My school day starts out with a long, half an hour bus ride.
The irony of having to find a seat between juvenile delinquents and people who just, plainly, don’t like me.
I sit in a seat near the middle of the bus. The bus goes over bumps and potholes as I examine all the writing on the seat in front of me: ‘R.S. and G.H. Forever’ enclosed in a heart, ‘Tanya Gilmore is a slut’, and, “Grant G. has AIDS’. Those were the nicer messages in the mess of the graffiti.
I can barely hear myself over the kids buzzed on Monster drinks, talking about their weekend, and the hum of the bus. I lean my head against the window, but the noises only get worse. I try to close my eyes and dream of a place where I don’t have to be forced into everything; where I could be happy. I’m certain such a place could never exist.
The bus finally stops at Warren High, and I’m not sure I want to get off.
After homeroom, Art is my first class. My teacher, Mrs. Tyler, tells us to sketch self portraits of ourselves. She gives us mirrors.
I inspect myself for a long time. My teeth are too big, my eyes, too puffy. There are dark shadows beneath my eyes, and my forehead looks too big. I try to draw myself, but I can’t. My face looks like a bunch of squiggly charcoal lines. I try to erase them; the charcoal smears the paper. Miss Tyler tries to help me, but I think she knows I’m hopeless.
Next class: Earth Science. I sit in the back, staring confused at a picture in our textbooks of a volcano in Chile. I’ve always liked volcanoes; they seem calm, and then one day they just blow up. Reminds me of someone I know.
Our Earth Science teacher, I call him the Drone, goes into detail about the structure of a volcano. He spews out words at us, like magma, ash, and crust. I lose interest after awhile. Still, I have to admit, volcanoes are pretty cool. I doodle ugly faces on my binder until the class ends.
English is a lot like Earth Science. Not only is our English teacher Version 2.0 of the Drone, her voice sounds like the adults in the Peanuts cartoons.
Not many people listen except Casey Carpenter and Jenna Twig, who are members of our school’s division of the Honor Society and all the other clubs that’ll look good on college applications. Their nails are manicured and covered with coats of a pretty bubble gum pink nail polish, their hair curled into little ringlets that shape their faces.
Drone 2.0 is a little ugly. She’s got a bob that doesn’t really suit her black hair, and bangs that hang in her eyes sometimes.
I feel a little sorry for her. Not only does she have to deal with too many hyperactive, hormone-driven high school kids on a daily basis, but she has to convince teens who think reading is stupid to appreciate Homer and Shakespeare. I try to listen, but I can’t understand her voice. To me, it sounds like she’s speaking German; too many consonants and spitting sounds.
The rest of the morning moved in slow motion. French was uneventful. The teacher made us conjugate ‘etre’ a million times in our notes. My pen eventually ran out of ink.
Then lunch comes. The worst part of the day in my opinion. I slump off down the hallway and pull the hood on my sweater up. I take a deep breath, and enter what has been considered the ultimate torture chamber for teenagers.
The cafeteria. It’s a lot like a zoo. Each different species is congregated in one corner of the huge room. The strong, arrogant Sportsano jockus are tossing around a football at their table, while gulping down double servings of their lunches. A couple tables over, the most ruthless species Preppiea popular have on designer everything and are texting on their cell phones.
I sprint over to the lunch line, hoping that if I hurry, I won’t have to interact with all the dangerous animalia. I get a tray, and the lunch lady uses an ice cream scooper to plop something green and yellow, supposedly a casserole, on a plastic plate. I also grab a browning banana, a carton of juice, and a dish of red Jell-O.
I pay and then start weaving my way out of the cafeteria, looking forward to the nice calmness of the girls’ second floor bathroom. I’m almost toward the two double doors when the wind’s knocked out on me.
Of course they wouldn’t let me leave the cafeteria without my daily dose of humiliation.
I feel something liquidy run down the front of my shirt, and something gooey sticks to my neck. My tray is laying on my stomach, upside down. I hear laughing, but I learned to tune it out after the first couple times this happened to me.
“Such a loser,” someone murmurs, but I don’t dare look up. I’ve learned, through tactics of how to at least survive in high school, that you can’t look a bully in the face. It’s not worth bruises all over your body.
I feel wet tears stink my cheeks, and I start wiping off the sticky Jell-O mess on my shirt.
All I wanted was to belong! Who knew that would be so hard?
(Arrrgghhhh!!!
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