The Academy--Chapter Three

Wow, I haven't posted this in a long time, but, on Sarah's request, I shall.

Chapter 3

“Qu’est que tu fais pendant temps libre?” I asked Alastair amidst the low rumbling of teenage whispers in French.
“Quoi?” It was one of the only words that Alastair could pronounce correctly, even though he could read and write French almost as well as I could. Even with my advantage of eight extra years of learning the language, Alastair was catching up quickly. He amazed me with his capacity to retain all that he was taught.
“I said,” I said slowly, “‘What do you do during free time?’”
“Oh. Well,” he sought for the right words in his brain and finally stuttered, “J’aime jouer au l’athletisme?”
I looked at him with faux disapproval and he said, “No! It’s ‘J’aime faire de l’athletisme,’ right?”
Grinning, I praised him. “Great! Now you just have to work on your utterly horrible pronunciation!”
He smiled back and we continued our French conversation with relative ease. We both walked to our next class, English, which classroom was located on the second floor of the school building. We laughed at Alastair’s poor attempt to explain how he felt about the class–“Je deteste l’anglais! C’est barbant!–when he randomly brought up a question that I had almost forgotten about.
“Are you still confused about what I said about our punishment?”
I hesitated, thinking. I tried to gather up the theories that I had had just a few days ago when we had been discussing this in the first place. I rubbed my shivering arms in thought, and, almost in spite, one stubborn cut on my arm split and began to burn.
“Ah,” I said softly. I pulled up the sleeve of my sweater and inspected the reopened scab. Alastair looked down at his shoes and shuffled his feet as he stood in the middle of the hallway. I found a nearby drinking fountain and washed away any evidence of my wound. It didn’t bleed hardly at all, so I recovered my arm with the sleeve and answered Alastair in the most roundabout way I could manage.
“Well, I don’t really. . .know what you mean when you say that I should blame you,” I said slowly. After trying to read his expression for one moment, I resolutely stepped to the left and continued down the corridor to the English room.
As hard as I tried to concentrate on what Mr. Crar was saying, nothing was sinking in. All of the information simply came into my ears and bounced off of my brain, jumbling with all of the other nonsense that was floating aimlessly inside my head. Still, I was optimistic. I didn’t give in to the incomprehensible thoughts that I was having. Everything seemed too confusing; I didn’t want to think about all of it when I had so many other things to concentrate on.