A little manic was okay. Being a little over-the-top was fine. But, this. This was not okay.

    Kai had only been placed in this class because he’d satisfied most of his graduation requirements early. All he’d had left was English. But somehow, he found himself sitting in the middle of a class of freshman, all frantically shuffling to find their new seats in their new class.

    “Creative writing” is what they were calling it.

    The teacher was a short, timid looking forty-something with wild, frizzy hair. When she introduced herself, she’d asked the students to call her Ms. Frizz. Like the Magic School Bus? Kai thought. "Yes. Like the Magic School Bus," she said.

    Despite her small frame and timid appearance, everything about her was bright and loud: her hair, her voice, her clothes, even the classroom. The decorations and motivational posters were similar to that of a pre-teen girl’s bedroom. No. A kindergarten classroom. No! A preschool! Whatever it was, it was definitely not okay, by any standard definition of okayness.

    And it was so obvious that Kai was the only upperclassmen. Like, blatantly obvious. For starters, he was taller than every other male student. Granted, there were only four, but they looked like children. Kai didn’t remember ever being that small in his life. Secondly, they all seemed fidgety and nervous. Like, they were anxious to meet their new classmates and their shiny, new teacher. Kai had figured out by sophomore year that once everyone got into their regular flow of classes, they started to see the same people repeatedly. Finally, and the most obvious testament to the freshman’s freshness was their immediate gravitation to upperclassman. Apparently, the summer before freshman year, someone, somewhere holds a meeting in which underclassman are told to worship upperclassmen -- a meeting that Kai must have seriously missed. They clung to his every word. Kai could almost see them taking mental notes.

    “Why do we write fiction?” Frizz’s question was met with uninterested silence. “There is no right or wrong answer. Why do we write fiction? Why do you write fiction? Why did you sign up for this class?”

    “For an easy grade,” replied one of the boys sitting toward the back of the classroom. The entire class laughed. Kai did not. While he did find Ms. Frizz’s loud voice, hair, and outfit wildly off putting, he loved her enthusiasm and passion about writing and hated that the other students didn’t take her seriously. As an aspiring author himself, he couldn’t help but take pity on the tiny woman.

    “To disappear. To find a world outside of the one we know,” Kai chimed in once the laughing had died down. He saw the light return to Frizz’s face and almost wished he hadn’t said anything. He felt all the little eyes in the room shift to him and he suddenly felt huge, like he didn’t quite fit in his desk. But there was no going back now.

    “Yes!” shouted Frizz. “Yes, yes, yes! In this class we will be exploring those other worlds. Those other universes. And for the record Mr. Lee,” she said, suddenly switching tones and directing her attention to the boy who’d made the smart comment, “if you want an ‘easy A,’ I suggest you start to take this class as seriously as Mr…,” she walked over to Kai’s desk and glanced at the name tag in the top right corner, “...Jong In Kim.”

    “Kai. I go by Kai,” he offered.

    “Kai,” she replied definitively.