Lee Quick Oneshot

The answer came next Monday with the new semester. More specifically, Lee’s new creative writing class. The teacher was a tall woman with a gaunt look to her eyes, but her voice was uncharacteristically jovial. Mrs Zimmers – as she wrote on the whiteboard – didn’t bother with the same introductions the other new teachers subjected him to, rather the first words out of her mouth were the instructions for their first assignment.

“Each of you, take out a sheet of paper. No, no tablets. Paper. And pencils. Yes, it’s archaic, stop moaning.” Mrs Zimmers watched in amusement as each student put away their tablets and reached into their backpacks to withdraw from their limited paper supply. Most people only had owned one notebook, if that, and had owned them since their freshman year. Some students walked to the front of the room to take a sheet from Mrs Zimmers’ small stack of assorted printer and construction paper, and the few students that owned them passed out small (and sometimes broken) wooden pencils. Lee watched their teacher in interest. Her face was too kind to share the characteristics of the school’s few anti-technology teachers, so why then was she insisting on such old fashioned tools for their first assignment? He dearly hoped this wouldn’t be a ‘paragraph about yourself’ or, god forbid, a letter explaining their strengths and goals for the year.

“This will be a pass/no pass assignment,” Mrs Zimmers began, meeting the curious faces with amusement. “I just want to see you make an effort. Do that, and you’ll be fine. This isn’t based on writing ability, just the ideas behind it. Make sure to have your name in the top right corner-” Lee hastily scribbled his own on the designated space “-and title it ‘Prompt One.’”

“Is this gonna be a regular thing in this class?” a brat from across the room called out. She earned herself a few snickers, and Lee made a face. He looked to Trill, but she didn’t look back up to meet his eyes. Rena, however, rolled hers, much to Lee’s satisfaction.

“Maybe, maybe not,” the teacher responded before continuing on. “You will have twenty minutes. I want each of you to use this time to think about and write on this.” She paused to turn to the screen behind her, picking up a pen and speaking the following as she wrote it. “Describe a person’s physical characteristics without using any physical features.”

There were a few murmurs of confusion from the classroom. “How do we do that?” someone asked.

“However you would like,” Mrs Zimmers said, a small smile lining her tired face. “I don’t care how you interpret the prompt, do whatever you want with any skills you have at your disposal. You have twenty minutes to choose or make up as many people as you like, and describe them.”

“What’s the difference between characteristics and features?” Rena asked before the teacher could stop her.

Mrs Zimmers turned like she was about to make a snarky comment, but stopped upon seeing the honesty in Rena’s face. She really was just curious. “A physical feature is what you see on someone’s body,” Mrs Zimmers explained. “Words like, ‘her hair is blond,’ or ‘she is tall.’ You can use any words you want to describe how someone looks to you without those phrases.”

“Any way we want?” Rena clarified. Mrs Zimmers nodded.

“You have twenty minutes,” she reminded, setting a timer up on the screen. The class exchanged looks between themselves before settling in front of their papers. Many students began to write, and many leaned back in their chairs to think.

Lee was not a writer. This much he had always known. So what the hell did Zimmers mean?

As his thoughts often did, his mind automatically turned to the game, and from there, to Rey. He did need to choose someone to describe after all. He thought of red hair and a lanky body and bright blue eyes, before remembering the prompt.

Describe someone without their features.

He wasn’t exactly sure how to go about it, but with a grade based on effort, it hardly mattered. He watched his pencil glide across the page almost without his mind’s consent, and he found himself writing not about the smiles, but the ease with which Rey shared them. Not his eyes, but the spark behind them as they lit up with every new sight. Not the build of his legs or the strength of his arms, but the unbridled confidence he swung them with, until they were alone, when closed in upon himself with a shy voice and crossed limbs. Not his body, but what he did with it. The way he used it, not the way it used him.

He finished before the twenty minutes were up, but every few minutes he thought of something new to say and wrote it down before he forgot. And before he knew it, the time was up and pencils were down, some students with looks of disappointment, and others with blatant relief. Lee looked down at his own paper. His handwriting was just barely better than a seven year old’s, and the writing itself was full of errors, fragments, and other literary flaws. But he couldn’t bring himself to be unhappy with it.

“I’m going to pick some of you to read aloud,” Mrs Zimmers was saying. “You can skip if you really want to, but if everyone skips everyone is reading their page to the class whether they want to or not.”

Lee listened to what the others had written. Some were like his, explaining movements and intentions, while others chose to write about the clothes someone wore, or the way someone held their hair or whether they wore makeup. Others used metaphors to talk about features without saying them, while still others described people as if they were blind, seeing instead through touches and sounds. Lee passed his own chance to speak, but smiled fondly at his own paper and the images that came with it.

He went on from that day with a new respect for writing and the teachers that taught it.

Later that week Mrs Zimmers called them up individually to assign them grades for the first prompt. Lee sat at the back of the class and listened to their conversations; Zimmers usually only asked for clarification on their interpretation, or their motivations behind the descriptions. Most students left with a one hundred percent, a few missing a point here or there for not following directions or showing a lack of effort.

Lee’s conversation was shorter. He walked up to her desk and watched his teacher with interest at what she would have to say. She asked only one question.

“Who did you write about?” she asked.

Lee blinked in confusion, meeting her eyes full on.

“A friend I have who lives pretty far away.”

She nodded, a pleased smile on her features. She looked down to the sheet in front of her and stamped it with a red star, and handed it back with a red scrawl on the top that read, “20/20.”