After a week-long holiday, second semester began, and classes resumed. I started going to school and first few days were nerve wrecking to say the least. Because during those days, we got to know our exam scores. Everyone hated that all teachers didn't give us our mark sheets on the same day. Instead, they distributed them on different days without even informing us. I wasn't too scared, but I was still nervous because you never knew what day they would choose to give us a heart attack. Nothing is certain in life. If it was this bad for me, how bad was it for those who weren't good at studies…
Fortunately, like every time, I got the highest marks in almost all the subjects. In one subject's exam, I had made a little mistake which brought down my overall percentage slightly. But it didn't make any difference in the rankings. I would go home every day and tell my mom my marks and she would become very happy. It was nice to see her smile.
By that point, I had completely forgotten about Dirk. We had stopped talking almost completely. There was no boy in the whole class who was even close to me in terms of marks and the girls who did come close to me were book worms and used to take tuition. I took great pride in the fact that I didn't study that much and yet, I was the top scorer.
Around two weeks after the classes resumed, a parent teacher meeting was held to give report cards to parents. It was also a precaution to make sure parents knew the actual marks of their children. If children could lie about their marks, what was stopping them from lying about the meeting? I didn't go because I already knew how much I had scored. So, I felt it was pointless to go.
In the beginning of the second semester, our social science's teacher resigned because she had to move out for whatever reason. But she didn't leave quietly. She made sure to give a speech to us about how much she liked us and how sad she was about leaving us. Not only her, but my classmates were also sad. For me, it was extremely strange because I couldn't relate to them at all. She had been teaching us for only half a year and yet, she was sad about leaving us? And students were sad about her leaving? I didn't think all of them cared. I did believe that some students were genuinely sad which was still not easy to believe while others were just pretending to be sad under peer pressure… like me.
Some of my classmates had even started crying… Either they were actually sad, or they deserved an Oscar. Seeing us miserable, our teacher gave all of us a kiss on our cheeks as a parting gift. She went to every bench and did what I thought was disgusting. When it was my turn, I wanted to tell her to get the hell away but no one else had refused so, I had no choice. The moment after she did it, I wiped my face with my hanky. I guess no one in our class knew about the concept of consent at that time.
I still can't comprehend why everyone was being such a cry baby. But then again, there was only one teacher I cared for. She was actually a great person and teacher.
The next day, our new teacher arrived. She was even weirder! The first thing I noticed about her was her appearance. She had Vitiligo. I noticed the second thing when she opened her mouth. She only talked in English. In my country, English is not our native language. In fact, it's not even most people's second language. But she made sure to not utter a single word in any other language. It was very peculiar. Her accent made it even weirder. Everyone wondered about her obsession for English, and she became a topic of gossip for us. Many students used to laugh at her and guys like Dic used to tease her during the lectures.
And even though it was terrible, I couldn't help but feel like she deserved it. It was as if she was trying to act like a foreigner. There were times when she would pause for more than a few seconds as if to figure out in her mind about what to say. It became worse when she told us to talk in only English during her lectures… what kind of dictatorship was that? I would question if she was trying to match her behaviour with her looks. Maybe she wanted to become a Britisher. Just kidding.
Days passed and our school announced a drawing competition. It was not a normal competition. You could only participate in groups and drawing had to be on a big sheet of paper. Yeah, it was not that special. I decided to participate because my friends were going to, and I had nothing better to do. I knew why they were so eager to participate. Because doing so would allow them to skip periods which I didn't hate. But along with my friends, one more guy was participating. It was Dirk. While I had stopped talking to him, my friends were his friends as well. So, either I could back out and lose out on all the fun my friends would have without me and with him or I could participate and make him uncomfortable by being 'weird'. It was obvious what I would choose.
There were five of us who participated in that competition. Prat, Steve, Me, Dirk and one of his friends. It took place in our school after lunch break. Many students from my class participated. And like we expected, we got to avoid every period until the last one. Me and my friends had participated solely for that. We made zero effort to make our drawing look great and, in the end, it turned out so bad that it didn't even look like something normal humans with working brains could and would create. We wondered how teachers would react after seeing what the abomination we had made. We wanted to make a simple landscape, but it turned out to be something you would see in apocalyptic world, a mess. All five of us were equally surprised with the way it turned out because we had no idea about how it happened.
Maybe because Steve had spilled paint on the sheet, and we didn't have a spare. Actually, that still was not a good reason. There was no word to describe it. We all concluded that that drawing was cursed. But we still submitted it just to see what would happen. We made sure to not let anyone see it.
Few days after the competition, during the school assembly, winners of the competition for each class were announced. Guess what? We ended up winning… a consolation prize. None of us could believe it. As the teacher announced the names of the winners, me and my friends looked at each other in complete shock. Even though we had won, we were still not happy. In fact, we should have been punished. Everyone knew that winning a consolation prize was worse than not winning anything like being born in a middle-class family as a middle child. It was as if school was trying to get back at us for insulting their eyes with our drawing. As if they were showing us pity and trying to tell us we could do better. It didn't console us or anything. What was actually satisfying was that no matter the ranking, all the winners only got a certificate. What was the point of winning when all that you would get was a piece of paper? I felt bad for the winners. First three places could have created a masterpiece, they had beat 'us', but they won the same thing as us.
The fact that teachers didn't tear our drawing and didn't punish us and instead gave us a prize just made us wonder. Were we living in a simulation and… how bad were the other drawings?
Well, I learned a lesson. If you do something with friends, most likely it will end up horribly.