I bring a clear plastic envelope to my exams
It's the rule, outlined in several pages of exam guidelines. I've never had to do it before; I've never been in a school so strict. I guess they have to be, when we're only a few short years away from holding people's lives in our hands.
The upperclassmen say you can't have pouches inside, either, and so I scatter my belongings inside, little pieces of myself on full view for everyone to see. I would write a poem about it, even though I've never been a poet.
But it's already poetry, isn't it? The forced intimacy of clear plastic, the way my half-finished pack of tissues crinkles against it. Some sort of involuntary what's-in-my-bag: just you and your envelope, and your hundreds of classmates and their hundreds of envelopes. I get to know you by the color of your pens. You get to know me by the chocolate cereal bar I bring inside the testing hall, bright green label stark against our standard issue clipboards. I wonder if anyone will see my cat-shaped sharpener and smile. I wonder if, when I look for what's mine in a sea of others just like it, I'll find it in five seconds flat.