School is bad enough for Quinn Compton. Lockers are broken into, robbed, and vandalized. It's a place where false rumors are spread, even on washroom walls. Bullies seem to be everywhere, even on YouTube, and some of them are girls! It's definitely a plac

In Front of The Whole Class

By Rick Hughes

Trafford Publishing

Copyright © 2012 Rick Hughes
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4669-3370-5

Chapter One

In Front of The Whole Class

Mr. Tiburon gave the assignment to the class and Quinn Compton could feel the fear in the pit of his stomach the moment the words were out of the teacher's mouth.

It was an oral presentation to be done in front of the whole Grade Six class. Everybody had to do it and there was no getting out of it.

The question was that if you could spend an hour with any person who ever lived, who would it be? Why would it be that person? What would you want to ask them? What would you want to do together? Mr. Tiburon tried to give examples of things you might want to do. Play ball was his first one, but Quinn got stuck wondering if Mr. Tiburon had ever played ball. It was very hard to imagine him ever playing anything. He was very old and very serious, not to mention very strict.

Quinn struggled to pay better attention. Mr. Tiburon believed very strongly that you should stay on task. It was an instant detention if Mr. T discovered that you were not following what he was saying. He did not want your mind wandering, even a little. At the moment, he was suggesting that maybe you might want to have dinner with the person you'd chosen. The trouble was that this made Quinn think about his stomach and how even the thought of standing up there in front of the whole class made him feel like he was going to be sick.

He sat in his seat in total panic. He had absolutely no idea who he would choose. When he tried to think of somebody, he got a brain cramp and Mr. T's helpful examples were making it worse. He didn't want to have dinner with anybody. He liked eating in front of the TV.

Now the teacher was suggesting that you might want to go to a spa with the person. Quinn wasn't really sure what a spa was. He thought he might have seen a commercial with a lady lying on a bench, covered in towels. He didn't even like taking a bath.

He looked over at his best friend Keenan to see how he was taking the news. He was nodding and smiling and already writing something down. Keenan was a good friend but sometimes he could be kind of depressing. Here was Quinn praying that there was some way he could get out of this, and here was Keenan wishing he was up there in front of the class already.

Quinn put his hand up. He had no choice. He knew that this was definitely not something that Mr. Tiburon wanted to see while he was still speaking. Questions were to be asked afterward. It was a very strict rule, but this was an emergency!

The teacher went on with his suggestions, ignoring the upraised hand, in the hope that Quinn would remember the rule. But Quinn kept his hand up until Mr. T. couldn't ignore it any more.

"Quinn?" he intoned. It was amazing how long he could make that single word last as he drawled it. It left no doubt how unhappy he was that his strict rule was being defied, that he was being interrupted.

Quinn knew how how much trouble he was getting himself in, but he had to do something, and fast! He forced himself to speak as the teacher glared down at him.

"May I please go to the washroom?" He didn't even wait for an answer. He just ran out of the classroom! He really was going to be sick!

Chapter Two

Imagine Them In Their Underwear

"Wow, I thought that you were really going to get it when you came back! The way you just ran out of class! But then Mr. Tiburon didn't do anything! I think he knew that you'd been sick. You could kind of smell it." Keenan was walking home with him after school.

"Oh no, really? Everybody could?" Quinn was already feeling embarrassed enough.

"Yeah, I think so. People anywhere near you, at least. And there's still a little on your shirt."

Quinn looked down and there it was, obvious enough that probably everybody saw it when he walked back into class. He tried to brush it off with his fingers. He'd looked in the washroom mirror when he was washing his face afterwards, but he must have missed it somehow. It wasn't really something that he wanted to know, but he was glad that Keenan had told him. It was what friends were for, he figured.

"You could always say you've got the flu." Keenan was trying to help.

"I might have to." 'Yeah, the flu,' he thought to himself. 'The public speaking flu.' He still felt a little sick.

Quinn decided not to tell his mother about being sick. He didn't know why. He just put the shirt he'd been wearing in the laundry and put on a fresh one. He did tell her about the presentation, and when he did, she just groaned.

"Oh no, not public speaking! I still hate it! I don't have to do it too often these days, but when I do, I still get really nervous.

It's not too bad with just a few people, but when it's in front of a whole room, my heart really starts to pound."

Quinn was starting to think that he was not alone in his fear of public speaking.

She put his juice bottles into his lunch bag. "I can still remember the first time I had to go up in front of the school."

"The whole school?"

"The whole school. The speech itself wasn't so hard. I had it all written down, and all I had to do was read it." She put out her hands. "My hands were shaking so bad when I took out the paper that I was sure that everybody could see. What saved me was that there was a lectern. I put the paper down on it and I gripped the edge of the lectern to stop my hands from shaking and I held on to it for dear life! When I opened my mouth to speak, my voice came out in this tiny squeak. I was sure that everybody was going to laugh."

"Did they?" This was something that Quinn was really afraid of.

"No, because I tried to turn the squeak into a cough as fast as I could, so that everybody would think I was just clearing my throat."

"And it worked?"

"It worked sort of. I think a lot of people knew, but at least they weren't laughing." She finished filling his lunch bag and put it into his backpack. Then she looked at her watch. "I've really got to go."

"But what happened?" Quinn didn't want her to leave without telling him.

"Oh, I started again and I just tried to keep going. I totally ignored the advice I'd been given and I just tried to pretend I was alone in my room practicing, and somehow I got to the end." She picked up her bag and started for the door. "I might be a bit late tonight. I'll call you."

Quinn chased after her as she went out the door. "But what was the advice that you totally ignored?"

"Oh, it was too silly. I just couldn't do it."

"What was it?"

"I was supposed to imagine that everybody in the audience was sitting there in their underwear!"

On the way to school, all Keenan wanted to talk about was Albert Einstein. He said he knew right away that he was the person he wanted to do the presentation on and he started to tell Quinn all the stuff he'd found out about him so far.

He sounded like a very cool guy, but hearing about him mostly made Quinn wish he'd picked an interesting guy like that, instead of not having the slightest clue who to choose.

They were getting close to school and Keenan was still going strong on Einstein. Quinn thought that maybe he should interrupt him because he did want to tell him about the underwear advice, even though he thought it was very weird. How could you ever concentrate if you were thinking about what everyone was wearing under their clothes?

By the time he got a chance, they were already in class and a girl named Emma had come up to join them. Keenan kind of liked her and he wanted to...