First Contact: August 29, 1999

The first day of school always makes me break into nervous sweat. I know that I’m older and more experienced than my students and that that should comfort me when I address them. It doesn’t.

All those faces, makeuped and zitted, staring with a mixture of apprehension and loathing, make me want to charge out of the classroom.  I want to run until I can't breathe anymore.  I want to collapse in the green grass of somebody's front yard and fall asleep with the sun on my face.

Joan was second on my roll sheet.

"Archem? Joan Archem?"

Silence.

"Archem?  Joan?"

One voice in the back.  One reedy, wasted. 

"Here."