Phases 3

Chapter 4



I put the last of my boxes in the moving van and turned to watch Dad, he was the reason for the boxes, the reason for the move, and I wanted to resent him, wanted to be angry that I had my backpack propped against our family station wagon, the one that we would be driving to Vermont, the other car was being hitched to the back of the moving van and dragged to the new house, and I couldn’t help but sympathize with it. I had at least two days full of trashy novels in my bag, and I almost wished that it was full of school books; I wanted to be borrowing the car to drive to my first day of senior year, not the two day drive to Vermont to start a new school. I looked up and down the street, the one that I had called home all my seventeen years, and watched as kids played in their front yards on the last few days before school started up again. I would have given my last week of summer for this to be the first day of school back with my friends, I would have given anything for my parents to suddenly say that we weren’t going to move, that it had all been a mistake, but I put my backpack in the back seat of the car, knowing that that would never happen.

I had said my good-byes to my friends the day before; I didn’t want them seeing me cry as I pulled away from my childhood home, and I thought it would be easer to say good-bye to the city I had grown up in, if I didn’t have people crowding around me; now I wished they had come, that I could surround myself with familiarity so that I didn’t feel so alone. Alone, it was something I was going to have to get used to, something I was going to have to embrace. I was going to start my last year of high school completely by myself, walking through hallways that I didn’t know, with kids that I had never seen before and get used to all new teachers and classrooms and new sounds and smells and a new life that I didn’t want.

The moving truck door slammed closed in front of me, and the movers made their way to the cab of the truck, so that they could start their long journey. I wondered if it would be childish if I waved good-bye to my things, but decided against it. Dad watched me from the front lawn, while mom got into the car and buckled herself in. She hadn’t said much in the past few days, as if while putting things in boxes she had accidently packed away her voice and thoughts as well. She had been moving through a haze, which I was well familiar with by now, because I had been living in it too, ever since dad said the word ‘move,’ but it seemed to have just hit mom in the past week, like it hadn’t become real until the moving boxes started getting closed up with brown packing tape.

“Come on, Sweetie, its time to hit the road. We have a long drive ahead of us.” Dad was talking only to break the silence, we had done all of our packing that morning without any extraneous talking, and I think it was starting to wear at him; for me, we could go all the way to the new house without saying anything, it was less likely that something would make me cry, would remind me that I was leaving everything behind, if we just stayed quiet. But, dad was determined. “How about we play a car game?”

Mom gave him the same ‘are you crazy’ look I gave to the back of his seat. “Tom, don’t you think that Morgan is too old to be playing car games?” She smoothed the hair down the back of his head, trying to placate him. It was an old gesture, one built from long years of marriage, something that I didn’t even think mom knew that she was doing, but it seemed to calm dad’s nerves, which had been wearing thin from the silence.

“Morgan might be, but I’m not.” Dad tried for another half hour to get us to play twenty questions and license plate poker, but finally gave up, and I immersed myself in my first book. We stopped for lunch when we hit the Indiana boarder, pausing only to get out and eat at McDonalds. Our goal was to make it to the new house before the moving van, but not too much before the moving van, because the only things that we had in the car with us where moms plants and some of our cloths, plus my stash of books. I couldn’t imagine what mom and dad would be doing when they weren’t driving, since we where taking turns, but mom had long since finished the paper and had taken to staring out the window. We had opted to keep the radio off, since none of us could agree on what we wanted to listen to, and I preferred silence for reading anyway.

After lunch, mom took the wheel, and dad and I switched seats, he lay down in the back and was soon snoring enough to disturb my reading. “Mom?” she turned to look at me briefly before her eyes went back to the road.

“Yeah, Sweetie?” she looked board, but then the only thing to look at out the windshield was the same thing that had been there for the past five hours, field upon field of farm land, and the occasional cow, sometimes a house or a tree.

“What are you going to do once we get to Vermont?” Mom had been teaching pre-school for my entire life, she had been my pre-school teacher once upon a time, and had loved doing it, but she hadn’t mentioned anything about a job when we talked about our move, and had opted out of coming with us to look at the house and school when we went to Vermont.

