In the Corner Classroom on the Second Floor
by Claire Elizabeth Braun
Eastern Washington University
Claire Elizabeth Braun is a psychology and creative writing student at Eastern Washington University in Cheney, Washington. Claire also works part-time as a preschool teacher, and her passion is working with children. She hopes to spread awareness for children's mental health by writing children's books that tackle complex issues in easy-to-understand and creative ways. Ever since she began writing stories at the age of 11, she has dreamed of being published. She is thrilled that her dream has come true!
First period AP English began promptly at 7:45 AM in the corner classroom on the second floor of Liberty High School. Twenty-seven teenagers sat at their desks, never late because they knew what would happen. What Mrs. Coleman would do to them was severe, some would say cruel, if they dared to arrive any later than it-should-be-illegal-to-get-teenagers-up-this-early in the morning. So they were seated as the bell rang, sounding its awful tune across a school of over 1,500 students.
Mrs. Coleman was speaking before the bell finished ringing. She asked for assignments, which Thatcher and Luna had already sitting on their desks, but the rest of the students had to dig for. She knew they were drawing out this time for as long as possible so they could study their vocabulary words for one, two, three seconds longer. But they would all pass, except for Henry, who was stoned, and Violetta, who was making out with her boyfriend in his car, a mere sixty feet from the window to Mrs. Coleman’s classroom.
They let everybody into AP classes, literally everybody; the cheerleaders, the ESLs, the Mormons, the debate team, and everybody in between. The school counselors, Mr. Benson included, knew this and he knew the AP teachers knew this because he’d told them repeatedly before the start of every school year: “There are no minimum requirements to take AP classes,” he would say, “No required testing, no GPA. Only a student’s desire to take the class, and a willingness to be challenged.”
The problem with her students wouldn’t exist if it was the student’s choice, however. Mrs. Coleman knew exactly which students’ parents had forcibly enrolled them in one, two, or six AP classes at registration. Each student had high expectations on their shoulders, and each student was crumbling under the weight of those expectations. Take Violetta, for example, who was a cheerleader, always wearing the uniform of it-should-be-illegal-to-sexualize-minors-in-this-way short skirts and tank tops to every class every day. Her overbearing parents had forced her into every AP class they could, expecting her to be a lawyer or a doctor or a mathematician, just like them. And here she was, rebelling where she could, in the car of a college kid who was drunk before breakfast, partially undressed before breakfast, the school police officer walking toward them, shaking her head.
Officer Gonzales had been positioned at Liberty High school with a baton, pepper spray, and a gun two years ago. She’d been a response to the string of mass shootings perpetrated by mentally ill teenagers who got access to their parents’ stash because it wasn’t properly locked away. Since her first day, she had stopped a total of zero mass shootings, but had busted fifty-three teens having sex in their cars, twelve Karens (haircuts included) who thought they knew better than the trained professionals tasked with educating their children, and twenty-four students smoking weed in the bathrooms. And there she was, walking toward her fifty-fourth pair of teens partially undressed, humping, their tongues shoved down each others’ throats. She figured the guy wasn’t a student there, given his out-of-state license plate and giant eagle tattoo across his bare back. And by the stench of beer escaping with moans through an open front window, she figured she would be making an arrest in the next ten minutes.
“Get to class.” Officer Gonzales made the order while pulling out her handcuffs. Violetta sighed, rolled her eyes, and marched towards the school building. She did- well, it wasn’t a walk of shame, necessarily- a walk of disappointment through the front doors, up one flight of stairs, and towards the corner classroom where her first period was. Before entering the room, she took a moment to straighten her skirt, tighten the purple scrunchie in her hair, and put on a fresh layer of lipstick. She confidently opened the door, knowing full well how Mrs. Coleman felt about students being late, and plopped into her seat in the back row. Although Mrs. Coleman hadn’t stopped speaking, several students turned to look at the late entry, some with terror in their eyes, some with respect.
“What’s she talking about?” Violetta asked the kid sitting next to her, a Mormon boy named Wyatt. This was another no-no, something the frightened teenager who was assigned to sit next to the prettiest cheerleader at Liberty High School knew full well. Wyatt was torn; his adrenaline was still high from the teacher screaming at them in seminary earlier that morning, but she was gorgeous, the way her hair was curled and her lipstick was a little smudged in the corner. Against all better judgment, he leaned over to whisper that she’d nearly missed the entire vocabulary test when a ruler smacked across his desk and sent his adrenaline to their highest levels yet that day.
