In the marketing industry, there is a tactic called creating a need and filling it. Teeth whitening is a perfect example. It isn't healthy, it's terrible unnatural, and, of course, it certainly isn't a need. We throw that word around a lot these days, when the actual noun to be used is "want". And we can want unneeded things horribly; a crude, infantile want that surrounds us with the desperate asphyxiation of a boa constrictor. It can hover as an intoxicating gas, filling our lungs so that we breathe it in and, when forced, begrudgingly breathe it out. It can become an obsession, this want, setting up shop in the brain and snubbing any weak-willed landlord who meekly offers an eviction notice.

How could something so insistently powerful have come to be? It isn't a need, as we've said. There are three basic needs in addition to one which is only a need as far as living goes; it is of no consequence in escaping the coroner. The three basic needs are food, clothing, and shelter. The fourth is love. The want that may possess us is entirely unaffiliated with these, and with any other emotion, for that matter. So again, how did it come about?

There is a vast chance that it was started by the very obvious choice of the marketing industry. With pretty pictures and reassuring voices coming from beautiful mouths with too-white teeth and the power to shoot these esthetically pleasing moments into our brains as frequently as they may, is it such a wonder? The question of why we can wait in line for hours for a product that we've been drooling over for weeks to find it in our hands and become bored, well, that question becomes almost rhetorical. It's about the hunt that those pretty pictures and sounds have inspired. The want is all they need.

Alice Burkfield sat in a cold wood-and-metal desk which was one of a hundred cold wood-and-metal desks in a cream cinderblock room. Her hair was the color of straw after a storm and it was sticking out in static-charged strands in response to Julian Polk who was conspicuously rubbing a sickly green balloon to her head.

Ms. Kent, their chemistry teacher, had left the class five minutes before, saying that she would be right back and leaving Carol Rum in charge. Carol was sitting in the biggest wood-and-metal desk in the room, which belonged to Ms. Kent, and she chewed pink gum and busied herself with her cell phone.

Alice turned to Julian suddenly and with one fluid movement popped the balloon with her long and manicured nails. Carol glared and blew a sugary pink bubble.

"You could have just said stop." grumbled Julian.

"Yes, but it wouldn't have made that fun sound." Alice retorted.

Stephen Goodman pushed his glasses back into place with his index finger and sneezed, making them fall back down his nose. Mark Andrews carved crude figures into the wood of his desk. Brittany Stewart stared at a slightly chewed pencil and brushed her chemically straightened hair. Dustan Robertson head banged to a song that only he could hear. Carol Rum chewed her gum.

"Hey, Julian?"

"What, Alice?"

"Where is Ms. Kent?"

"We aren't supposed to talk" sighed Carol.

"Shut it," Alice growled.

The question of their teacher's whereabouts was forgotten, for the moment. The students amused themselves in their own ways for another twenty minutes. By this point, Dustan's neck was too sore to rock, Mark had run out of room on his desk, Brittany's arm was tired, Stephen had used all the tissues in his travel pack, and Carol's gum had lost it's flavor. Alice and Julian muttered to each other about nothing in particular.

"Hey, Julian?"

"What, Alice?"

"It's been 10:15 for half an hour."

"The clock is just dead." Julian threw a crumpled wad of paper at Carol.

"What do you want?"

"What time is it?"

"10:15"

Alice and Julian's eyes widened to the size of four identical jelly golf balls.

"You're sure?" Alice whispered.

"Duh I'm sure."

"I'm going to find a janitor and tell him that our clocks are broken." as Julian said this, he attempted to get out of his desk. He couldn't. He looked at Alice. She tried to stand. She couldn't. Brittany dropped her brush and could not get up to retrieve it. Mark decided to move in order to have more carving space to find that he was stuck to his seat. All of them tried to get up. All of them were trapped in their small wood-and-metal desks, except for Carol Rum, who was trapped in her rather large wood-and-metal desk.

At this point, Dustan Robertson let out a long and imaginative string of profanity, Mark Andrews began violently stabbing his carvings, Julian Polk sat silently with his jaw set, Alice Burkfield hyperventilated, Brittany Stewart compulsively clawed her fingers through her hair, Carol
Rum smacked her stale gum with a newly intense vigor, and Stephen Goodman could be heard quietly sniffling in the back of the room.

"This isn't real. This isn't real. This isn't real. This isn't real."

"Carol?"

"Yeah?"

"Shut. Up."

Carol made an offended noise and crossed her skinny arms over her blue sweater. Stephen made a gurgling sound and wiped his nose on his sleeve.

"Hey...hey guys"

"What, Steve?" Brittany tried to sound gentle. Her voice came out in a frantic hiccup. Stephen was about to tell her that he preferred his real name, not some abbreviation, but swallowed a glob of saliva instead.

"Well, just, Carol has a phone, can't we call someone?"

She looked at her phone to discover that it was suddenly out of service. Stephen started sniffling again. Dustan continued his list of obscenities and Alice wondered if he didn't have Turrets. He was shaking now, and everyone around him leaned away, as much as they could, because just you don't want to be too close to a cussing shaking kid who head bangs to the rhythm of the AC. Especially when you're stuck to your seat. He fumbled with his jacket which hung on the back of his chair and extracted half of a Camel Wide and a red Bic from the inside pocket.

"What are you doing?" screeched Carol and Brittany in unison.

"Smoking."

After two drags he had stopped shaking, and after three, the smoke set the overhead sprinkler system off. The class yelled, straining their vocal cords, making veins stick out in their necks. After an hour they were too exhausted to do anything but feel the water raise up to their knees, then waists, then elbows. By now, everyone was crying, was confessing, was praying, except for Julian Polk. He glared at the giant dry erase board with his jaw set. When the water got to his nose, he inhaled deeply and purposefully.

Ms. Kent looked through the small window in the classroom door and smiled.