Several students shrieked. I might've, too, if I hadn't been so utterly bored that nothing could startle me anymore. I set my pencil down, abandoning my “essay” (at this point mostly doodles and my name in cool fonts), and looked up to see what it was.
 So did Ms. Anderson, our Language Arts teacher. Her glasses, red-framed, owlish, and the objects of many insults, flashed in the light. Students ducked as the bluebird flapped hopelessly round and round, the light flickering through its wings. Fluff and dust drifted down. I couldn't help but snigger inwardly at the sight of all the panic that it caused, and sat forward eagerly, waiting to see what Ms. Anderson would do next. Call the janitor? Shriek? Make us keep writing our essay?
She did none of those. Ms. Anderson strode over to the light switch and flicked it off. More shrieking, giggling, as the class was plunged into near-complete darkness; I briefly wondered whether she was finally off her rocker, and was about to get up and join in the collective chaos and exulting. Then I realized what she was doing. The bluebird hung in front of the window briefly, and right before I moved from my desk, I paused. Something about it – the bird -  made the noise of the class seem to fade into a muted, dreamlike murmur, though they were as loud as ever. There was something about the way the shadows played through the blinds onto its wings, the soft blue glow its feathers captured, its silence and the strange unreality of that brief second.
 Then it dove through the door, and the spell was broken. I blinked, sat back down; talking and laughing erupted from the others, but I just stared. I realized that Ms. Anderson was staring, too, and for a moment I thought I could see the same blue glow in her hazel eyes. Then a student cussed, loudly. Her glasses flashed again; the lights turned on; her voice was as sharp as ever. “Be quiet! Back to your essays! You there, see me after class about that filthy language!”
 I sighed, and went back to work.
 Later, when the bell rang, I couldn't help but pause as I filed past her with the other students. “That bluebird -”
 “It was a scrub-jay,” she snapped, and I hurried off to my next class.