The Phone Rings

I am simultaneously working on my Social Security paper and an English poster about the color green, so I ignore it.

Shelby answers, then comes over to my room.

"Tea, phone."

"Okay, who is it?"

"I dunno." Her eyes slide shiftily back and forth. "It sounds like a guy."

I roll my eyes and accept the phone, expecting it to be an overtired female whose voice she didn't recognize.

"Hello?" I say.

"Uhhh, hi," says the voice on the phone. Shockingly enough, it actually sounds male.

"Who is this?" I ask.

"Stanley," he replies. Stanley was in Gretchie's and my spanish class in eighth grade. He sat in front of me, and he left his gym shirt on under his t-shirt so you could see the writing through the back, and he smelled as if he didn't use deodorant. I haven't noticed a stench this year, but I had told him we were working on the same topic, and I'd gone through his outline with him after Mrs. Hirten gave him some horrific score to explain what he'd been doing wrong.

The call lasts about thirty seconds, in which I say, yes, writing a paragraph about the changing life expectancy since 1935 is absofreakinglutely fine and he says okay then, I'll see you in school on Monday.

I hope he doesn't make a habit of it.