Karen hasn't actually done anything. She's pretty confident about this, because she's not really the sort of person who does things. Even when she does do things, she doesn't mix random chemicals and make a bunch of probably-not-toxic but still-very-messy fizz all over the chem lab countertop.
The teacher gives everyone at her table detention. It doesn't occur to her to protest this.
It occurs to someone else!
"That's not fair," he says indignantly, "you can't assume we were all involved just because we were all nearby!"
"You have a responsibility to make sure that your entire table is following the rules," says the teacher. "I don't care who made the initial bad decision, I care that no one at this table thought to stop it."
"That's no way to run a classroom! I can think of five things I could do to make a mess that big with less than a second's warning beforehand, are you giving us all detention for having bad reflexes?"
"Would you like to make your case to the assistant principal? Because there are twenty more students in this room who are trying to learn something right now."
As the first kid is drawing breath to continue his indignant tirade, his twin leans a little closer to him and murmurs, "Only five?"
"That's not the point," he mutters back, but declines to disrupt the classroom any further.
Karen calls her mom immediately after school to let her know that she has detention, and no it's not a big deal, and she'll explain it over dinner, and could Azalea please pick her up at five o'clock since she's not going to be able to take the bus home.
Detention is in the French classroom today. Karen's not in French. She's in Spanish, and she's pulling a C right now. If anything, this makes the game where you try to guess the meanings of the French words on the wall even more fun, because she knows enough English to guess, but she doesn't know enough French to make it easy.
She takes a stab at her math homework for about five minutes, and gets stuck in the middle of a proof. She watches the clock. The teacher steps out of the classroom at 4:52, and then 5:00 comes and goes, and for the next ten minutes Karen thinks about saying something, but it occurs to her that she may have just gotten the time wrong and maybe it actually ends at 5:30 or 6:00 or something.
She takes out a different math assignment, one that already has "25/40" circled in red pen at the top of the page, and begins writing a story in the margin about a world where humans have all been killed by some primate-specific pathogen and have uploaded their consciousnesses into raccoon brains.
"I'm bored," one of the twins announces for the fifth time since they all sat down.
"You have the tools to address this problem," says his brother, not looking up from whatever he's writing in his notebook. "Also, of the four of us you're the least entitled to complain."
"Oh, right, there's four of us." He glances at the back of the classroom, where the fourth kid has been quietly and forgettably sitting by himself with a book this whole time. "Hey, what's your name?"
"Nó ðú ymb mínes ne þearft líces feorme leng sorgian," he reads from the page.
Oh, man, she really doesn't want to talk to anyone right now, because she doesn't know these people and she isn't supposed to say anything to them, but they're failing to appreciate Beowulf.
She waits a slightly awkward amount of time, long enough for everyone to assume that there will be no further commentary.
"Beowulf is the story of the titular epic hero and king. It chronicles his defeat of the monster Grendel and of Grendel's mother, as a young man, and later the defeat of a dragon, after some fifty years of rule. It explores themes of heroism and competent leadership, family and honor, courage and wisdom, and is also mostly about ridiculous impossible monster battles that prompt the reader to question Beowulf's humanity."
She can't actually write anything while she's talking, but it's important to her to look very disinterested in the contents of this story, so she doesn't look up. Her raccoon story now has a bunch of meaningless squiggles in the middle.
"I hear we're going to study it in English this year. Looking forward to it."
She smiles down at her paper. This is an appropriate Beowulf classification.
Scribble scribble scribble not talking to people until the teacher comes back.
(The teacher does not come back.)
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