Staring at a Wall Chapters One and Two

1

The bright sun blazes down on the asphalt in front of the run-down apartment building I’ve called home since my dad got out of jail five years ago. Before that, we had a little house on the side of the road by a construction site, but we couldn’t pay it all off with three mouths to feed instead of two. So, we moved to this dump full of leaky pipes and creaky floors. The exterior makes the place look just about as sad as it is, plain brick with cheap windows, a few broken. Even the front door looks like it’s about to fall off its hinges as I carefully walk through. 

The lobby has a water-stained carpet and no other decorations, not even paint on the walls. I go up to our place via the rickety elevator that I’m almost one hundred percent certain will give out with someone inside one of these days. Our room is dimly lit due to the dying bulbs, lack of sunlight, and the television with the brightness on low. The latter of which my dad is stationed at, with a beer can graveyard on the side table, as always. My mom is at work right now. The way she will be for the foreseeable future, as long as she stays with my dad. I never see her anymore. If I were gone, I bet she wouldn’t even notice. I hate that she stays with him. He’s a sedentary freeloader who’s worth less than a random man off the streets of the slums. Always throwing around the fact that he’d have no place to stay if she left. Maybe that’d be good for him, help him learn the value of some hard work and respect. After all, the only reason he can’t just get a job and leave is that he got himself arrested like an idiot for trying to rob a gas station, of all things. If anyone is willing to try that when he has a wife and kids, they don’t deserve a family at all. A wife with a stable job, for that matter. 

I walk past without him noticing me at all. My room is a mess, clothes are scattered, stains from spilled drinks on the walls, and torn posters erratically hung up. I still have a couple hours before school starts, so I pop in my earbuds and boot up my iPod. Can’t afford anything fancier than an iPod and a flip phone, so that combination will just have to do. I put on my playlist and try to shut off my brain. Block off the concerns and the sadness. And the anger, especially the anger. That gets messy fast when it comes out, so I apply the barricade. The same barricade I use every day to keep things from veering off the edge. I sit for a second in what feels like peaceful silence, which in reality is the blasting music in my headphones, as I lean against the wall while in bed. I close my eyes and just focus for a minute on keeping things together, making sure that I don’t stick out, making sure the edges don’t show. “Even in darkness, there will always be a light. Even if that light is a flame, even though it can burn, doesn’t mean it will.” I whisper to myself. My grandma used to say that before she died last year. She was always better than both my parents combined, and I loved her so much for it. I miss her every day. Then I lay back, shut my eyes, and drown out the world around me. 

I check the clock an hour and a half later, I should head out for the evening session. I had to do an awful lot of negotiating to get it so that I could work the morning shift at the one fast food chain in the area. A McDonald’s that gets a lot of people in the drive-through in the mornings, getting crap food and coffee for breakfast or a treat. It gets me the income I need for things like my phone and iPod, because I’m damn well certain my parents wouldn’t splurge on non-necessities like those. Slowly, I shift my weight and get out of bed, moving over to the door to leave. Suddenly, my dad slams the door wide open.

“What have you been saying about me, girl?!” he yells, the scent of alcohol on his breath is strong. Very strong, even for him. He’s slurring his words slightly.

“Nothing, nothing at all! What are you talking about?”

“I heard you’ve been talkin’ shit about me to your little school friends. What’ve you been sayin’?” 

“I never said anything, I don’t even have any school friends.”

“Oh yes, I forgot. You’re a pathetic loser,” he says with enough mockery to offend even a rhinoceros.

“It’s not like you have much of a social life either. I mean, you don’t even leave the house. Dirty freeloader.” I mutter that last part near silently, but unfortunately, at that very moment, he was very perceptive of the words leaving my lips. SMACK! His slap knocks me to the ground, and I cry out in shock, pain, and not a small bit of indignation. He’s a large man, and not weak either. It was a hard hit, but not hard enough to leave physical proof. Not anywhere visible at least. He’s never done that before. Never gotten violent. His image distorts further in my head, switching from your run-of-the-mill dirtbag to a creature of violence, a creature of pain. I run past him, panting with the effort of lifting his hand and swinging it – likely more physical activity than he’s done in months – escaping out the door with the tote bag I use for school. 

2

The air has chilled rather comparably to its earlier temperature. It must have gone from sixty to fifty degrees in the last hour. Regretfully, outside factors have made it impossible for me to have a jacket, which would have been greatly preferable to the lack of protection currently on my arms. At least the school has a heater. Sort of… It’s better than this. I hurry on foot down the combination of sidewalk and eroded road that makes up my mile hike to school. As class starts at five, it’s best to get there on the earlier side. Safer to skip walking roadside during rush hour traffic. During the transition into winter, it’s also better to get there before it gets properly cold. The days are hot and the nights are cold, and, though I have to deal with it anyway, I’d rather not have both parts of my commute to be freezing.

When I come up on the school, it looks even more like the stereotype of a low-income area high school than it did when I first arrived. Then it had a dull glow of new possibilities, but now it just hums with despair. The despair of the staff who never made it past this point, and the despair of the students, who’ve largely had to accept that they’ll never make it where they wish to go. The whole foundation of the building looks ready to give way at any second. I don’t blame it; holding the dreams of those going nowhere sounds tiring in its futility. Anyway, they don’t even teach anything useful to go beyond this town. All the textbooks are from thirty-five years ago, and are largely filled with – what sounds like – a bunch of political propaganda against the Soviet Union. 

The inside isn’t much better, with beige, posterless walls and lockers with chipped paint. The fluorescent lights shine a spotlight on every flaw; both of the people, and the building itself. One would expect the evening session to be pretty sparse in numbers, but a large portion of students in the area need to work a job, so it’s actually relatively populated. There are about 200 students in the evening session, with four forty-five-minute classes. The catch being that much more homework has to be assigned to match the workload of the day students. At least each class is easy, and that’s not just me, the teachers go out of their way to help us out, or not help us out, more have less to grade. Anyway, no worse for us. 

