Ten minutes to the lunch bell, and I’m finally free, she thought. She could feel her toes tapping in impatience. Next her fingers. Then her pencil. She was itching to leave, and with the sound of freedom merely a few clock turns away, it was impossible not to feel edgy.
“Children, life isn’t pointless, always remember that,” the teacher said whether as a parting word or as a prelude to another lengthy speech, she did not know. Some people applauded. Must be the parting statement.
Knowing her teacher was right in front of her seat, she used all of her strength in restraint - restraint in rolling her eyes. Turning to the window beside her chair, she decided the best way to pass the time would be to think.
Yeah right. Life isn’t pointless my foot! Life is routine. Life is redundant. Life is boring. Snort, yeah that’s right. Life is… She could go on and on about life, but then she realized she was using worse and worse adjectives than she began with.
The bell rang and she hastily went away, eager for the escape from the suffocating walls of “life isn’t pointless” class. She hated how everyone in it seemed so optimistic all the time - it made her feel like a big fool in the middle of a crowd. Like a clown with an ugly grin springing out of a jack-in-the-box. Like a joke.
Frankly, she never found life interesting. It was something she had gotten used to. Again, it was routine. You wake up, you sleep, you wake up again. It’s a never-ending cycle where nothing ever changes. The people you see are all the same, the things you do an infinite repetition. All the things in between sleeps are just like crystals of salt in a glass of water: they add spice at the beginning, but then they just dissolve into nothingness as time goes by.
Consumed by thought, she trips and falls down flat on her face. For a moment, she considered if people would stop and stare, or even laugh, but after a second of seeing that nobody even bothered noticed, she decides they wouldn’t any time soon. She gets up and doesn’t care. Nobody does, anyway. And so she carries on walking.