Test

• Jennifer Morris, Grade 12
• Short Story
• 2008

As you reach for the iron door know your palms start to sweat and your heart begins to pulsate
in your throat. Step by step your knee’s weaken and feel like you are about to collapse onto the ground. Step by step you can feel people’s eyes watching you digging holes deeper into the back of your neck; finally, you reach the seat labeled with your name. Slowly you begin to lower your body into the hard, under-sized plastic seat. Once you have been addressed you begin to read, but it’s hard to concentrate with the scratching of everyone’s pens. You glance around as the addressee’s march up and down the isles like soldiers on duties, making loud noises with each step they take. The clock ticks as each second passes, your heart begins to beat at the same time as the clock, together they make such a loud noise you begin to wonder why no one else can hear it. Trying to clutch on to the answer you desperately know but can not think of gives you horrifying cramps in your stomach. Glancing around the room you catch eye contact with his sky blue dazzling eyes, like a trance you can not remove your eyes from his. Clonk, clonk, clonk and you hear someone clearing their throat like a chunk of food has been stuck in their esophagus, not daring to look at the stern face you quickly swivel back to your position. As the soldier passes by, you take a quick glance back to him; he is still staring at you, but with a giant smile upon his perfect face. You feel your face heat up and your heart start racing faster than the clock. Stupid ancient soldier, you think to yourself and mutter a curse beneath your breath. Once again you feel the eyes peeling away the back of your neck. Horrified by the reading of the clock you attempt another question, picking up your pen after a thousand times of reading the pointless question you realize you have drawn hearts instead of letters. Once image appears into your mind, like the never forgotten sunset of after a fire lit day in the Blue Mountains, his face dances around your mind, with his eyes of a clear summer sky and his smile like the amazing stars on a summer’s night. His radiant skin which you want to touch with your finger tips just knowing how smooth it will feel, for him to embrace your body within his harms would be a dream come true. Why can’t he feel the way you do for me? That question never leaves your mind. Suddenly you awaken from your thoughts by the bell sounding, as you are addressed to leave, he bumps into you and smiles, giving you a gentle kiss on the forehead, and flustered you just smile and walk away. Once again another day is wasted by a test but for love wise, it was not.