How much can a writer convey in one hundred words? In five tiny paragraphs, Alaina Hammond delivers all that readers can crave from an irreverent microfiction, and more. Often, less is more: what’s not said, says volumes. High school, indeed, may be the test we can never quite complete. —Court Harler
It’s Saturday morning. I’m at a high school. Not mine, but it smells roughly the same.
There’s a poster, announcing auditions for a play. For a split second I consider auditioning, then remember I can’t. Whatever, I’m in a play next week.
In the classroom where we wait for our tests, I notice a cute guy next to me. Whatever, my boyfriend’s hotter.
Mr. Cute Guy gets a calculator, which means he’s planning to be a STEM teacher of some sort. Me, I’m taking the English teacher’s test.
My confidence is solid. High school’s easier to handle, when you’re twenty-eight.
ALAINA HAMMOND is a poet, playwright, fiction writer, and visual artist. Her poems, plays, short stories, nonfiction, paintings, drawings, and photographs have been published both online and in print. A four-time nominee for the Pushcart Prize in fiction, her novelette, Jillian, Formerly Known as Frog Girl, was published by Bottlecap Press. Find her on Instagram @alainaheidelberger.
Featured image by Ivan Aleksic, courtesy of Unsplash.
Flash the Court 
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