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was glaring at you from across the room as if she were preparing to attack, you’d have a hard time answering too.
    â€œVietnam and Korea?” She cocked her eyebrow. “No, Mr. Curse, though perhaps the British and the Americans would have preferred it that way.” Her expression soured. “One more interruption”—she raised a single finger as if I had no idea how many one was—“just one more and you’ll have detention. Understand?”
    I nodded and hunched in my chair.
    â€œWhere were you?” Colin whispered after Mrs. Farnsworthy returned to her lecture.
    I shook my head and made a subtle gesture to tell him to be quiet.
    â€œOkay, tell me later,” he said. “But if she comes after you, remember to stop, drop, and roll. I’m pretty sure that’s not just for fires. It works for crazy teachers too.”
    I coughed to stifle my laugh, only to have Mrs. Farnsworthy glare at me from across the room. Apparently, in her book a cough was enough to get me detention.
    The thing is, I don’t act out in class. I do as I’m told, and I follow the rules. I’ve only gotten detention twice in my whole life, and both those times were because of Colin. So what happened next was really out of character for me.
    I was taking notes when it started. Like before, the color drained from the room and left it a dreary gray. I gripped the edge of my desk and drew a series of shallow breaths, not entirely sure if I was having another hallucination or a stroke, but praying desperately for the stroke. That’s when things got even weirder. One second Mrs. Farnsworthy was droning on at the front of the class, and the next moment she was standing— Whoosh! —right next to me. Only not really, because… well, she was in both places, as if a twin had sprouted from her and transported magically across the room to kill me or, worse, to ask me another history question. Either way, for the second time today, I was on the verge of wetting my pants right then and there.
    Shaking, I looked at the Mrs. Farnsworthy beside me. She had that same blank stare as the other hallucinations. Slowly, she started twisting and contorting her face. Her mouth widened and then, just like the others, she screamed. Shrieked is a better word, actually. She shrieked bloody murder. It seemed doubly worse than the other hallucinations because I knew her. Her features continued to distort, twisting like some human pretzel.
    I reacted entirely on instinct. When you see something like that, no matter how hard you try, you can’t think. Really, though, I only did what any other kid my age would’ve done. I leaped out of my chair and screamed too. I jumped back so hard that I hit Colin’s desk and sent his books clattering to the floor.
    Once again, the class was silent. My mouth dropped when I saw that Mrs. Farnsworthy's screaming twin had vanished. There was now only one of her standing at the front of the class.
    She seemed to have forgotten all about history. I only realized that the room’s color had returned when I noticed a slight hue of pink inching up her neck like a thermometer measuring rage. She clutched the front of her beige cardigan.
    Mixed expressions crossed the faces of the rest of the class. Some kids seemed amused, others horrified. One thing seemed certain: I was once again the only one who had seen anything. I glanced back at Colin. His face was white and his mouth kept opening and closing as if he were a fish blowing bubbles.
    â€œS… sorry, I… uh… I…” I searched through all the excuses imaginable to explain my outburst, hoping that I could come up with something before the pink hue, which had now crested Mrs. Farnsworthy’s cheeks, climbed to the top of her head. “A rat,” I said finally. “I saw a rat.”
    There were a few stifled gasps.
    â€œA big one.”
    Reggie Sung was out of his chair before I finished my