"What do you mean 'yeah'?" She hissed incredulously. "They called an ambulance for him. They say he's all fucked up! Did you do that to him? You?"
"Kind of." I affirmed. "But listen Trace. I need to know… "
"Kind of?" She said. "We're talking about Richard Fairview. He's twice your size. How the hell did you… "
"Tracy will you shut the fuck up for a second." I commanded.
She blinked at me in surprised respect.
"Listen." I told her. "You and I need to sit down and talk about something. Something that will probably be the most important thing you've ever heard." I glared meaningfully at her, knowing that my face was showing an adult expression. "Things are different with me. Very different. And I'll tell you about them tonight."
"What are you talking about?" She asked, wide-eyed.
"Tonight." I promised. "But for now I need you to tell me what my class schedule is."
"Your class schedule?" She asked, raising her eyebrows.
"Yes." I nodded. "My inability to remember it is part of what I have to tell you tonight. But for now, where the hell am I supposed to go?"
She looked at me for a moment in suspicion, confusion, fear, and awe. Finally she began to speak. "First period you have math… "
She wasn't able to give me actual room numbers or anything, but she was able to supply enough info for me to get through the day. I arrived in Algebra class just as the bell rang. I had a moment of panic as I looked around the room, seeing all of the students at their desks, the teacher at his desk and opening his roll book. Where in the hell was my desk? Was I really in the right first period class?
The teacher, a middle-aged, dark skinned man looked up to see me standing there. I couldn't even remember his name. Something Arabic was all that came to me.
"Would you care to take your seat Mr. Stevens?" He asked mildly.
"Uh, sure." I stammered, heading for the first empty desk. I was given several strange looks from the teacher and my classmates, leading me to believe I'd chosen the wrong seat. But no one said anything.
A minute later, the class began.
I sat through Algebra without a clue as to what the hell the teacher (who's name, Mr. Ached, I was finally able to discern) was talking about. I'd always been placed in the college prep classes in high school, a result of my high placement scores on the tests. I'd always been a good test-taker on general knowledge exams with multiple choice questions. So I'd been placed in the college preps where I'd been stoned much of the time and only garnering enough information to pass with a C or even a D in some cases. Algebra was not something I'd used every day in life and I'd come in on it in progress after more than a decade of not using it. I was hopelessly confused by Mr. Ached's lecture.
My second class, on the other hand, was the exact opposite. American History. In my previous life (as I was coming to think of it) I had an associates degree and half of a bachelor's degree in History; a subject that had always interested me. A completely worthless degree, I agree, but it's possession coupled with the obsessive reading I'd done on the subject throughout my life made me an equal (or perhaps even a better?) to the instructor as she lectured on the causes of the Civil War. I found the lecture naive and boring; packed full of basic information that had been scaled down for easy digestion by high school students. She presented the information in black and white, not touching upon a single controversial issue of that time; the sorts of issues we'd relished back in college. Strange, until hearing that lecture, I'd never realized how much we'd been bullshitted and programmed in school.
Third period was Human Anatomy and Physiology. This was a little less boring for several reasons. For one, it was another subject that I was quite knowledgeable about since I'd been forced to learn it at near physician level in order to qualify for paramedic school. It was also not politically scaled down for high school, although it was somewhat more simplistic than what I'd been taught. The second reason was the instructor, Mrs. Crookshank. She was a very attractive woman in her mid-twenties, probably only a few years out of college. I remembered that she'd starred in several of my masturbation fantasies and had been a frequent discussion topic among my peers when the talk turned to teachers we'd like to fuck. As she lectured the class on the circulatory system I found myself watching her body move back and forth to the blackboard, watching her ass beneath the pantsuit she wore, her tits bouncing beneath her sweater. I was OLDER than her, I kept thinking, but yet I was not.
"Now we've been discussing the circulatory system for several days now." She said at one point. "So can anyone tell me the complete route a blood cell takes through this system?"
Obviously she was expecting no hands to go up. It was almost, but not quite, a rhetorical question. She was met with blank looks from her class of thirty or so until I, deciding to have a little fun, put up my hand.
"Yes Billy?" She asked impatiently. "Do you need to use the restroom?"
I smiled at her shyly. I knew she was expecting nothing from me beyond that. I'd flunked her class. "No." I told her. "I was going to answer your question."
Her eyebrows went up. "YOU know the route a blood cell takes through the circulatory system?"
The class was looking at me now, obviously expecting me to make a joke of some sort, although I was not even known for that sort of behavior.
"I think so." I said softly.
She gave a patronizing smile. "Well do tell." She said.
"Okay," I began. "Why don't we start with an oxygenated cell as it leaves the heart. Is that a good starting place?"
She raised her eyebrows higher. "Sure." She finally said.
I nodded. "Okay. An oxygenated cell will be pumped from the left ventricle, through the aortic valve, into the Aorta, which will then branch into the descending and ascending Aortas. Of course at this point it may be sent to the coronary arteries but let us assume for the sake of discussion that it is not. From the aorta the cell will be pumped through the arteries into the arterioles and finally into a capillary bed somewhere where it will then give up it's oxygen molecule to a cell and pick up a carbon dioxide molecule for transport back to the lungs. At the point of transfer the capillaries will become veinuels. The cell will pass through these into veins, eventually making its way to either the superior or inferior vena cava, depending upon what part of the body it just oxygenated."
Mrs. Crookshank was obviously in shock, as if she'd seen a monkey suddenly start to talk. "Go on." She said numbly.
I nodded. "The vena cava lead, of course, to the heart. Specifically the right atria. The cell will enter the right atria and will then be pumped to the right ventricle. From there the cell will be pumped through the pulmonary valve to the pulmonary artery, which, I might add, is the only artery in the body to carry unoxygenated blood. The pulmonary artery will take the cell into the pulmonary capillary system where it will drop off its CO2 molecule, which will then be exhaled by the lung, and pick up another oxygen molecule from the alveoli in the lung. From there the now oxygenated cell with pass through the pulmonary vein, the only vein in the body that carries oxygenated blood, to the left atria. The left atria will pump the cell into the left ventricle and the process starts all over." I smiled. "Takes a little over a minute I hear."
The class was completely silent, staring at me. Finally Mrs. Crookshank spoke. "That's exactly right Billy." She said. "Very good."
"I read a little bit on it." I said, casting my eyes back to my desk.
At lunchtime it became quickly apparent that I'd altered history, as it was, a little already. As I waited in the snack bar line, and as I found an empty seat on the quad, I could see that people were pointing at me and looking at me. When I would turn to look at them, they would cast their eyes away. I figured the word had spread about my fight with Richie. People were probably in disbelief. I could almost hear the conversations they were having. Him? That little wimpy guy? Kicked Richie's ass? Sent him to the hospital? How? Does he know karate or something? He must!