Adrenaline, or Epinephrine, as its friends called it, has done a lot of work in the body of Wyatt Franklin Young since his birth approximately fifteen years, eight months, thirteen days, two hours, twenty minutes, and four seconds ago. Especially this morning, when brain signals caused Epinephrine, or Epi, as its friends called it, to shoot throughout the bloodstream no fewer than four times; first, when Wyatt Franklin Young awoke from a nightmare about a meeting with his bishop; second, when Wyatt Franklin Young overslept and was yelled at by his mother; third, when Wyatt Franklin Young was harshly reprimanded by his teacher in seminary; and finally, in this moment, as a ruler smacked down on the desk of Wyatt Franklin Young approximately seven minutes and twenty-seven seconds into first period on Tuesday, November 2nd, 202X.
The entire class heard, or more accurately felt, the ruler as Mrs. Coleman sent it downward with a thundering thwack! Over her seventeen years of teaching AP English, Mrs. Coleman had never failed to engender an automatic flinch and overwhelming panic into each one of her students when they heard that particular sound echoing around the thin walls of Liberty High School. At this moment, the startle reaction took place not only for the students within the classroom, but for each of Mrs. Coleman’s AP English students within school building, the four who currently had classes in the freezing portables directly adjacent to the school building, the Liberty High school seniors who were scattered throughout the campus, and Miss Lee, the only one of Mrs. Coleman’s AP English students to ever return to the high school to teach. Even though sound cannot travel through so many layers of drywall and brick, the ruler smacking upon the desk reverberated down the spines of each child and adult in the building and made the few birds that hadn’t fled to Mexico for the winter scatter in wild panic from the top of the school building.
“Violetta Romano.” Mrs. Coleman’s voice came out in a harsh, throaty whisper. The only other sounds came from the rattling heater and Sophie Meyer, a senior, crying in the next classroom over. Anger rolled off the veteran teacher in waves, smacking nearby students in the face with equal force to the ruler that had, only moments before, obliterated every molecule of air between her hand and the desk. Mrs. Coleman sighed, then clicked her tongue three times; this caused the automatic reaction of eye bulging and breath holding for every student in the classroom. “You understand my expectations and the consequences when those expectations are unmet. Please, go stand in the hallway and I will be out to speak with you once the vocabulary test is completed.”
Violetta’s face was red, but she felt no shame. Shame was an emotion that could only be brought on by her parents, not by any other figure of authority. However, every square millimeter of her pale skin, including everything that was easily visible due to her cheerleader uniform, instantly flushed red, and she desperately tried to cover skin with skin as she stood from her desk. The warm breath of her teacher briefly hit her and caused sweat to form on her nose, and Violetta marched through the classroom door, letting it slam behind her. She hoped the other students in the class didn’t notice her tomato skin, but instead the satisfied smirk that graced her glossy red lips as she walked out. This was what Violetta wanted, wasn’t it?
“Indubitably.” The soft sound of pencils scribbling furiously on paper followed Mrs. Coleman’s strained voice reading from the list of vocab. “Indubitably. Apocryphal.” Harlow’s nose squeaked due to the cold she’d contracted two days ago, and the sound briefly distracted several students who had to intensely refocus on their papers. “Apocryphal. Esoteric.” Mrs. Coleman cleared her throat, and the class collectively froze, but she continued with the list. “Esoteric. Decamp. Decamp.” She set the small vocabulary book on the table in front of her. “Now class, please pass your quizzes to the right side of each row and I will be by to collect them.” As she walked between the windows and the students, she gave further instructions. “Take out your copies of The Scarlet Letter and review last night’s reading. Be prepared to discuss. I will return shortly.” She placed her stack of papers on her desk and quickly exited through the nearby door.
