[size="4"]Raise Your Hand[/size]
How many minutes left? My eyes blink underneath my lashes and I steal a quick glance at the clock. It's 35 minutes until the bell. I write the answer to number 2 in loopy writing, both ears still absorbing my teacher's words. Number three. I write the answer. She begins to read the question.
I believe I am suppressing a yawn.
Her blue marker is scribbling across the board, drawing a river and an ocean, while explaining to us the different densities of fresh and salt water. Fresh water, because it has a lower salinity level, has a lower density than sea water. Sea water, because it has more salinity, has a higher density than fresh water. Larger densities sink, she reminds us. So what might happen if river water were to merge with sea water?
I think I yawn again, this time not even attempting to cover it up. I feel I am the only student in this classroom here to learn. The room is silent. Someone calls out something like, "they would mix". The teacher's eyes are still searching the dead faces. The fresh water would stay on top, float, because it's less dense. But I don't say anything. She turns back to the board, going over it again, putting emphasis on the words to sink and to float. What am I doing? I could raise my hand and say something. I could help finish this lecture that's beginning to prickle my nerves.
My hand twitches. What if I'm wrong? What if my voice shakes or I cough or sneeze in the middle of my sentence? I don't have any friends in this class who would help me joke my way around it. I nearly laugh at myself. So I blow a hairball out my nose, who would care? I chew my lip. I would.
I am not a specter, I have decided, as I sit here in this wobbly metal desk, my fingers curled tensely around the stick of my pencil. I am not an observer, I tell myself dryly, letting my fingers release and then slowly raising my arm up into the air. My teacher's eyes slide across the whiteboard as she repeats the question, and then down past the talkers in the front seats, before they finally fall on me.
"Yes, you there," she calls me, having not remembered my name.
I take no offense, because she does it to nearly half the class.
"The river water will float on top," I say in a statement that only slimly echoes a question. I know I'm right. It's been obvious, though no one seems to listen long enough to put together her bomb-dropped hints.
She smiles and wiggles her finger, turning back to the whiteboards and explaining in detail what happens when low-density water (fresh water) is merged with high-density water (sea water). It's then that the adrenalin hits me. Speaking in front of the class and answering correctly gave me a high, and had seemingly temporarily boosted my confidence, if not permanently. I usually know the answer, yet I wait until someone else figures it out and raises their hand. Why haven't I participated before?
I don't know the answer to the next question, yet I raise my hand anyway. So what, I'm wrong! I know I'm not an unintelligent person, and it's time for me to forget about being insecure.