As I sit in the most boring math class ever, my teacher drones on and on. He sounds like one of the adults from Charlie Brown: “wah, wah, wah, wah, waaah, wah.” While I doodle on my desk, my teacher takes notice to my lack of attention to his lesson, and so he does the most cold hearted thing possible: he calls on me.

“Kaily, what’s the answer to number twelve?” I flip frantically to number twelve in my math book and stared up at the board; I have no idea what’s going on. I brace myself, knowing I’m about to be lectured in front of the entire class. I hang my head low, and my teacher’s voice sounds crystal clear as he begins his lecture on daydreaming. He goes on and on and on about the effects of not paying attention in his “spectacular” class. I don’t think I’ve ever been so bored in my entire life. I put my head down on my desk and my hands over my ears, hoping the bell will ring. My prayers are half answered as a shrill ringing noise fills my ears. My mind begins to race as I raise my head and see my whole class dashing from the classroom. My best friend Ru is beckoning me over to her.

“Come on, Kaily, the fire alarm!” I get up from my seat and dash to the classroom door. Caching up to my class, I proceed down the stairway in line with the mass of students exiting the building. Since my math class is on the third floor of the middle school, there are lots of stairs to descend. People seem to be in a rush to get down these stairs, which causes me to panic. I ask Ru if it’s a real fire, and then I see it.

As I turn the corner to go down the next flight of many stairs, I see smoke filling the air before me. The smoke looks as if it’s climbing up the stairs. My math teacher asks if anyone is behind Ru and me, and we yell up the stairs behind us to check; no one answers. My teacher takes the silence as a “no” and proceeds to tell everyone to crawl the rest of the way down the stairs, staying below the rising smoke. My class continues down the stairs, crawling but just as I am about to get on my knees, I hear someone up the stairs, yelling for help.

“Ru, did you hear that?” Ru nods her head “yes”, and I turn to run up the stairs. I begin to cough through the thick smoke that is now filling my lungs. I shout to see if anyone is there, and I hear our librarian, Mrs. Lila answer my calls. Ru, who is a very studious student, spends hours in the library, so naturally she leads the way, not needing to see the hallway clearly to know her way to the familiar room. We get closer and closer to the library, and our coughs get heavier and heavier. Then, I hear Mrs. Lila’s voice quite near by. I whip my head back and forth. I can barely see Ru who is less than an arm’s-length away from me. I walk to my left, which seems to be where the calls are coming from.

“Hello?” Something crashes in the direction I’m walking, and I pick up my pace with Ru on my heels. The smoke is making it very hard to see, but I can make out some kind of shelf before me. Then, I see her, poor Mrs. Lila lying on the floor underneath a bookshelf. Her legs are stuck underneath the bookcase, but Ru and I are determined to get her out safely.

Mrs. Lila thanks us for our kindness through heavy, deep coughs. These coughs worry us because the smoke is rising quickly, and it appears the fire isn’t far behind. Knowing I’m stronger than Ru, I will lift the bookshelf while Ru pulls tiny Mrs. Lila out from underneath. Wasting no time, we put our plan into action. On the count of three I need to lift the big, heavy bookshelf.

“One… Two… Three!” As I say “three”, I lift the bookshelf as high as possible and yell at Ru to pull Mrs. Lila out. The plan is a success, except for one issue: Mrs. Lila can’t walk. Her legs are most likely broken. Ru and I brainstorm the safest and quickest way to get out of the building, and we decide it’s best if Mrs. Lila has her arms around each of our shoulders, and we can hobble as quickly as possible down the stairs.

Ru and I take on the weight of Mrs. Lila, which is very light considering she is an adult, and we begin to hobble back to the stairway whilst struggling to breathe. The halls are painted with black, whispy smoke. We trudge on through. When we finally reach the stairs, we see fire. It doesn’t fill the whole staircase, so we risk the journey, knowing it is pretty much our only choice. We squeeze in between little patches of fire as quickly as possible. Things seem to be going pretty smoothly until we reach the stairs to the first floor (which leads to the outdoors).

Here, the fire is huge, knocking down parts of the archway of the doors to the stairwell. The fire grows larger each second we stand there contemplating our next move. I look back up the stairway hoping for a solution, but all I see is black smoke. I begin to really panic; I don’t know what to do. I don’t have to wonder for long though because the flames around the doors start decreasing, and I hear footsteps and yelling!

Help, finally someone to help us! In the next moment, I am in a fireman’s arms running down the stairs. He runs me to the paramedics outside of the burning building along with Ru and Mrs. Lila. All three of us are rushed to the hospital. The amount of smoke Ru and I inhaled is very dangerous, but it was worth it.

Later in the day, I learn that Mrs. Lila has two broken legs, but she will recover. Mrs. Lila is going to be okay though; that’s all that really matters to me. Ru and I saved Mrs. Lila’s life because we stopped to listen and care about someone else’s words. Which I guess proves that my math teacher was right: paying attention makes a world of difference.