The Substitute Teacher
The clock above the whiteboard reads 8:14, but Freya Svensson has already lived seventeen different lives inside her own head by the time Mr. Halvorsen clears his throat for the third time.
The letters on the board won't hold still. That's the only way she can describe it to anyone who asks, though nobody ever really asks, not in a way that wants the true answer. *The Tragedy of Julius Caesar* floats above the whiteboard tray in Mr. Halvorsen's blocky teacher-print, and even that, a title she's seen a hundred times, seems to breathe. The J leans like it's tired. The u and the l trade places when she isn't looking, swap back before she can catch them at it. She knows the trick by now. She knows it isn't really happening. But knowing doesn't stop the small cold drop in her stomach every time she has to turn language into sound in front of thirty other people.
"Freya." Mr. Halvorsen doesn't look up from his copy of the play, spine cracked white along the fold, a man who has taught this scene so many autumns that his voice has gone flat and automatic. "Page forty-one. Start where Brutus enters."
Beside her, notebook covered edge to edge in doodles — a wolf with too many teeth, a…
