Student Government In Theory
The assembly is about student government, which means the assembly is about nothing. I know this already and I'm fourteen. Everyone around me knows it too. The bleachers are doing that groaning-metal thing they do when nine hundred teenagers try to sit on them at the same time, and three rows down a boy named Kellen is eating what appears to be an entire sleeve of saltines in a way that is both impressive and concerning. Mrs. Dell is at the podium. Mrs. Dell is always at the podium. She has been our Activities Director for approximately eleven thousand years and has the posture of somebody who was told in 1993 that good posture would save her life and never stopped believing it.
"This is," Mrs. Dell is saying into a microphone that only works when she gets within an inch of it, "an exciting opportunity for every one of you to have a voice —"
Somebody in the senior section coughs a word that is not *voice*. The word they cough is *voiceless*. That gets a laugh. Mrs. Dell smiles the way she has been smiling through that laugh since before I was born.
Simone is sitting next to me because Simone sits next to me when she can, which is a thing I have started to notice and am trying not to make a big deal about. She leans over. She smells like the cinnamon gum she says she hates and chews anyway. "She's going to say *opportunity* again," Simone whispers. "I'm calling