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Chapter Ten
Point of View: Narrator

Zoe leaned on one of her crutches while she wrote on the whiteboard at the front of the room. The dry erase marker smelled and she wrinkled her nose, thinking that they should really come out with dry erase board markers that didn't make the teachers using them get a buzz. It squealed as she dragged it across the board a little faster, eager to cap it.

Behind her, the class was chatting away loudly, all trying to talk louder than the others so that they could be heard. There were a couple boys sending paper airplanes and balls through the air, trying to hit each other. They kept missing and hitting girls, who would shout out angrily at them. There was a girl directly behind Zoe whose speedy voice was unmistakably Californian, telling her friend a colorful story about a game of Seven Minutes in Heaven she'd recently played at a friend's co-ed party. One boy was yelling about his driving skills and how he'd almost hit a chipmunk that morning, but had 'pulled moves like Ricky Bobby' and missed it by swerving.

Zoe took a deep breath and turned around to face the class. "Good morning," she said. Absolutely none of them responded, or even noticed that she was facing them now. They were all engrossed in what they were doing. She looked at the clock. They had twenty-one seconds until the class officially began. She counted. Three... two... one.... "FOOOCUUUUUSSSSS!" she bellowed.

Immediate silence followed.

"There we go," she said. She grabbed her second crutch from where she'd leaned it on the wall and moved slowly to the desk, where she picked up a pile of papers. "Today, we're going to do some review work for your test, and you're going to make up your study guides..."

"You're going to help us make our study guides?" a kid named Ben asked.

"Sort of," Zoe answered.

"Ms. Sinclaire," called a girl toward the back whose name was Heather, "Is the test, like, really hard?"

Zoe shook her head. "If you've been reading the material then it'll be a snap," she answered, smiling. "It's really all about reading the material. And there's a really great bonus question that you'll love." The bonus question on the second test of the class was Zoe's favorite because of the crazy answers she always got. There was no wrong answer - the question was Tell me about your life's goal? She'd heard everything from rock stars to doctors to comments like "sleeping in" and "getting out of class". Every single answer had gotten full marks, no matter how lame.

"Well there goes my passing grade," muttered George, the kid Zoe had labeled in her mind as "the one that never does homework".

"Too bad," Zoe said, dropping the study sheet in front of him, "You're passing your drives really well, so I'd hate to have to fail you on academics..." George grumbled and looked over the study sheet.

"Okay, so here's the story," Zoe said, returning to the front and resting against a wooden stool she had by the board for when her hands and legs couldn't take anymore. She leaned the crutches against the board again. "We're going to do this in two teams." She held out her hand, and, like Moses parting the Red Sea, indicated the split down the center of the room. "Team A, Team B."

George, who was sitting in the dead center, quickly scanned which side had smarter looking people on it, then scooted onto Team A's side.

Heather's hand was back in the air. "What do we get if we win?" she asked.

"The winning team gets ten points extra credit on the test."

"Yes," George pumped the air. He turned to his friend, Chris, who had gotten stuck on Team B's side. "Suck it, Team B!" he shouted.

Zoe sighed. "Watch the language, George." She lifted the study sheet. "Okay. So. Out of twenty questions, half of the questions on the study sheet has four multiple choice answers. Those questions are worth 100 points. Another quarter of them are fill in the blanks. Those are 200 points. Then the last five are essay answers on the test, but, to make it interesting, we'll make them charades for the game. Those are 500 points."

"Oh I'm so good at acting," hissed one of the girls on Team B, "I hope I get one of those questions. I'll rock so much at it."

"What we're going to do is before I tell you which question I'll be asking, you need to select a representative from your team to take the question. Everyone has to answer at least once." She scanned the teams quickly, there were eight on each. "The extra two questions will be a team effort and you'll write your final answer down and we'll play it that way. The person you select gets to choose a points bracket. I get to choose the question they answer. If they get it right, they win that amount of points. If they get it wrong, you lose that amount. The last two questions we'll go jeopardy style and you can play all-or-nothing."

"This game rocks," George said, pointing at Chris again he announced, "You're going down, bro." Zoe rolled her eyes. Competitive teens... they'll suck into anything. She wondered if George even realized this was technically considered learning.

Zoe looked to Team A. "Okay, Team A. Select your first player."

They huddled and talked and it took a few minutes, but they finally selected a girl with brown braids named Anna. Anna was okay at driving, but she'd done kind of crappy on her first test.

"Okay, Anna," Zoe said slowly, "What points bracket would you like?"

"One hundred, Ms. Sinclair," she answered sweetly.