As the door closed, shuffling backpacks and whispers mingled in the corner classroom on the second floor. For, you see, nobody in the classroom was quite sure what would happen to Violetta once Mrs. Coleman exited the room to speak to her. In fact, nobody in the school knew how Mrs. Coleman dealt with students who “failed to meet her expectations,” except for the few unlucky students who had learned the hard way. There were, however, innumerable rumors, stories and tales that had been passed around the lunchroom, from upperclassmen to lowerclassmen, over the generations of students that had entered Mrs. Coleman’s classroom. These stories were whispered between the aisles as the students opened their books, and continued as they stared uncomprehendingly at the words on the pages they were supposed to be reviewing. One such rumor that Jordyn was whispering to Willis was that of Franklin Allen, or Frederick Ellis, or Francisco Eli, depending on who was telling the story and how much they actually cared about the details. Franklin-Frederick-Francisco had been a freshman, or a senior, or a nineteen-year-old held back two years, but the story always took place in the corner classroom, the only classroom the current student body knew Mrs. Coleman had ever taught in. He was either whispering to a cute girl or vaping, but he was always a bad boy and always in a leather jacket and sunglasses. Like she occasionally does when a student is being rowdy in her class, Mrs. Coleman sent Franklin-Frederick-Francisco into the hallway, spoke with him there, and then returned to class alone to complete the lesson. The rumor-teller always pauses dramatically at this point before revealing that Franklin-Frederick-Francisco was never seen again after Mrs. Coleman spoke to him. Nobody saw him in school for the rest of the day, week, or year, his friends never heard anything, and if a teacher or counselor or school police officer was ever asked about the missing student, they would frown, shake their head, and say they couldn’t speak about the matter. Naturally, everyone assumed she’d done something to him, that Mrs. Coleman, the teacher every student knew to fear, had killed Franklin-Frederick-Francisco, and that the entire staff of Liberty High school was covering up for her misdeeds. Willis gasped at this point and turned to see if Sawyer was listening, but Sawyer, who sat in the front row, closest to the clock, was focused on tallying the minutes Mrs. Coleman and Violetta were in the hallway on a scrap piece of paper. He counted eight and a half before the door creaked open again, and Mrs. Coleman reentered, but Violetta did not.
The students all discreetly looked at each other as Mrs. Coleman resumed her position in the front of the class, each too afraid to ask, each dying from their curiosity. Finally Ginny, Violetta’s more bookish friend from the cheer team, sheepishly raised her hand, barely making it parallel with her ear. “Yes, Ginny? Do you have a question about how Hawthorne used imagery to convey the stigma felt by Hester?” Mrs. Coleman’s eyebrows were raised. “No, um, sorry. I have an urgent note from Coach Vincent that Violetta needs to see. Can I go give it to-” Ginny’s quiet squeaking words were halted when Mrs. Coleman shook her head and clicked her tongue. One, two- “It can wait until after class. And if Violetta wants to tell any of you where she went, she will.”
In a way, that phrasing was a relief to Ginny, Matteo, and Jordyn, each of whom were close with Violetta and each of whom had just been assured that they would, indeed, speak to her later in the day. All three settled further into their seats, trying to refocus on the imagery in The Scarlet Letter, so as to have an answer when Mrs. Coleman inevitably called on their blank faces before the end of class. When the bell rang, and Mrs. Coleman released them, because the bell didn’t dismiss class, the teacher did, the trio moved in different directions, looking over the milling crowd of sweaty teenagers for a particular shade of platinum blonde with a purple scrunchie holding back just a little bit of hair.
But, where was Violetta? She hadn’t returned to the classroom, obviously. The college boy she had recently been getting intimate with was on his way to the police station, and his car was in the process of being towed. The bathrooms too were empty of this particular blonde cheerleader; two contained students trying to skip class and one contained a senior taking something illicit outside of the view of the hallway cameras. Oh yes, the cameras; surely Violetta can be found on the cameras. Let’s see… there she is! You can see her walk down the empty halls, finding her way to… the office? Oh? It seems she was sent for disciplinary action. But, no, this can’t be! She walked right up to a door and knocked, the door in question belonging to none other than the mental health counselor! The horror!
The door was knocked upon, gently, and moments later its handle was grasped tightly by the one who frequently opens and closes it, Mrs. Chang, the mental health counselor at Liberty High School. She had soft, well-moisturized hands, which the door greatly appreciated. “I’m available now, please, come have a seat,” Mrs. Chang said to a student the door hadn’t seen before; red-skinned, blonde-haired, skinny. She rather rudely shoulder-checked the door frame and sat on the couch, which was the door’s closest friend, and Mrs. Chang closed the door with the same firm grasp she opened it with. “Mrs. Coleman sent me,” the girl said, her voice choked with tears the door was regularly witness to. Many students came to Mrs. Chang and cried their hearts out; some even came already crying, like this girl here. Like all those times before, Mrs. Chang sat in her desk chair, the door’s other closest friend, smiled, and said, “Can you tell me what happened?”
