"An Hour of Math"

Principal Flayer was the most feared person in the entire district.

She was a bony woman with long, skinny fingers and thin lips that were always twisted into a sneer or a frown. Other women her age had smile lines; Principal Flayer had scowl lines.

No matter what the weather, Principal Flayer always wore a wool skirt and a stiff blouse that went all the way up to her chin. The skirts were sometimes institutional grey—never charcoal--or bleak neutral, but the blouse was always white.

Nobody ever called her by her first name. She made the teachers feel like disobedient students, and the superintendent was so afraid of her that he sometimes hid in his office when it was time to inspect Principal Flayer’s school.

The fifth graders—who were the oldest kids at the school and therefore knew everything about it—were convinced that she wasn’t human. Vampire had been ruled out since Principal Flayer had no fear of the sun, but it was still extremely possible that she was a witch or an evil alien.

Some fifth graders had pointed out that witches rode brooms, and Principal Flayer always came to school in a bile green car that shuddered and wheezed and spat out foul smelling clouds of black smoke. But that was exactly the kind of thing a witch who wanted to take over a school and bake all the kids into pies would do.

On the wall of Principal Flayer’s office was a little grey box that nobody—not even the janitor—had ever seen the inside of. It was always locked, and Principal Flayer kept the only key on her wrist.

It was a sunny Wednesday—too far from last weekend and not close enough to Friday. The students were eating in their lunchroom, and the teacher’s were eating in theirs.

It was the art teacher’s birthday. There were trays of food and a cake shaped like a palette. The teachers were laughing and offering each other salad and small sandwiches and pieces of cake.

Principal Flayer wasn’t participating.

Every day she had half a turkey sandwich. The sandwich was always one slice of meat and one leaf of lettuce on white bread with neither mustard nor mayonnaise.

She felt that birthday cakes were frivolous, but she allowed it anyway. None of the teachers were brave enough to complain about anything she did, but Principal Flayer liked to think of herself as a generous person. A silly little cake didn’t cost the school anything, and everyone knew who they could thank for being allowed their distracting dessert.

Principal Flayer would’ve preferred to eat lunch at her desk, but School Unity was important. Eating alone would’ve looked elitist, as if she thought she was better than the rest of the faculty.

With Principal Flayer there, no one wanted to mention how short lunch was or how tired they were. No one dared to speak of a troublesome student or a bad parent. Every so often someone would start to laugh and stop as soon as she saw Principal Flayer’s grim face.

But lunch was finally over, and the teachers dutifully, silently threw out their trash and went to get their students.

Principal Flayer felt that lunch was too long. Fifteen minutes was a perfectly adequate amount of time to eat if one was sensible and didn’t waste a lot of time gossiping and socializing.

The school board disagreed, and Principal Flayer simply didn’t have enough time to waste on such things. Bickering with people like that—it was not a good use of time at all.

Her thin nose wrinkled. Someone—or even more than one someone—smelled of cigarettes.

Principal Flayer strongly disapproved of smoking. Not only was it a bad example to the children, it was a waste of five minutes that could be spent on lesson plans or filling out necessary paperwork.

She made a note to mention this at the next faculty meeting.

Principal Flayer always made notes in her head, never on paper. Paper should never be wasted, and pens were carefully rationed—two per month—and it was up to her to set the example.

She allowed herself one pen per month. Even with the cheapest brand she could sometime make that pen last two months, possibly two and half if she was frugal.

No one else seemed to have the same appreciation of thriftiness.

Principal Flayer returned to her office and unlocked the little grey box.

Inside were three buttons, colored and order like a stop light.

She looked at the school clock—12:32—and pushed the red button with her too-long index finger.

Every day after lunch, from 12:30-1:30, Ms. Klein’s class did math. For the past two weeks it’d been fractions—denominators, numerators, GCF, and LCD. And over those two weeks, the students had reached the conclusion that that was nine days too long to spend on fractions.

Today they were going to be adding fractions. The class squirmed and tried not to groan—someone’s sister in 5th grade said Principal Flayer could hear everything—as Ms. Klein put six problems on the board.

Not a single hand went up when Ms. Klein asked for volunteers (nobody said Principal Flayer could see everything). The students tried to shrink themselves down or turn invisible when Ms. Klein said she’d just have to call on people.

That was when Timmy’s hand went up. Timmy always got good grades and never lost his homework and was obviously completely in love with the teacher.

“Thank you, Timmy,” said Ms. Klein—more proof. “Anyone else?”

Since no one else wanted to marry her, five unwilling volunteers joined Timmy. They all picked up a piece of chalk and went to work.

As Ms. Klein looked at their answers—Timmy naturally got his right—the class noticed that the clock hadn’t move. Math was taking forever—those bugs that only lived for one day would be dead by the time the minute hand got to the eight. And that was assuming the minute hand was actually moving. Most of the class wasn’t willing to make that assumption.

None of the clocks had a second hand. Principal Flayer said they were an Unnecessary Impediment to the Learning Process. You didn’t even get the satisfaction of watching one slow, boring minute tick tick tick to the next one.

Ms. Klein was old—none of the students could believe they’d ever be as old as ten—but not as old as some of the other teachers. She was pretty (for a teacher) and always smiled, but when she glanced up at the clock during that math period, a brief, angry expression flickered over her face.

Only the most observant children noticed, and even they weren’t paying much attention to anything.

A few kids twisted in their desks, not really trying to hide it, as they looked at the clock. Several of them were convinced that the big hand had gone backwards. There was no possible way that it was still—but you couldn’t really be sure. Fractions were even more boring than times tables.
As Ms. Klein passed out the worksheets, the little ring with the small clear stone sparkled. A lot of the girls had been talking and whispering about it ever since it appeared. They seemed to think it meant something and laughed at anybody who asked what.

The boys figured it was just some dumb girl thing, although there was some discussion about whether Ms. Klein counted as a girl. There were some who felt that, if you weren’t a boy, there was really only one other option. Others argued that your mom wasn’t a girl, and Ms. Klein was sort of a like a mom.

The main supporter of the “sort of like a mom” argument was Darrin. In first grade he’d cried when he fell off the swings and was most likely a sissy. You couldn’t really take anything someone who was probably a sissy said.

An hour was too long for anything except recess, and this had to be the longest hour of math in the history of the universe.

It was just another sign that maybe the adults were right, and life actually wasn’t fair. If the world was fair, no one would have to spend this much time on 5/16 + ¼. And there’d at least be something good to look at out the window, and Saturdays would last longer than anything.

Principal Flayer got up from her desk and, after looking at the school clock again, went to the little box on the wall.

She pressed the green button, and time started again.