I am cursed[1]. I am surrounded by a sea of transmuted figures, bearing some but not a distinct likeness to their former selves. Slumped and unresponsive, stumbling through the halls of my high school with an arrested gait and in a constant stupor. Hunched over desks as if the desks themselves were magnetized and their brains were oppositely magnetized. The desk seems to call to their heads, inching them closer and closer…

Being spoken to might temporarily break the haze, and elicit a “could you repeat that” or — more tragically comic to me — “yes, definitely” as a response to “What might cause the answer to be 0?” 

There are days when these beings don’t come to school. Days, mind you, is plural. There are campus preview weekends, of course. Soon will come AP exams, where mysteriously on the day before the exam, one might be absent. Coupled with the day of the exam, and we have two more days, gone. Mental zombies.

These beings are mere shadows of what they were before.

[1] Okay, okay, I know I’m not cursed. I love my seniors. But fourth quarter is trying for me, because it is trying for them.