The couch was at its breaking point. It was old, stained, sun-damaged, and had sat in that little beige room for almost a decade. It had been thrifted before coming to live in the office of the mental health counselor, and before that it had a rough life in the home of a elderly man who died on its cushions. Now, after years and years of being cried on, puked on, spilled on, it was ready to throw a tantrum. There was only so much a couch could take, and this was the cheerleader that broke the sofa’s back. Her butt was planted on its left cushion, right in the groove where countless teenagers had planted their own smelly butts before her. It felt the tears- slow at first, then coming down like pouring rain- hitting its worn-out fabric again and again. The couch felt like crying itself, but it unfortunately could not, because it did not have eyes to cry from, nor glands to create tears. So, it let out a perilous groan, and snapped beneath the new butt that landed on it.
“Sorry, this couch is so old.” Mrs. Chang was embarrassed, but excited at the prospect of getting a new couch; the school surely couldn’t ignore a broken sofa in her office. Well, they would try, but it would look bad when parents came in, and the last thing anybody in charge at the school wanted was to look bad. “Come sit on the chair, Violetta. I hear what you’re saying. Your parents are making your life stressful, and you don’t know how to tell them that. If you’re comfortable, would you be willing to come see me again? I can help you plan out what to say to them. If you want me to, we could even invite them in and you could speak to them with me present for support.” Their eyes both moved to the broken couch. “Once I get a new sofa, that is.” Violetta nodded, grabbed another tissue, and blew her running nose. “I think that would be good.”
Violetta said goodbye to the school staff member she’d never bothered to learn the name of until now, Mrs. Chang. The bell had rung a few moments ago, and the hallways were filled with hundreds of students trying to get from one end of the building to the other in the 5 minute time period the school gave them. Violetta started walking to her next class, Spanish with Senorita Hernandez, when she collided with a familiar girl in a cheerleader’s uniform. Ginny hugged Violetta with every ounce of strength she possessed in her skinny 5’2’’ frame. “You’re alive!” she exclaimed. “We were worried she’d done something to you!” “Who, Mrs. Coleman?” Violetta asked, voice still hoarse from crying. Then she got an idea in her little blonde head. She locked arms with Ginny as they moved towards second period. “Oh, it was horrible! You’ll never believe what she said-”
Interview with the Author
1. What inspired you to write this piece? What was your thought process throughout?
My initial inspiration to write this story happened during a fiction workshop. We were discussing omniscient third-person narrators and, when given time to write, this story began to pour out of me. Many of the details and characters come from my own public high school experience. I was very involved in AP classes and the culture that surrounded them, and I was fascinated by the wide variety of students who participated in these classes, either by choice or because they were pressured to do so. Jumping through the psyches of the different characters allowed me to practice unique character voice, including the voices of inanimate objects and groups of people.
2. What do you hope readers will take away from your piece? What effects do you want the piece to have on the person, community, or society?
I love bringing people joy, so I hope my story causes readers to laugh, giggle, guffaw, or snort while reading it. I also hope people feel seen, whether they are current high school students or previously struggled through AP classes and parental expectations.
3. What is your favorite piece of fiction (short story, novel, flash fiction, etc.) that you’ve ever read? Why?
My favorite pieces of fiction are Sabaa Tahir's An Ember in the Ashes and its sequels. I really enjoyed how these fantasy books tackled difficult topics like trauma, especially how being traumatized and being one who traumatizes is juxtaposed by the main characters.
4. If you plan on continuing to write, what are some goals/plans you may have for your future?
I plan to continue writing in school, my profession, and for fun. I currently enjoy creating picture books about the children in my classroom for them to enjoy, as well as writing journal entries that track the children's development, often using a narrative format. My hope is to write children’s books about mental illness to reduce stigma at an early age and to allow children with mental illnesses to see themselves in the stories they read. Outside of reading, I plan to attend graduate school and become a children’s counselor.