One Thursday before the last period, Mr. Jalaei called me into his office. I hadn’t done anything and wasn’t sure what this would be about. He lead me down to the prayer room and once we were there we noticed Mehdi, my former 4th grade classmate, lying down on the ground. Mr. Jalaei went up to him.

“What are you doing here?”

“I have a stomach ache so I’m just lying down.”

“Who gave you permission to come here?”

“No one gave permission.”

Mehdi was sent back to class. Mr. Jalaei took out a pen and a piece of paper and scribbled something on it and showed it to me.

“What does this mean?”

It was a number, six digits in total. I thought it might be a phone number but it didn’t look familiar. I stared at it and finally said, “I don’t know what that is.”

“Don’t play games with me.”

“I don’t think I have ever seen this.”

“You are actually capable of thinking?”

I thought about giving a smart-ass response but judging by Mr. Jalaei’s harsher than usual demeanor I assumed things were serious, even if I still had no idea what they were about. Mr. Jalaei continued.

“What kind of school do you think this is?”

I remained silent, waiting for some kind of explanation of what this was all about. Finally Mr. Jalaei took me back upstairs and into an office. He instructed me to wait there until Mr. Jalaeifar came to see me. As I sat there Rasouli spotted me and let himself in.

“What’s going on? What are you doing here?”

I ignored him.

“You’re not gonna talk? I keep telling you to stay out of trouble but you always go right back into your usual antics. When are you gonna finally straighten up your act?”

Just then Mr. Jalaeifar arrived. After questioning Rasouli’s presence and subsequently kicking him out of the office, he got down to business.

“You’ve been doing and saying a lot of things that are not acceptable in our school. You’ve been cursing, bullying others and talking about forbidden subjects.”

While all of that was true I still did not see why we were where we were. What exactly had transpired for this to suddenly become an issue? Mr. Jalaeifar repeated the question regarding the numbers. I once again truthfully insisted I did not know what they meant.