String of Fate

Chapter Four

"Sir, are you twenty-four?" A female student queried. I looked up from my textbook and saw Katie Davies, my top student, looking at me with a little bit of uncertainty on her face.

"Yes." I told her, smiling. Then, I had an idea. "Katie, would you mind bringing your book up here and writing out your solution on the board so I can see if we use the same method?"

She nodded, standing up and bringing her book to the front of the class. I held the pen out to her and she took it to write her workings on the board under where I had written the equation for the class to copy.

2x + 18

2x + 18

2x

2x

x

x

=

=

=

=

=

=

6 + 60

66

66 – 18

48

48 ÷ 2

24

She turned and gave the pen back to me. I smiled at her and tried being friendly but I couldn't help but think that she was scared of me. "Thank you, Katie. That is correct. You can sit back down now."

She quickly headed back to her desk and seemed to try and hide in her seat. She clearly did not like being the centre of attention and I kind of hated that I had made her stand in front of the class. I looked at the class and decided that I just needed to get on with it. "Right, class, write this one down as an example, however, it will be the answer to section A question 6, which is one of the sections that you guys are going to be doing now. Before I let you guys run away with this, we have three lessons of this and you will be completing sections A through to I by the end of this section of lessons. Today you guys are going to be doing A through to C, and what isn't completed by the end of this lesson will need to be handed in on Monday with the other sections completed. Everyone got that?"

There was a murmur of general agreement from the class so I closed my textbook and sat down at my desk. The class fell quiet as they began to work through the questions that I had set them, the only sounds coming from their pens scratching the paper. I decided that I could mark some homework while they were busy but I was becoming a little annoyed with the lack of sounds, so, I reached over and switched on the radio that I kept on my desk to the local radio station, making sure that it wasn't too loud to be more than background noise. It meant that the lesson passed very quickly for both me and the students.

It was Friday morning that I was surprised – a thread appeared on my finger. A large part of me thought that it was a hallucination just because I had never had one before. I was half tempted to ditch the classes today and follow it, but that would not be fair on the students. The part of me that cared about the students getting their education argued and won. I ended up going to school like the responsible human being that I was.

Throughout the day, I did keep getting distracted by the string on my finger but it wasn't too difficult to teach the students. I had been doing it for a couple of years now at least, so, I had had some practice in teaching while I was distracted. I couldn't wait until the day was over so I could follow the string. It was the last lesson of the day that surprised me. When the last class entered, I noticed that my string moved and I looked up as Katie sat down, her hand showing the bright red string. This lesson was going to be more difficult that the rest of the lessons today had been. The person at the end of my string was going to be sitting in the same room of me. If that wasn't a distraction, I didn't know what could be.