[ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 ]	She had no intention of being a teacher; when she was an ambitious undergrad, determined to become the next Virginia Woolfe, minus the suicide of course. But she needed something steady, so she got her education degree, and five years later, she’s still teaching at this suburban middle school. The kids trickled in, two or three at a time, and as Mrs. Malarkey wrote the date on the board. The kids used to be kids, innocent 12 and 13 year olds, only caring about after school activities, MTV and reading Seventeen or Rolling Stone. But the past few years, the faces and interests had changed. They grew up too fast, their innocence robbed from them like a heat-packing mugger. There was Lisa who got pregnant and shipped off to some boarding school for pregnant teenagers. There was Tommy, whose pastimes included shoving kids heads in the toilets and burning things on the playground, that is, when he wasn’t taking his bipolar medication. There was Tina, who played the violin beautifully, but whose parents were determined to groom her for Julliard, and made her practice until her fingers bled, until violin wasn’t a pleasure anymore, it was pressure. She was only 12 for Christ sake. Last to walk in, as usual, were Elena and Rob, the non-conformists of the school. She suspected them to be involved with drugs and alcohol, and occasionally she could smell tobacco on their clothes. But she wasn’t comfortable getting involved. She knew they had a hard time in this suburban environment, getting picked on by the other kids for being from the other side of the tracks. But she admired them for dressing how they pleased, acting how they pleased, no matter what the other kids said. “Okay class,” Mrs. Malarkey said after the pledge of allegiance. “How did the homework go?” She didn’t know why she asked these things. No one ever answered one way or the other. They just sat there, doodling on their notebooks, or scratching their heads or slyly whispering to their neighbor, like Mrs. Malarkey couldn’t see them. “Okay, well what did you think of the short story?” “I didn’t get it.” Jenny said, twirling her white blond hair around her finger. “What didn’t you get?”