10:05 AM

Chiming bells of chaos reverberated through the empty corridors, in through the seams of closed doors, and into the minds of hungry individuals. Both joyous that the time to pour their faces into cardboard platters of classic uncharacteristically charming school lunch was approaching, but demoralized that it will feel like eons have passed since they’d slurped that last bit of milk out of their cereal that morning. Walking towards the door, my eyes are fixated on the clock, imagining its hands at “11:45 am” but that thought vanishes as the once beautiful position of “11:45 am” faded hastily to “10:05 am”.

Rumbling and bumbling, students took their seats with absolute exhaustion because the holy time of food would arrive no sooner than “11:45 am”. The teacher, admiring the enthusiasm from the students, sips coffee and finishes a packet of Oreo Thins. I am practically drooling as the smell of fresh coffee runs through each row of tables in the classroom.

10:24 AM

Exactly fourteen minutes and thirty-five seconds pass since the last beautiful thought of eating runs through my mind. I cannot bear the silence between questions and last-minute note-taking, for my stomach growls louder by the second. I feel like I am to faint this very moment and the energy to listen feels insurmountable. No one in their right mind is paying attention to what is happening in this moment of the Civil War or the intonation of a trumpet; it is against the laws under Article: “hungry teenage children who aren’t actually that hungry but feel the need to present themselves as a child on the brink of starvation or better…death”.

10:55 AM

This is wrong, “The clocks must’ve been turned back recently, which is really odd because it isn’t the right time of year for that,” I say to myself. Questioning the mere existence of one or two hours being shifted, my attention pops as some random kid comes asking what I thought about so-and-so and so-and-so becoming King and Queen. I don’t care; I’ve bigger problems than high school relationships. I glance at the clock, nearly sweating just looking at it. The rumbling of peak high school nonsense comes to a sudden halt as my stomach performs a musical, crying out in desperation. I forget what the clock even says, and everything is dimming. The stimulation of warm scented air from the coffee to the piercing churn in my stomach, to even how dry everything feels, kills me. Retaining just an ounce of attention to just sit in a chair, seems almost impossible. As I read the clock, its hands leave an afterimage in my mind as I droop down into my notebook. “Tick…tick…tick”.

11:22 AM

Nothing feels normal, for this is beyond human limits. It is imprisonment of the mind to let this go on for so long. Barely able to stand, I walk towards the teacher who’s brewing another cup of coffee, and ask in my own form of english to use the bathroom for it will cure my everlasting misery and torture. They nod, probably because they understand how uninteresting anything but food sounds at this time of day, and I make my way to the bathroom…ever…so…slowly. Taking my sweet time to cover about ten meters of hallway, I look at the bell. That was the wrong thing to do, for the piercing sound of relief was too good to be true. In this case, time felt uneven, with moments of viscosity as the minute hand moved with such ease towards the 12, and others where the second hand was actually dragging behind the hour hand.

11:23 AM

I arrive at the sink, and slowly but surely, I start washing away any patience I had towards school. A blurred figure approaches the mirror almost like a silhouette (probably because the mirror is filled with graffiti). “Hey” he says, which is basically the pinnacle of conversation in the boys bathroom. I don’t make eye contact with the silhouette of a figure. I reply in what only feels most appropriate… “Hey”. As I make my way out of the bathroom the clocks glare at me. Ticking in great struts. The perfect beat of the second hand grows louder and more bleak by every step. Almost as if they are communicating with me.

11:35 AM

This is it! I had spent the last ten minutes tapping my pencil on my notebook continuously. This is the climax of the day! Everyone slowly pushes their books to the side, pulling out their phone and losing complete interest in anything that will happen in the last ten minutes.

“How abo…ominoes?”

“Le…o to…C’ Donalds”

“HAHAHA”

“Where…ou going…unch?”

“You just like – literally…”

My heart starts racing in pure enthusiasm for the little time left in the class period, and the ground starts vibrating vigorously as people push out of chairs. The scent of lunch is a pandemic flooding the halls. The teachers gather at the front of classrooms to halt any temptations of sprinting to the cafeteria. The clashing of keys bombards the small mumbling of classmates, for the sound brings hot food to the forefront and captivates my mind.

11:40 AM

The bell slowly starts to spring back and forth. And the clocks crack as the sound of the bell smashes through their casings, or perhaps I defeated the greatest villain of them all, my impatience. The halls start bursting into chaos, and I race to my car. I make my way to my escape, but no one is there….no one is showing up. I turn the car on and sit in silence; the seatbelt alarm goes off in the absence of chatter. “Tick…Tick…Tock”.

12:05 PM

Twenty minutes pass, and lunch is over in a blink of an eye. “Where did the time go?” I said under my breath. Whatever I ate doesn’t even leave an aftertaste, a distant memory. memory.