"You sure that's enough?" asked Mrs. Savage after I grabbed a tissue from her outreached hand. I shook my head no and quickly took three more. I pulled back towards my test and tried to keep my nose under control. I had Niagara Falls coming out of my nose. I hate allergies. I grabbed the corners of one of the tissues, twisted off a smudge of fabric, and shoved it up my right nostril.
"You look like you have a fever going there, fella." I look up to see another one of the test proctors smiling.
"It's just a..." I stop myself mid sentence and thought
wait a minute Duy. You can use this to your advantage. "yeah." I finished.
"Don't go to school tomorrow," she smiled and walked away. This became a regular occurrence. Every twenty minutes or so one of the test givers would stop by my table and ask me if I was alright or if I needed tissues. At one point I had a wet paper towel handed to me with instructions to place it on the back of my neck or wherever else I felt discomfort. I was practically babied throughout the entire AP world history exam. After scribbling some nonsense into the conclusion of my last essay, I gave out a sigh of relief and closed my booklet. A minute later I opened up the booklet and read its contents, imagining I was one of those AP graders, with their long fingers and long necks, grading a test. I imagined reading some kid's paper. A boy perhaps. Barely sixteen. Fragile face, fragile body. Spent the last three nights cramming. A boy, named Michael Dinsky. And I? Charles Mantle, an AP World History teacher from Carlton High School in Denver, Colorado. Two kids, a wife, three cats, two fish, and a white Toyota corolla. Normal man, normal life. As I stare down into Michael's test I see scribbles of distorted facts. Authoritarian government, Nationalism, British trading companies in the Indian Ocean. What a bunch of bologna, I thought. As I thumbed through the essays I came to the last one. I was reading it and then all of a sudden, I stopped mid-paragraph. There, in the second body paragraph, right before the topic sentence, was a phrase. It was quickly scribbled out as I could tell, but the phrase was legible. It read:
THIS IS SPARTA!
I sat there for awhile. And then, I chuckled. And then, I laughed. And before you know it, I hooted. I hee-hawed. I whistled, tooted, flambooted, and nearly jumped out of my chair. All of the other teachers stared at me in amazement. I didn't care! This kid, Michael Dinksy, he's A GENIUS! I mean c'mon! Who would have the balls to write something so witty, so outrageous, so spectacular? He obviously knew that I would be able to read it. He scribbled it out lightly because he wanted me to read it. I instantly grabbed my pen and gave this kid a huge big old veiny5, right there. I just graffiti'd that baby right there onto his paper. I mean he deserved it. I sat back with content written all over my face. A feeling of accomplishment.
"Are you done? Are you completely finished?"
"whuh?" I lifted my head off of the table, a line of saliva was etched onto my test booklet. I had fallen asleep.
"Are you done with your test?"
"Uh..yeah," I mumbled.
"Okay, I need you to go to the nurse's office and grab some like Lysol, we need to wipe the tables. After that you can leave. Just get rid of your tissues okay?" I look to the right of me. There was a mountain of used tissues just begging to collapse like a game of Jenga. I stood up and carried the tissues into a trash can on my way to the nurse's office. I grabbed the lysol, came back, handed the wipes to one of the proctors, grabbed my stuff and left. No seventh. Even if I didn't do well on the test, I'm sure Charles Mantle wouldn't mind. After all, who could deny King Leoduyis.