“Hey, Ali.” I jump, startled. It’s not a voice I was anticipating, not that I was anticipating anyone.

“What?” I ask, a bit sharper than I intended. I wasn’t lying when I said I didn’t have any friends at school. However, I do have an ally, not a confidant, but an ally. We sit together and partner up on projects. It’s mutually beneficial, but we don’t talk much, or at all, most days. She’s never been the chatty type. 

“It’s really nothing, you just… I don’t know. You just seemed in a bad state.”

“I’m- I’ll be fine.”

“Okay, see you in class.” She heads off towards a faded green door with a placard reading “Room 217”. ‘American History’, my first class of the night. I trail behind her, finding my seat in the middle of the cramped, dreary room. Luckily, they have each class split between two rooms and two teachers; otherwise, it would be awful in here. The teacher I have in here, Mr. Stint, lives up to his name in the amount of information he supplies, both about how to do his assignments and the information given. However, almost every teacher who is made to work nights has this same attitude. Almost. 

“Evening.” Mr. Stint greets us as he enters the classroom, taking up his position at the front of the room. He looks even more drained than usual. Noticeably so. Luckily for us that means he’ll likely just give us a free period to work on some assignments he needs us to finish. Unluckily it means that if he assigns us a new assignment he will tell us next to nothing about how to complete it. The class is silent enough to hear a pen drop, a very rare occasion, especially for this crowd. “Would everyone pass over their assignments from yesterday? Then you can just find something to do. I’ll give out your homework at the end of class.”

One girl cautiously raises her hand. Mr. Stint shoots her a glare and she puts it down so fast that it collides with her water bottle before she can stop it. It clangs across the ground, rolling to Mr. Stint’s feet. “I’m so sorry! It’ll never happen again, I swear!” She says, a tint of fear lining her words. 

But it’s too late. He was close to the brink before, and this minor infraction of his list of rules has pushed him off. He grips the edges of his desk behind him and angles himself to face the girl more directly. Calmly, he begins “What is rule twenty-four of this room?”

“No excessively loud noise.” She replies, voice shaking.

“And what was that?”

“A loud noise.” Tears are welling in her eyes now, knowing the possibilities of what’s coming.

“Correct. And do you know what you did to me?”

“No, sir.”

“You gave your already migraine riddled teacher a worse headache than I already had. I’m going to leave now, because I have to. All due to you.” The girl nods, full-on crying now, both with guilt and fear for what’s coming. “Now, you’re going to have to face punishment. You have two choices: to join our day session students for a few weeks or to have to stay late for a few weeks.”

The girl looks scared, either way’s a bad bet. “ I- I- I’ll take the late stay. Thank you for the choice, sir.’ 

“Of course.” He smiles with a sinister edge. I wouldn’t trade places with her in a million years. Not my inclination to lose my job or my life, anyway. Walking that late means she’s basically screwed, that’s when most of the gangs in the area are most active, or, at least that’s usually the guessed time of death on the news. 

Mr. Stint then makes his way out of the classroom and leaves us to our own devices. Not like he’s supposed to do that, but volatile people are the only ones we can get to work at a school in a place like this. As expected, the moment Mr. Stint is out of earshot, the talking begins. Which over the next five minutes transitions into yelling and buffoonery. One guy is yelling random things to try and trigger people, based on the little he knows about each one of them. 

“Hey, Parsha! How’s work treatin’ ya? Oh right, ya got laid off.”

“Fuck off, jackass. You’re actin’ like a child.”

“I am a child.”

“You know exactly what I mean.” Parsha rolls her eyes and moves on, chatting with a mild mannered girl in the third row. I close my eyes to just chill for the rest of class, when suddenly ‘Mr. Offensive’ calls out my name.

“Ali, hey! How’s your dad been doing? Hopefully better. ‘Cause last I saw ‘im, ‘e was passed out in the alley by the liquor store.” He asks, laying the fake concern on thick. I open my mouth to retort, but before I can truly process what’s happening, I feel my fist colliding with his chin. 

“Ow! Holy shit man, it’s not that serious.” He touches a hand to his face, “Oh my god, I’m bleeding! What is wrong with you? What are you, some kinda psycho? Now I see why your dad’s a drunk, I would be too if my daughter was a lunatic.” He’s breathing hard, clearly panicking, but his words strike where he shouldn’t have tread. Then my hand’s moving, curling, and I feel the skin of his cheek. Then I hear the sound of him hitting the ground, and his chair clattering along with him. He looks horrified and hurt. Slowly, he gets up, and sprints from the room. 

After a second I register what has happened and sprint from the room in the opposite direction. I have to get out of here before anyone finds me. Or I break down in public. At this point I don’t know what’s worse, but one thing’s clear. Skipping is my best option. I make it through the empty hallways, running faster than I ever have. Soon the doors come into view and I quicken my pace faster still, escaping the suffocating air as I ram open the door. I keep running after I escape for what feels like a long time. A very long time. 

By the time I stop, I’m flushed but freezing from the air around me. I’ve ended up surrounded by trees. I’m lost. The realization crashes over me that I might die out here. I can’t think of anywhere near my house, or in town, with more than three trees, let alone a forest. I fall onto the ground; tired, ashamed, and despaired. I should never have been violent with him. I lean back against one of the many trees. That’s weird. It’s warm. I turn fully around to try and see it in the sun’s fading light. A faint warm glow is emanating from the base of the tree. When I peer closer, it very slowly, almost imperceptively pops open, as the warm light spreads across the ground. I don’t have anything to lose, so I pull the rest of the tree door open and go inside.