It was 10:15 AM in Ms. Adam’s third grade class and so far the day had gone without incident. There’d been a scare earlier that morning, when Jon M.’s solution to 9 x 7 did not match the rest of the class, but Ms. Adam smoothed the situation out by assuring him that, yes, in some cases, 9 x 7 might equal 72. That was only for today, though. Tomorrow the answer would be 63. 

Math was one of the more dangerous subjects to teach, with its absolutes and hard facts. Almost every time she went over the homework answers, at least one student would begin to hyperventilate. And she couldn’t tell that student that their answer was entirely correct, because then the students with the actual answer would begin to grow anxious themselves. The method she used with Jon M. this morning was the best way she could figure for keeping everyone’s head a normal size and maintaining correct arithmetic. It worked most of the time. 

That was this morning during math, and now that they were on to history, Ms. Adam’s job became a lot easier. There were no wrong answers in history class. 

“Now,” Ms. Adam said. “Who was president during the Civil War?” 

Four of the six little hands shot up. Ms. Adam pretended to consider who to pick for a moment before pointing to Sammy. 

“Babe Lincoln,” Sammy said.

“Very good,” Ms. Adam said. “Abraham Lincoln was the president during the Civil War. Write that down, children.” 

Most of the children began to scribble illegibly into their notebooks, and Ms. Adam turned around to write the name on the board. When she turned back to the children, a hand was trembling in the air. 

“I thought. . .” Priscella began, and already her breathing was erratic. The crown of her little forehead had begun to swell, spreading her blonde bangs apart. “I thought. . . I thought Martin Roother was the president during the Civil War.” 

“Oh he was!” Ms. Adam said quickly. A few more children’s breathing picked up pace. “He. . . He was president during the second Civil War. So both you and Sammy are correct.” That quieted them down. Priscella’s head returned to its normal size, which was already a little bulbous to begin with. To maintain the peace, Ms. Adam shifted to a more open-ended question. Nothing ever went wrong with open-ended questions. 

“Who is your favorite president?” 

All six hands went up. Ali stood a little in his seat to make his hand higher than the rest. Jon B. tried a different method, flailing his arm from side to side in the air as if he were waving goodbye from the window of a departing train. A handful of them were saying “O, o, o” like monkeys. 

“Alright, how about we do this: everyone write down your favorite president and explain your answer. Then we will share as a class.” 

The children got busy with their work. Their noses were only a few inches from their papers as they wrote. Big or small, old or young, everyone liked to give their opinions on things, and Ms. Adam knew that the students were never more engaged with their work than when they were writing about themselves. 

Ms. Adam did a lap around the room while they wrote, peering over their shoulders as she walked by. Most of their handwriting was indecipherable to anyone except themselves, but she wasn’t allowed to give any pointers on how to improve it. Michael’s was so bad that he wrote with equal parts pictures and words, inserting little stick figures and hieroglyphs in place of words he couldn’t guess at how to spell. Right now, as she passed him, he was drawing a picture of some four-legged creature in the middle of a sentence. 

Please, please don’t let him think a dog was ever president, she prayed quietly to herself, for she knew that if he did, she wouldn’t be able to correct him. 

When all the students had put down their pencils, Ms. Adam returned to the front of the room and announced that Priscella would go first, though everyone would get their turn. Priscella held her notebook in front of her studiously. “My favorite president is Martin Roother because he was president during the second Civil War and died for our sins.” “Very good, Priscella!” Ms. Adam said. “Now, Jon B., can you tell us who your—” “I thought Jesus died for our sins?” It was Michael, not looking worried, just confused. Before she had a chance to answer, Ali chimed in: “No, Jesus was spared by Allah.” Sammy: “Who’s Allah?” 

Ali: “God.” 

Michael: “I thought Jesus was God?” 

Ms. Adam: “Alright children, I think we need to—” 

Jon M.: “No, Jesus is the son of God.” 

Priscella: “But Martin Roother—”

“Alright, quiet time,” Ms. Adam said, a little louder than she intended. The volume startled the children out of their discussion and struck their faces with a sudden fear. They weren’t used to getting yelled at, much less by their teacher. Teachers were supposed to be like nannies—infinitely kind and patient. 

Seeing her mistake, Ms. Adam immediately said, “Everything’s okay. Everyone take a deep breath in—” The children inhaled. “And a deep breath out.” Exhaled. She took a second to survey the class. The two Jons and Sammy looked worried, unaccustomed to this kind of drastic difference in facts presented to them. Ali, Michael, and Priscella were even worse, each of their breaths beating in and out of their mouths at different tempos. With each breath, the crown of their heads inflated a little, looking like light bulbs. Light bulbs in a classroom were never good. 

“Okay, we are going to keep breathing like this for a little bit. In. . . out. In. . . out. Put everything we were just talking about aside for a moment and focus on—” “But Allah spared Jesus, right?” Ali asked, oblivious to the breathing exercise. The only thing wider than his eyes was his forehead. “Why would God let Jesus die?” “Jesus is God!” Michael screamed. The exertion doubled the size of his head in an instant. With that second outburst, all of the other kids’ heads began expanding too. Six heads inflating like balloons, the kinds with rubber bands strangling the middle of them, so only the tops got bigger and bigger and bigger. Sammy was crying, Jon M. kept saying “Son of God,” and Ali and Michael were shouting back and forth at each other, somehow ignorant of the metamorphosis they were undergoing. Ms. Adam watched in horror, her tiny words drowned in the chaos, and felt like her own head was about to explode, which of course would have been ridiculous. Seeing no other option, she bolted to the wall and pulled the great big lever marked “EMERGENCIES ONLY”.

