One time this happened...

My backpack weighed more heavily than my grades when I lugged it onto the bus. It was as if I'd spent all night cramming textbooks, but really I'd spent all night trying not to trip on my mom's antique vase.

My pencils always felt like they were judging me, lying scattered across the worn wood of my desk like tiny skeletons. The other kids laughed as they scribbled notes with their vibrant markers, but not me – I was stuck in the era of the humble pencil, desperately cling to the comfort of a No.

My fingers involuntarily curl around my worn geometry textbook, a reflex after twenty years, even though I haven't opened its faded cover since college. That morning I watched an art student, her hair a matted tangle of curls, as she quietly sketched an imperfect still life: a mangled paper towel roll balanced on a wobbly vase.

My backpack somehow manages to be both too big and the wrong shape for my torso – it dangles off my shoulder at an alarming angle as I try to navigate our school's entrance. I'm the only one wearing a bright orange windbreaker, and I can practically hear my classmates mocking me from across the courtyard.

My shoes squeaked in unison with the fluorescent lights as I trailed behind my classmates into Mr. Johnson's room.

My palms were a faint, clammy echo as I clutched the edges of my desk in the worn linoleum cafeteria, avoiding eye contact with the cafeteria worker's bemused expression as she asked about my tray selection for the umpteenth time today. My stomach churned with the unspoken fear that I'd somehow – accidentally, innocently – picked up the tray someone else had left, a fear so irrational it didn't need to be voiced.