at attention, staring directly at the back of the head of the kid in front of us until…..

“YOU ARE DISMISSED!”

I exited gym class in a straight line just like the other kids in front of and behind me did, but eventually we all broke apart into chaos, searching for our respective next classes. I walked through the halls to my next class, another little sheep in the flock, looking for a shepherd.

The next period, seventh period, I had Earth Studies with Miss McKinley. Miss McKinley was ok, she was kind of old and there was something, I dunno, dry about her, like dead leaves fluttering in a frozen winter draught. She used a long wooden pointer to indicate on yellowed maps the places where our world broke apart eons ago, sending the continents drifting, colliding, building, eroding. Alan Squirrel was in my class, too. He was the only one to score straight A’s on all his tests this marking period in stupid old ES.

Alan always smiled through the entire class, the only one of us who actually thought synclines and anticlines and basaltic volcanic rocks were fun.

Mike Mellish is currently a student at Allegheny College in western PA. He only recently began looking into publishing his work, and has published one work of short fiction, 'Exhale,' in The Writer's Choice E-zine, and one poem entitled 'for my father' in Golem magazine. He is 20 years old and spends his down time reading, running, playing lacrosse, and lifting weights.

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