“I suppose I will unpack and settle in. There’s a lot to do to the house before I’ll feel like its home.” She smiled at me, but it didn’t reach her eyes.

“No, I mean, for work. Are you going to go back to teaching?” I couldn’t imagine mom staying home all day, she was someone who was always doing something, either coming up with a new project for her class or making something, in the summers it was writing, but none the less, she was always moving, thinking of her being still saddened me.

“I don’t really know, Sweetie. Not this year, I think. I really want to settle in, be there to help you with college; I think I’m ready for some time off, maybe I’ll do some writing, you know how I’m always saying that I’m going to.” Mom had been talking about writing a book for as long as I could remember, but she never really seemed to have the time to finish it, between work and home and me and dad, she was always busy with something that kept her from doing anything else. Mom had always been the happy homemaker type, she was constantly redecorating a room, or adding something to make the place feel more homely, which was one of the reasons that I was so sad to leave our house; my room had changed and grown as I had, mom and I had redecorated it several times, or re-painted it, to more suit my age and interests. For the past few years it had been blue, as I had moved out of my tiny-bopper pink faze and wanted something a little more subtle. I had posters of different paintings that I liked instead of the usual band posters, and I had surrounded my room with the stuffed animals that I had collected though out my youth. Everything in our house felt lived in, felt like family, from the warm browns and golds and yellows of the kitchen, to the peaches and creams in the master bathroom. Mom would have more then enough to occupy her with the new house, which was all bear walls and white everywhere.

“That sounds like a good idea. Do you know what you want to write?” I wanted my mom to be happy, and she seemed almost as upset about the move as I felt, though she was trying really hard to hide it; something in the back of my mind told me that the move wasn’t at all mom’s idea, that dad had pushed for it, but for what reason, I wasn’t sure.

Mom just shrugged and went back to staring at the road ahead of her, dad’s snoring was the only noise in the car, and I tried to go back to my book. I checked the dash board, and wondered if we had changed time zones, but I couldn’t remember where the dividing line was between central and eastern; I wanted to ask mom, but she didn’t seem like she wanted to say anything else.

The hours ticked by slowly, and we stopped for dinner, just on the western side of Columbus, Ohio. We stopped at a Denny’s; so that we could take a bit more time then we had with lunch. My legs hurt and my butt had long since fallen asleep, and all I wanted to do was curl up in a nice warm bed and sleep for like a week. It surprised me how much sitting in a car for a day could tire a person out. Dinner was a quiet affair, mom and dad talked about what they had read in the news paper, since they had both taken turns reading it, and they asked me about the book I was reading, which was strange, since they never took an interest in my reading material, unless mom was making fun of my choices; I think that they where just starved for a topic that had nothing to do with our move and the fact that we had left our home, that they where just choosing anything that seemed safe. Mom and dad settled on the war, which was always a topic of conversation between them, they both chose a stand point, and then argued until dinner was over, it wasn’t necessarily reflective of their accentual opinion, but it made for a lively debate, and usually really good dinner conversation, they where both intellectuals and both very well read, and it showed when the argued.

I tuned them out as soon as they where done asking me questions, and started to pick at my food, pushing my salad around my plate until the waitress came by to take it away and hand me my hamburger, which I managed to eat half of and then felt sick. I spent the rest of the meal finding new ways to stack my French fries until mom took the plate away and gave me a scathing look for being so very impolite in public. I rolled my eyes, it didn’t really matter how I acted out here, no one that we saw tonight would ever see us again, they could think what ever they wanted about my manners and how my parents raised me, that they wanted, as far as I was concerned their opinions where inconsequential, but mom gave me her best, your embarrassing me look, and I put down the last fry and folded my hands in my lap. I wanted with every part of me to argue, but that would just make the rest of the car trip unbearable, and I had already used up my temper tantrum over this move, I didn’t get another strike; I didn’t want to start my life in this new town grounded, despite the fact that I didn’t know anyone, and didn’t have anywhere to go, it was just the principle of the matter. I reigned in my temper and sat on it until dad paid the check and I was behind the wheel.

I drove in the dark until around ten; we had passed through Pennsylvania and into New York when I finally pulled the car over into a motel parking lot. Dad went in and got us two rooms that where next to each other, and I collapsed onto my bed and was asleep before I even got my shoes off.

