On a Monday after a much too short of a weekend, students had to get back in their routines and go to a building they all dreaded. Whether you were a student or faculty, Mondays were truly the worst day of the week. Saturday and Sunday usually reigned supreme in rankings while Friday was close behind (maybe even tied with Sunday for some). For most people, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday felt awfully similar. The discrepancies between the three were minimal. Perhaps one of those days would be better than the other solely by coincidence, but it wouldn’t have any correlation to which day of the week it was. Monday was the sole outlier in terms of the feeling it gave.

Friday through Sunday all felt akin, same with Tuesday through Thursday. Monday was like a distant relative that always dampened the mood at family gatherings. Whenever life and eccentricity were in the air, Monday would always turn the mood sour. It’s not Monday’s fault, it's in its nature to act as such. One of the days of the week needed to be the bridge from the lovely weekend to the unpleasant weekdays and Monday drew the short stick. Friday takes on a similar role, but it looks much more friendly since it leads to weekend paradise contrasted with work week tedium.

Chad Nosmith, a sophomore at Manha high school was experiencing this phenomenon known as a Monday. This Monday wasn’t like those that came before. For Chad, Mondays didn’t hold the same feelings of dread that it did for other people. He looked forward to Mondays because it meant that he could continue his schedule of going to school for five days and then having a two day weekend. The week day’s repetitiveness fit perfectly into what he looked for in life.

The reason why he was experiencing the phenomenon known as a “Monday” was less because of the day of the week and more for what this certain day entailed. It just so happened to co-align with a Monday.

On a cool fall day in the middle of September, Manha High School decided to implement some drastic schedule changes. The reason behind these schedule changes had been the historically low scores on recent standardized tests. The school board, along with the student council, decided it was time to implement changes. These changes mostly surrounded the idea of lessening “distractions” for students and getting them to spend more time in a learning environment.

What this equated to was the shortening of after school activities and the lengthening of the school day in conjunction. Instead of ending at two thirty, school would continue until three pm. All activities couldn’t start until school ended, but the school prohibited sports and activities from just lengthening their practices and meetings in response. How they were to enforce this was not specified.

With the school day being lengthened, the classes were naturally extended as well. The additional thirty minutes from the extension was evenly distributed between all periods throughout the day, including lunch.

Another change that extended the length of the classes was the shortening of passing times. The original time students had between classes was eight minutes. This was shrunk down to four. At face value this seemed like a small change but passing period times added up allowing for the classes to be lengthened substantially.

The other big change they made was how lunch was scheduled. Instead of having three different lunch groups eating lunch at separate times, there would be a single period for eating lunch. This change confused Chad a bit, he had always thought the block schedule lunch was more time efficient, but maybe the school knows better than him?

All of these drastic changes were made in the name of bettering the education of the students at Manha High School.

As Chad walked through the familiar hallways before the first period started, he could only think of the question he asked Rose the night after the pep rally.

Will this actually help?

Of course, he had phrased that question with some sarcasm surrounding it, but the question was still genuine. “Was this going to help?” was the question waiting to be answered by the entire student body. He didn’t like this all that much. Besides the obvious of messing with his precious schedule, he thought this felt like an experiment where the students were the lab rats. Chad felt metaphorical pokes and prods from the school board as they looked down from outside the cage. They were changing and perturbing the student’s environment, seeing if any correlations would appear in their academic performance.

He took a sharp right and strode forth down the math hallway as he had done many times. He was trying to be optimistic. So far his day had gone just as any other Monday would. He woke up, ate breakfast and then walked over to school with his little short cut through the woods. He now walked to his first class of the day that started at exactly 7:30.

Honestly, this schedule change could’ve been worse.

When Chad first heard of the schedule change last Friday, he feared that his entire world would flip upside down. Luckily, they ended up not changing any classes and just lengthened them. He felt that he could easily adjust to this.

Except…

Chad had joined the student council. The word “joined” didn’t do the situation justice. He thought “forcible enlisted” would better suit how he ended up enrolled.

Damn you Yuna.

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

Chad thought of his boss at the local library. There were many reasons why he ended up joining, but she seemed to be the biggest culprit. Although, maybe he wasn’t giving enough credit to his mother.

He shook his head.

Worrying about that stuff won’t do you any good now.

Without breaking his rhythmic steps, Chad entered his first period class, Calculus. The room was small and quite basic. There were approximately twenty desks for students and a chalkboard. The teacher’s desk was tucked in the corner. With no window and the aroma of chalk in the air, the room was quite stuffy.