Too late. The first head exploded just as the sleeping gas began to drift lazily out of the vents above. It was Priscella. The last words she ever said with both halves of her mouth were “Martin Roother died—” and then she popped. Her head exploded in much the same way a bubble of paint explodes—covering everything around it with its contents the second it goes. Bits of brain and skull and plenty of blood flew through the air. A particularly large fragment of bone lodged into Michael’s lightbulb, and he popped without hesitation. Then Ali, who had been looking directly at Michael, popped of his own accord, the sheer shock of what he saw being too much. One by one the students’ heads exploded, a Rube Goldberg machine of trauma, blood, and brain matter, until only Sammy remained, blood splattering her on all sides, her forehead swelled to its limit but somehow not releasing. 

The sleeping gas was in the air now. Ms. Adam could detect it under the sharp smell of iron that now stained the room. It smelled of strawberries. She lowered herself to her seat as the gas started working on her senses, keeping her eyes on Sammy as she did so. Please, please let it work, she thought. Please let Sammy fall asleep. Ms. Adam’s eyelids were closing, not voluntarily, but like the curtains of a theater rushing to end a scene. She folded her arms in front of her and let her head fall onto them. Just before she lost consciousness, she heard one last pop!

Where she went wrong was not picking a side, the administration said. Most of the students were protestants, so what Ms. Adam’s should have done was agree that Jesus was only the son of God and deny Michael and Ali’s claims. The catholic and the muslim might have exploded, but offering the other children some certainty would have bought enough time for the gas to take effect.

It was too late now, of course. Six heads in one day—the worst incident to ever occur in the history of Bob Lee Elementary School. The parents were beside themselves. “There goes my little girl’s chances at college!” Priscella’s mother said indignantly. Naturally, they saw the whole incident as the result of Ms. Adam’s incompetence. She needed to be fired immediately. Unfortunately for them, teachers were not easy to come by in their state, and the best the school department could do was move Ms. Adam to a less important position. 

Remedial Class 1D, located in the second underground level of the elementary school, was where they assigned her—a damp, dreary place sandwiched between two supply closets. The floors were made of cement, not worthy of the linoleum that coated the upper levels, and her desk was only marginally bigger than the childrens’. It was where they sent the lost causes, the children without any potential and the teachers not sensitive enough to work with the gifted kids. 

Ms. Adam looked at her roster as she waited for the children to arrive. Twenty-five students. She’d never had a class so large before. 

The children came shuffling in, taking their seats assigned to them by Ms. Adam’s predecessor. They made all sorts of gurgling noises and groans to one another, and Ms. Adam couldn’t tell whether they were actually communicating or just attempting to. 

A handful of them had noses, maybe three or four, but most of the children were missing everything from the lower jaw up. Just flapping tongues and windpipes. She could tell which ones had recently popped by how unaccustomed they were to moving, pinballing around the room as they tried to locate their seat. On the other hand, some children had apparently become more than accustomed to their new bodies, effortlessly walking into the classroom and filing into place. One even put an apple on her desk.

“Good morning, everyone,” Ms. Adam said. “My name is Ms. Adam, and I’ll be your teacher from now on.” She started to write her name on the board before she realized the issue with that and stopped. 

“Uh Graaaaahhhh Uh Raaaah,” said the children in perfect unison. The few with both halves of their mouths still intact said, “Good morning, Ms. Adam.” She took attendance and each student gave a grunt or groan at their name. 

“Alright, excellent. Everyone’s here. We’re going to start the day with math. Let’s have a warm up first. Everyone please take out your notebook and write down the solution to 9 x 8 for me.” 

She walked around the room as they worked. A few of them missed their notebooks as they attempted to write down their answers, but to her astonishment, all of the children wrote down legible answers despite their lack of eyes and brains. Ms. Adam returned to the front of the room and glanced at her roster. 

“Ummm, Sean, would you mind telling me what solution you got for 9 x 8?” A little boy towards the back raised his notebook to his exposed tongue and said, “Rah Uh.” 

“I’m sorry, could you repeat that?” 

“Rah uh.” 

“Here, let me just take a look at what you wrote down.” Ms. Adam went over to Sean and looked at his answer. “81. Yes, that’s sometimes the solution—” 

Sean’s tongue stared blankly up at her. No hyperventilating, no head expanding. She glanced around at the other children, and they were the same as Sean—all attentive and waiting for her to continue. Sean’s jaw tilted a little, and she could just barely imagine the eyebrows he used to have furrowed together. 

“No. No, 81 is not correct. But you were close! 81 is the solution to 9 x 9. So subtract 9 and you get the answer to 9 x 8. 

Sean scribbled some calculations onto his paper and showed her the result. “72, excellent! Now using that same method, can someone else tell me what 9 x 7 would be?” 

THE END