Smart girl, thought Zoe. She was fairly certain Anna wouldn't get anything higher than that right. "Okay... Team A, for one hundred points, where should your hands be while driving? A... Ten and Two. B... Six and Twelve. C... Eight and Four. Or D... On the wheel."

Anna started thinking. For the love of God, don't say D, thought Zoe.

"Um... C?" Anna said slowly, drawing the letter out like it was a question, not an answer.

"Right!" Zoe said, relieved. "Team A, One Hundred." She wrote 100 on the board in a red marker. "Team B, select your player." Again the team huddled, and some arguing ensued. A moment later, Sara, the girl from the drive the other day, was standing. "Okay, Sara," said Zoe, just as nervous as she had been with Anna, "Pick your point bracket."

"Two hundred," announced Sara boldly.

The rest of Team B was looking on, nervous expressions on their face.

"Okay," Zoe scanned the page. "For two hundred points, Team B, define the acronym SMOG."

Sara's face went pale. Seconds ticked. Zoe felt bad for her, she was clearly regretting choosing a fill-in-the-blank, and she could see her eyes searching, as though reading her brain for the answer. "Isn't smog, like, pollution and stuff?" she finally asked.

"Um... well, I mean as it pertains to Driver's Ed," Zoe answered as the kids behind Sara started laughing and Sara's cheeks turned red. She quickly sat down, obviously mortified. "SMOG is Signal, Mirror, Over the shoulder and Go - it's the rules for merging." Zoe waited while everyone wrote down the answer on their study sheets.

Once she was fairly certain everyone who was going to had written it down - George hadn't moved a muscle - she turned to Team A. "Okay, Team A. Your next player?"

It continued on that way through most of the questions. For the most part the kids did okay. They weren't wonder drivers by any means and they got more wrong than they did right, but Zoe was trying to make the answers memorable when she gave them out, sharing anecdotes when she could about past drivers and situations she'd been in herself. They had one moment where George almost pummeled another kid, though, when she'd asked Team B to define what "LOS/POT" stood for and Ben had said, "Isn't that what they're calling the south west neighborhood now?" George had punched his hand and turned around looking menacingly at Ben, who had paled. Zoe had to yell "focus" again because all the kids exploded over the prospect of a fight between George and Ben. These kids would love Red Asphalt 5, thought Zoe, They're evidently into gore.

Finally, they were down to two kids that hadn't gone yet. George for Team A and a brainy girl with thick glasses named Emily for Team B. All that was left were the charades questions. She felt bad for Team A - they hadn't budgeted their smart kids very well, and now they were stuck riding 500 points on George's highly unreliable shoulders. They had a 400 point lead at the moment, but if George got the question wrong they would be losing with Team B still capable of taking an even larger margin over them.

"Okay George, get up here," Zoe said, reluctant to give George a reason to be the center of attention. The kid was a ham enough as it was. He bounded to the front and held his hands up like he was a fighting champion taking the ring. The students laughed. Zoe waited for them to calm down and cleared her throat. "Okay, George. Here we go. For five hundred points. Act out for me the steps to a parallel park. Describe the points you're lining up as well as what you're doing with the wheel."

George turned to the side and squatted to look like he was driving in a car. "Okay, so here I go. Drivin' down Sunset. There's a hot babe... I honk." He mocked honking, waving, and winking - directing the affection to a blonde in the front row of seats that was way out of his league. "Then woaaah! Wait! That record store's got vinyl on sale half off!! But crap it's all parallel parking!"

Zoe shook her head. In seven years of doing this question, she'd never seen anyone pile on the theatrics quite like this.

"But then, sweeet! There's a spot open right there! So. I light up my mirror with the car in front of the spot's door handle and put the car in reverse. I turn the wheel like so, and back up." He waddled backwards into an angle like he was pulling into the spot. "Then - get this - I turn the wheel the other direction, and go forwards. Like this..." he demonstrated, inching forward. "Then, just to straighten out, I back up a little bit, rotating the wheel to the straight position." He stopped, back to his original position, then stood up, "And I go buy myself a shit load of vinyl and mack on that hot babe I saw a second ago and we go back to her place and have sex on her momma's couch."

The kids in the classroom burst into applause and laughter. Zoe wasn't quite sure how to react. George started bowing, "Thank you, thank you... I'm here all week..."

"Thanks for that very... colorful.. description... 500 points for Team A.. only because you got the points and did successfully parallel park," Zoe said as George received high fives on his way back to his seat. "However just for the record, you were holding your 'wheel' at ten and two, and the DMV would've marked you down for that."

George kicked his feet up onto the table and leaned back on two legs of the chair at the desk, grinning up at her, "Ah Ms. Sinclaire, you're a doll."