stay home."

"Mom, I'm fine," he lied.

"It's just that I don't want you walking around feeling sick all day. Did you have enough to eat this weekend? I worried about that while you were lugging around all day Saturday. You barely seemed to eat anything. Maybe that's what's wrong. Did you eat enough for breakfast?"

"Yes," he lied again. He had only managed about three bites of cereal before seeing the newspaper. The thought of it still made him woozy.

"Well if you start feeling faint again, go lie down. I don't want you to hit your head. But promise to call me if you don't feel good, okay?"

"Okay," he lied yet again.

He got out of the car, promising various things to his mother that he likely would not remember within a couple minutes. As she drove off she shouted, "Goodbye honey, I love you!" out of the window for the whole school to hear.

To his relief, the day had passed by normally so far, and it was now lunch. He made it to his classes, listened to the teacher for about ten minutes, and promptly fell asleep. At the beginning of the school year he had felt guilty for sleeping, but he eventually justified it to himself. "I didn't understand the earlier stuff, so why waste my time trying to understand the stuff now and waste the teacher's time with questions?" he would wonder. "Besides, it's worked out so far. I'm a senior, so why change a winning formula?"

He was exactly right, but for the wrong reasons. He failed every single test he had ever taken in high school. He never did his homework, and didn't even know quizzes existed because he slept right through them. His average grade would have only been a ten, due to attendance. Each teacher, though, gave him his own special curve. This was in order to get him our of their class. Now, they knew that this was wrong morally, but this issue wasn't about ethics anymore. It was simply a matter of economics.

"Listen," the superintendent began at a meeting after the boy's freshman year, "I know that everything you've ever been taught is telling you that we have to help this boy. But we simply cannot. He sleeps in every class period, during lunch, and even in detention. And when he sleeps, he drools. A lot. The boy's like a broken faucet. This year alone, he's destroyed two-thousand dollars in textbooks. Remember how we made the mistake of letting him use the computer lab during the first couple weeks? He drooled all over the keyboards of three computers and- only God knows how- directly into the CPU tower of another one of them. All four computers were destroyed. This summer we'll have to get the carpet replaced in every single room he's had for a class because there's mold settling in. Actually, the biology teacher said that it's flourishing. We've wasted too much money calling plumbers on false toilet-flooding alarms because he fell asleep in the bathroom. And I won't even mention the lawsuits we could end up facing if another student slips on one of his drool-puddles in the gym. Do whatever you need to do to get him out of this high school in four years. Our budget can't keep up with the damage he causes."

There were only two classes left. He trudged his way into his English teacher's room and took his seat at the desk with the towels underneath. Ever since he could remember, he had hated English classes. Things like plot, symbolism, and characters bored him to tears, the papers made him frustrated, and the reading put him to sleep. He couldn't remember ever paying attention for more than thirty seconds in any English class he'd ever had. He was actually a little proud of how quickly he could fall asleep in English classes, and tried to beat his time every day. At this point, he was down to about a minute and a half.

He was very determined to beat his record today. As he had entered the room, he was pumping himself up to sleep, which consists of doing things that are the exact opposite of what normally pumps people up. And now, after doing this, he was very enthusiastic about his upcoming sleep. He almost couldn't handle the hype. He could hear the cheers of thousands of imaginary fans egging him on. His classroom had dissolved away and had now become a giant stadium with his desk in the middle. He could hear the PA system announcing his name, but it was barely audible over the screams of all his fans. A spotlight shined down on his desk, and he could picture a squad of cheerleaders by it beaming at him. They shook their pom-poms; they wanted this. He wanted this. The fans wanted this. He envisioned himself raising his arms and looking up, basking in the warm glory. He could do this. He knew he could. He grabbed a microphone, addressing the crowd.

"I'd just like to take a second and thank all my fans out here tonight," he began. "You know, people ask me what it takes to be great at what I do, and at first it was hard to answer them. I could never decide between my dedication, my God-given talent for falling asleep, or anything else like that. But then I realized what it was. All this time, I've never needed any of that; all I've needed was amazing fans like you. You guys are the ones that make this possible, and so today, this record is for you!" He imagined the crowd's cheers to be unbearably loud at this point, with some of the weaker-hearted females even swooning. Roses showered over him as confetti rained down from above. He took a pause, lowering himself to one knee and closing his eyes in concentration. He rose and walked over to his desk. "This is it," he thought as he sat down. He was going to break his record of "Fastest Time to Fall Asleep in Class" in the "Standard Four Legged High School Desks with the Seat Attached and the Book-Cradle Underneath" division (This would be an even bigger accomplishment than getting the record in the "Beanbag Chair in Elementary School Library" division).

Eager to begin sleeping as soon as possible, he put his head down as swiftly as he could.

A loud "thud" rang through the room, followed shortly by an "O...oo-oow." The stadium suddenly disappeared, and the school's classroom rushed back in its place. The entire class turned to look as he cradled his head in his hands. A welt was already starting to form. He quietly moaned for about two minutes- the first minute due to the physical pain, and the second due to the emotional pain he suffered from being ripped away from his adoring fans by reality. Even more unfortunately, he found that it was impossible to fall asleep, as his forehead was bruised and his skull was throbbing. For the first time ever, he was forced to stay awake during an English class.