The next day was a repeat of the first, only I started the day feeling gross. I woke up in my cloths from the day before, and couldn’t find any shampoo other then the kind that they leave in the motel bathroom, which is never accompanied by conditioner, so my hair felt like straw and was tangled all day. I took fifteen minutes and wrestled it into a braid down my back, but every time it brushed against my skin it made me shiver. I changed my cloths, but I still smelled like the motel room, and I just wanted to get out of there, but my parents seemed to need forever to get ready. I was a pack and go kind of person, so it really didn’t make sense to me that I had two parents that could take an eternity to do the smallest things. Mom was completely inefficient in her movements, choosing to flit from one side of the room to the other, never quite finishing a task before starting the next, dad lay in bed until mom had to actually push him out and make him pack and change, and just when we thought we where ready to go, mom had to go to the bathroom, which for some reason always seemed to take twenty minutes, because she inevitably also had to change.

Mom came out to the car first, and her face told me all I needed to know; she was as unhappy with the fact that we where in the middle of no where with still a day to drive, as I was. She looked a bit like she had sucked on a lemon and a little like she had seen a ghost; that wide eyed look with her lips pursed. I decided not to try to start a conversation with her, and just settled myself into the car with my book to wait dad out. Mom wasn’t as good at waiting as I was, and turned on the car, and the air conditioning, then starting honking the horn after about five minutes, which I’m sure didn’t endear us to anyone who was still sleeping in the motel, since it was only eight o’clock in the morning. Luckily dad took the hint and came out of the room quickly, with his overnight bag and a big smile on his face; he did not take the sour looks on either mom or my face into account.

“Alright, family lets head off to breakfast. Isn’t in beautiful here, mountain air, picturesque scenery.” He beamed at me over his shoulder and I scowled back.

“Coffee, now, please.” Mom said, and then pointed at the road, as if to give dad a hint.

“I second that.” I followed moms lead and pointed, mom frowned at me, and I just shrugged at her, if it was okay for her, I didn’t see why I got a look for doing the same thing. Dad stopped smiling and put the car into drive, pointing the car in the direction that we needed to go, and went searching for coffee, probably hoping to make his family more pleasant. I wasn’t beating on that happening anytime today, I may have gotten a full night sleep, but it was a crappy one, and mom didn’t look like she had faired any better. Her make-up was hiding the dark circles that I knew where under her eyes, but it couldn’t hide the glassy look she had and I was sure I had the same glazed over expression that she had, only my circles where showing, since I couldn’t bring myself to put on any make-up for a drive in the car.

The day continued that way, with dad trying to be cheerful and mom shooting him down. At any other time, I would say that my parents where fighting, but I blamed the tension on the move and being stuck in a small space with each other for two days, even under the best of circumstances our family didn’t do well in a small confined space with nowhere to go for days on end, and these where definitely not the best of circumstances. I didn’t feel like I had to be worried, but it was irritating to deal with, the upside was that it distracted me enough from the move that I didn’t feel like crying constantly.

We arrived in Burlington a little after noon, and had lunch in a strip of shops that the locals called Church Street, we ate at a small sandwich shop before spending a few hours looking at the shops and watching the people go by. Dad called the moving truck to see how far away they where, and decided that we could spend the afternoon in the city without risking missing the truck. I was anxious to get to the house and unpack, but at the same time, I wasn’t ready to start my new life, I was happy to linger for a while in this Limbo that my parents had created by the road trip.

“We can come back next week before school starts and get you your back to school cloths. It’ll be fun, we can also shop for things for the house, I know your going to want some new stuff for your room, and we have so much painting to do. I can’t stand the white walls this house has.” Mom seemed to brighten in the sunlit street while she flitted from one shop to the other, looking at all different kinds of things that where displayed in the windows. For the most part, the stores where the same ones we had back home, with a few local exceptions.

“That sounds nice.” I distractedly answered moms offer to take me shopping while I looked in the window of a candle store; I could almost see the scent of the candles wafting out of the open doorway, and I wanted to go in, but my parents where urging me back to the car.

