February 2024 Flash Lit 4 (second try) - Escape

Mr. Johnson stood behind the long counter with the sink in it.  The whiteboards behind him were covered in formulas and molecular diagrams in which Teresa had not the slightest interest.  The fifty five minute class period of chemistry might as well be fifty five to life in prison, as far as she was concerned.

Someone had told her that the architect who had drawn the plans for her high school had gone on to a career designing prisons.  Teresa believed it.  Whoever it had been liked cinder blocks a lot and windows not at all.  She wanted out.

 

Her eyes drifted across the periodic table on the wall, along the lab counters on the sides of the room, glimpsed an unfortunate double-bonded oxygen atom on the edge of some compound on the board, and came to rest on Mr. Johnson’s bicep.

 

Teresa had never really looked at Mr. Johnson before.  He was, like thirty, which was old.  But the bicep curved out nicely from the sleeve of his polo shirt.  His skin was dark brown and very smooth.

 

Some suck-up asked Mr. Johnson a question and he turned to answer, presenting his back to Teresa’s side of the class.  Other parts of Mr. Johnson also curved nicely.

 

Teresa escaped form chemistry into an appreciation of anatomy.