The clock on the wall simply had to be broken. The same went for the digital one on the bottom-right corner of Olivia’s computer screen. The fact that they were perfectly in sync with each other was a fluke. The seconds ticked away like minutes, and minutes like hours. Olivia drummed her fingers on her desk and scanned the classroom full of kids who were just as ready as her for Tuesday afternoon’s final bell and caught a glimpse of a spitball lodging into the back of the new girl’s hair. The girl shook it out of her long locks and cast a somewhat flirty glare into the back corner of the room.

Earlier in the period, Olivia had given out a practice test after a short review on polynomials. The eighth graders had spent most of the fifty-minute class on it, but now, four minutes before the final bell, they were finished and whispering among themselves.

Spying a fresh spitball shooting across the room, Olivia headed over to the group of boys in the back corner. She held out her hand, palm up, and wagged her fingers. “Straw.”

The three boys exchanged innocent looks. “They don’t have straws in the cafeteria anymore.”

“Yet somehow you managed to find one, didn’t you?”

Brody, who was thirteen but could pass for seventeen with his broad shoulders and patchy facial hair, reluctantly passed it her way after pulling it out from underneath the desk. “Sorry.”

Olivia pinched the straw at the center and looked at all three boys one by one as she spoke. “While I applaud any attempt at communication that doesn’t involve a smartphone, there are other ways to get a girl’s attention.”

There’d been a rush of detentions in seventh and eighth grade during the last month or so of boys who’d been caught mooning other students. Though it had taken Olivia by surprise, it seemed that mooning had blossomed into popularity again. Or perhaps it had never gone out of it.

She was thankful not to have caught that happening in her classroom this afternoon, or she’d be staying after to write up a detention of her own. Not only was she ready to get on the road, but Ava had emailed five minutes ago to say that she was waiting in the school parking lot.

As the three boys mumbled fresh apologies, Olivia nodded. “It’s just a couple of minutes till the bell rings. How about we agree not to cause any more trouble, and we’ll start fresh tomorrow?”

Under normal circumstances, Olivia was one of the last teachers in the building after the final bell rang at 3:05 p.m. She loved to linger in her quiet classroom as the late-afternoon sun streamed through the windows, planning out her lessons for the next day and responding to an inbox full of staff and parent emails.