<div class="floatright">(http://elliquiy.com/elluiki/images/archive/4/4a/20130511162352!DxKLyceeni.jpg)</div><span class="bbc_size" style="font-size: 18pt;"><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: comic sans ms;">Val</span></span><br/>St. Cosmas, English Class<br/><hr/><br/>Val hadn't slept much the night before but, oddly, she didn't feel tired. Quite the contrary, she felt full of nervous energy. Colors seemed more neon than they usually did, every sound was louder and more unexpected, and, no matter what she did, Val couldn't seem to concentrate on<em>anything</em>. It was like that one time Emily Hastings had given everyone on the team energy drinks—the kind Val's mother never let her have—before a competition.<br/><br/>Val could only assume it was because of the presentation she was going to be giving in English later that day. She had been stressing about the presentation for weeks now. It wasn't that Val disliked public speaking, she rather enjoyed being the center of attention, but she was determined not to repeat what happened last year. While giving a similar presentation to her sophomore English class, Val had forgotten the English word for 'antonym'. Rather than moving past the word, she had struggled for several minutes to remember the proper word and had ended up looking, she thought, incredibly foolish. English wasn't exactly a foreign language to Val, her mother had spoken it at home even before they moved to the States, but German still felt more natural and she had a tendency to slip into it when she was stressed. Regardless, the whole issue had been quite traumatic and Val was determined not to repeat it again this year. Thus, she had spent much more time than usual prepping for this project.<br/><br/>The entire day went by in a blur, with Val hardly noticing a word anyone said to her. She caught brief snippets of sentences in Math and nearly lit her hair on fire in Chemistry. Twice. Usually Mr. Peters, the 'hot' young chemistry teacher that, for some reason that completely escaped Val, everyone on the squad seemed to have a crush on. Mr. Peters was a good deal better looking than most of the male staff, but that didn't make him hot. His eyes were too close together. And his nose was crooked. Yet, even Miranda Hawkins, who everyone agreed had terrible taste in boys, thought he was cute. It was so infuriating sometimes...<br/><br/>What had I been saying... Oh, right; Mr. Peters was usually very strict with Val about putting her hair up, which she hated doing because it made her hair all crinkly and gross for the rest of the day, but he didn't seem so bothered by it today. Val was so tuned out that she didn't even stick around the table by the hallway to the girl's locker room like she usually did to catch up on the latest gossip.<br/><br/>When English eventually rolled around, Val was so anxious she could hardly sit still. She heard nothing of the first three presentations. The fire alarm could have gone off and she wouldn't have noticed. When she heard Ms. Noble call her name, Val shot to her feet like and electric current had been run through the seat of her desk. To her relief, no one laughed, but that didn't stop her from blushing slightly as she walked to the front of the class. Closing her eyes and taking a deep breath, Val began her presentation.<br/><br/>When Val had finished her speech, she heaved a huge sigh of relief. It had gone off without a hitch, she hadn't mispronounced a single word! Lowering her eyes from the spot on the wall she had been staring at for the last ten minutes, Val realized that everyone in the room was sound asleep. Even Ms. Noble was snoring softly at her desk!<br/><br/>That was approximately the moment Val realized something strange was going on.