"Oh my God, this is boring" he thought to himself about halfway through the class. The teacher was droning on about some author. Apparently the guy had written some books and stuff. "Big deal," he thought, "It's not like he's the only one that's ever written a book. There are millions of those." He rolled his eyes and looked around. His eyes drifted forward and slightly to the right, and he was immediately pleased by what they landed on.

She was, in two words, incredibly pretty. If given a few more words, he would have described her as the most beautiful girl he had ever seen in his life- past, present, and future included. She was slender, but not skinny; feminine, but not girly; her skin was light, but not pale. She had achieved a mesmerizing medium of every desirable trait. Everything about her was perfect, and yet he still sensed modesty- as if she hadn't realized her own beauty. He had realized it, though. It was an innocent beauty, miraculously unspoiled by her time on Earth, and as he gazed at her, it seemed like the world stopped and gazed at her too. He also realized that he had just fallen in love- and he hadn't even seen her face yet.

It was beginning to get warmer in the room. He couldn't tell if it was just him, or if it was actually the room.

As if on cue, she turned around. His heart boiled. He thought he was going to melt as she made eye contact with him. Her eyes seemed to twinkle even in the fluorescent school lighting. A moment later, he felt dripping on his arm. "I...m-..melt," he thought. It was all he could manage at the moment. He sneaked a glance down to double check and realized that he was just drooling. He couldn't stop, but he also couldn't care. He looked back up at her with his mouth gaping open.

"Can someone turn the air conditioning on?" a student asked. "It's really getting hot in here."

He had to win her over, or die trying. He was a man in love. "Mom always says that love makes a man do crazy things," he remembered, "so I have to do something crazy for her. But what should I do?" He was still looking at her, and while she was no longer looking directly at him, he could still see her face. He watched her rub her eyes with the most graceful gesture, and after she was done he was left staring at them.

"I've got to tell her how beautiful she is," he thought, "but how?" The teacher's voice drifted into his conscience. She was still going on about that author, but now she was covering his collection of poems. He knew what he had to do: he was going to write her a poem.

She rubbed her eyes again, less delicately this time. They were watering over and reddening from irritation. The air conditioning problem still hadn't been fixed, and the heat was soaring. Students wiped sweat off of their foreheads and struggled to concentrate on the lesson. If it got any hotter, they might have to leave the room.

He pulled out a sheet of paper and a pencil, preparing to write the purest love poem in the world. He kept drooling on the paper, though, and soon gave up on the idea of writing it down. He would just have to memorize it and recite it to her. He wondered what his opening line should be. He wanted the poem to be about her and her beauty. His favorite part of her seemed to be her eyes. He was fixated on them, unable to break his gaze. He could slowly begin to feel something familiar. The first line of the poem was coming to him.

She seemed clearly bothered by her eyes now. They were glazed over and becoming bloodshot. "Ow!" she cried. Even while irritated, she had the voice of an angel. "My eyes are burning!" A classmate across the room replied, shouting, "This whole classroom is burning! Can someone open a window?"

As his classmates began panting and shifting around uneasily, he stayed focused on his poem. He stirred his brain for ideas and could feel the first line of his poem arising from the murky depths of his mind. He knew that the first line had to be about her eyes; it was the foundation for a perfect poem.

By now, the classroom was becoming unreasonably hot, and her eyes were bloodshot- although they still twinkled. A group of students had gotten up and were working on opening a window which had rusted shut.

He could feel the line bubbling up. His brain was beginning to boil. It was only a matter of time before he had the poem memorized and the love of his life by his side. He felt an abrupt click in his mind, as if the words he was searching for had forced themselves in. It was decided; his poem would begin with: "Your eyes are like-" His thoughts were interrupted by a scream.

Her eyes were no longer watering, and he was no longer drooling. Her eyes were burning too intensely and evaporating all of the tears her eyes produced. His drool was being evaporated by the room's exponentially rising temperature.

He couldn't hold it in any longer. His brain was seizing with the effort of creating this poem. He jumped up from his desk and bellowed, "Your eyes are like stars!" And with that exclamation, her eyes began the process of nuclear fusion. The room began to incinerate, and the force of the newly born stars- although just the size of human eyeballs- blew him back through the rusty window. He blacked out for a second while laying on the grass outside.

When he regained consciousness, he was could hear the screams of the doomed students stuck inside the room. It was a horrifying experience, and he fainted again.

When he awoke this time, the fire department had arrived and had begun hosing down the classroom. The smell was sickening, and it made him faint.

He came-to a third time. Now, police investigators were surrounding him, asking for details of the incident. He tried to remember, but found that his brain was completely inert. His body decided to follow suit and became inert as well, causing another fainting episode

This time, when he woke up, he was in a therapist's office, laying on an uncomfortable leather couch. He summoned enough energy to claim, "I'm not going crazy" before drifting off again.