InsaneJournal

Reizo sat in the back of the class, arms folded over his chest and pencil hold at the eraser in his teeth. He wiggled it in his mouth, focused on the lead point as he precariously rocked to and fro on the hind legs of his seat. The pot-bellied middle-aged teacher sat at the front of the room, head bowed as he read through the newspaper on his desk and looking up from it only occasionally. The fluorescent lighting caught his balding cranium from time to time-- the hair product he used to keep his hair styled enough to (badly) distract from his bald spot gave said bald spot an unfortunate reflective quality.

Time drifted by miserably in the classroom. It was a warm day, made warmer by the fact that the classroom was relatively full of living, breathing heat machines and the fact that the air conditioning seemed to be broke. Adding to the heat was the almost maddening silence, interrupted only occasionally by a lonesome cough or the whisper of pages turning.

Until the teacher stood up abruptly, cast a critical eye around the room, and moseyed out. This particular teacher was well known for these long breaks, and it was why Reizo showed up in detention in the first place-- he’d be marked there, the teachers would quit griping for a little, and no one would do anything about him being out of the room when the guy watching them was gone for most of the detention himself.

Several more moments passed, murmurs and whispers filling the room until a chair scraped rudely across the ground and Reizo stood up, stretched languidly, and walked out of the room himself, amidst eye rolls and louder whispers about the delinquent. The whispers grew and grew until people were talking plainly-- apparently Reizo leaving the room meant it was safe to.