Too Distracted to Function

Trigonometry was Michaela’s least favorite subject. Her teacher, Mrs. Parveen, was at the front of the room, giving trigonometric functions her all; but the whole thing made Michaela sick! Sine, cosine, tangent. More like shitty, cringey, trash. At least she came by it honestly; her mother hated Trig too.

Michaela ran a hand up her face, trying to focus, but encountered the prick of a chin hair.

Ugh.The chin hair. A wiry, black beast running amok in Michaela’s family. If left unchecked, it lengthened, thickened, and curled into itself, like a dragon.

There were tweezers in her book bag, in her locker. Michaela raised her hand for a hall pass. Her teacher, in the throes of the Pythagorean Theorem, merely shook her head and continued.

With the pad of a thumb, Michaela tickled the black worm. She positioned her thumb and forefinger on either side of it, trying to get a good grip, but the hair was too short.

She imagined again the tweezers, resting snugly in the front pocket of her JanSport. In her mind’s eye, the tweezers were surrounded by a warm, inviting glow. In her mind’s ear, she heard an angelic hum.

A sharp pain yanked Michaela from the daydream. Her probing fingernails had rubbed her chin raw, and a bead of blood had formed just left of the cleft in her chin. Another family trait.

She continued to dig, confident she could excavate the stubborn hair. But that confidence waned as the lecture continued, and her fingers became slick.

Desperate, Michaela raised her hand again.

“Yes, Michaela?” Mrs. Parveen huffed.

Red lines dripped from Michaela’s fingertips, trailing down her bare arm. “May I have a hall pass?”

Mrs. Parveen’s face tinted green at the sight of blood. She nodded shakily, her mouth resembling a sine graph.