Chad would always arrive at his first period five minutes before it started. He did this to avoid any unwanted or unexpected conversations with his peers. By the time class would start, he would often already be nose deep in his textbook.

Who the hell is that?

A sole girl was sitting in the desk closest to the door in the front row. She rested her face on one hand, squishing one of her cheeks. She held a small paperback book in her other hand. The girl wore black leggings and a gray skirt. Similar to what Rose wore at the pep rally last Friday, this girl wore a white dress shirt with a tie, although, her shirt was partially unbuttoned and her tie was completely loose. He thought this was odd. This school didn’t have any sort of uniforms or dress code, so why did she wear a dress shirt and tie? And why did it look as if she didn’t want to wear it?

“The hell are you looking at?”

“Hmm?”

Maybe Chad, being surprised that someone beat him to class, stared at her for too long. He should probably just apologize for it even though she was the one who did something unexpected. He always got to class at the same time, it was ingrained in him that no one else would be in the classroom except for him.

Before he could reply, the girl spoke again.

“Are you some sort of idiot or something?”

“Wha-”

“That was a redundant question, of course you’re an idiot, my head’s hurting.”

Is this girl for real?

No words came to his tongue. He couldn’t figure out how to respond to this girl. After a few seconds of silence, he simply turned away and went to his usual desk in the back of the classroom.

Best not to converse with someone like that. She seems like she’ll do something completely irrational at any second.

The girl turned her piercing dark blue eyes from him and back to her book. He sat directly four desks behind her. He wondered why he hadn’t noticed her before.

Of course I wouldn’t have noticed her.

Chad was pretty sure he wouldn’t recognize any of his classmates. Every Calculus class, he would immediately open his textbook and start reading the lesson. He didn’t bother paying attention to the teacher, he always learned better and faster when he taught himself. He would also do the homework in class while the teacher was lecturing and deemed this the most time efficient way of dealing with his homework.

He was about eighty percent done with today’s homework. His brain was a bit tired, so he decided to give himself a brain break and lifted his nose from the textbook. At some point the classroom had filled with students and Mr. Gredge was sitting on his desk well into a lesson. He was lecturing to the class, teaching them Calculus. That was what he was supposed to be doing, but it seemed more like ranting. Chad couldn’t judge since he just started listening, but no equations had been written on the chalkboard.

“Those damn pricks, they can’t just expect me to work longer for no extra pay? Who the hell do they think they are?”

Mr. Gredge was the head coach of the football team at Manha High School. He usually wore jeans and a polo with a small picture of the school’s mascot, Rhonny the Rhinoceros, on his pectoral. Chad was sure he was a drill sergeant in his past life or maybe it would make for a fitting back up career since he seemed so displeased with his current job. His face always had a tint of red to it, but it seemed to be a lot more red today with a vein bulging from his temple.

“The damn board has been getting on me about losing too many games as well. How the hell am I supposed to win more games if you cut all practices by thirty minutes!?!” Mr. Gredge sighed, bringing his hand to his face, “Between restructuring both practices and lessons, where am I going to find the time to enjoy myself?”

“Maybe start with not wasting ours.”

The reply came from the front of the class. He lifted his face from his palm, the vein on his temple was pulsing.

“What was that!” Mr. Gredge shouted.

Somebody from the front row stood up. It was that girl who had beat Chad to class. He couldn’t see her face, but her shoulder length black hair with dark blue highlights made her easy to remember.

Has she really been in this class the whole year? Am I just that oblivious?

Chad glanced around at the other students in the room. He might as well have been in the streets of New York City. None of their faces looked remotely familiar.

I guess I am just that oblivious.

The girl stood strong against the intensity Mr. Gredge was radiating. She was quite tall for a girl, taller than Rose Visca the student council president. She was maybe even taller than Chad, although it was hard to get an accurate judgment while seated.

“You heard me you big oaf,” she pointed directly at the teacher, “Maybe if you’d actually teach us something instead of bitchin’ all day, the school wouldn’t have made these changes.”

His face turned to a dark shade of crimson. Chad didn’t think it was possible, but his face had somehow managed to become even more red. It was as if every blood cell under his skin was about to burst.

“Ms. Hunt! Get your ass to detention!”

The girl with the last name Hunt grabbed the paperback she had been reading and began walking out the classroom.

“Probably will learn more there than from your dumbass! At least my headache will go away now.”

The girl left the room and just as abruptly as it started the argument came to a screeching halt. After the door slammed shut not a sound was made for another minute.

Well, that was an entertaining brain break. I’m so glad I didn’t converse with her earlier.

Chad went back to his homework, tuning out his surroundings again. He managed to finish it just as the bell rang to signify the end of class.