One thing that I had noticed about most of the stores, was that their doors where open to the elements, granted, it was a beautiful day, but just about anyone could reach into the open door and take what ever was closest, and no one would be able to stop them. This didn’t seem to be a concern to any of the proprietors though. Back home, doors where always securely closed and security devices where on everything to prevent theft. Looking into these shops was almost like taking a step back into time, back when people really did trust their neighbors and community meant community.

The last forty five minutes of the trip felt like dying. I was really leaving my old life, though I had said good-bye in St. Louis, these last few miles clenched it, we really where gone, and this really was where we were going. The long driveway looked ominous in the dark, like the beginning of a spooky movie, and I couldn’t help but think that this wasn’t the best way to start a new stage in my life.



Chapter 5



The school year started all too soon. My trip to Burlington with my mother had been fun; we had gotten school stuff and tons of new things for my room; I sort of felt like she was trying to make up for the move by buying me things, but that wasn’t going to stop me from accepting. In the week since I had moved I had gotten e-mails from everyone at home and even a few letters in the mail. Mark had written to me everyday, trying to convince me that it really would work even though we were so far apart. I was flattered, but every time I read one of his letters my heart hurt for him; we had been together so long that I really couldn’t imagine life without him, and here I was starting senior year without him, or the rest of my friends. I selfishly hoped that once the school year started he would find someone or something else to occupy his time, and his letters would drop off, because they hurt to read.

I got up super early on the first day of school, I had spent an hour the night before picking out something to wear with mom, but as soon as I got up, I was indecisive again. I got in the shower, and brushed my teeth, dried and combed my hair, and then stared at the faded blue jeans and the burgundy empire wasted top mom and I had picked out. Suddenly it felt too big city trendy, most of the kids I had seen walking around town where in tank tops and t-shirts; I wanted desperately not to stick out, though I knew it was inevitable. I rummaged through my drawers and pulled out a bright blue tank and a Wash-U sweatshirt to tie around my waist, and threw on the jeans and a pair of my cute new boots that mom had gotten me, and ran out of my room before I could decide to change.

At breakfast, I couldn’t decide if I was more upset that my friends weren’t going to be going to school with me or if I was more nervous about going to a new school, but either way, the food tasted like sawdust in my mouth, and started to make me feel sick to my stomach after only a few bites.

“Sweetie, you really do have to eat more then that, if you want to be nice and ready for your first day of school.” Dad beamed at me, he had been doing that ever since we had moved to the new house. He seemed to have embraced the move for the entire family, even while mom and I where still adjusting, dad was gung-ho about anything and everything.

I gave him a scathing look, “I’m not six anymore, if I don’t want to eat before school I don’t have to.” I tossed my spoon into the bowl of cereal on the table and stalked off to the front hall to find my back pack, which was still empty of books, but filled with notebooks and pens and everything else you need to start school. I looked inside to make sure that no one had added a pack of crayola crayons while I wasn’t looking. Nothing seemed amiss in my backpack, so I zipped it and hefted it onto my back, calling to my mother over my shoulder as I made my way out of the house to the car. It wasn’t that I was really eager to get to school, but more that I really needed to get away from the house. I felt like a petulant teenager talking to my dad that way, but in the past week our once strong and close relationship seemed to have fizzled into a passing tolerance with one another; while dad and I grew apart, mom and I found more things in common and where spending more time together. The searing loneliness that I had expected was starting to set in, as it would for anyone my age that only had their parents to spend time with.

Dad had started work immediately, he was gone late into the evening on most days, but made the effort to have breakfast with us each morning. It was a nice gesture on his part, but not one that he had fully thought out, because his early morning breakfast meant that mom dragged me out of bed at seven am during my summer vacation, and I can’t imagine that I was particularly good company, being that I wasn’t good company in the morning under the best of circumstances, let alone when you get me up on my summer vacation for no real reason. Despite my surly attitude, dad smiled and joked though it all, on the other hand, mom got more and more quiet. On the first day at the house he broke our rule of having dinner together every night, and since had only made one appearance at the dinner table.

Mom hadn’t really settled into the house, sure, she had moved all of our stuff in, and had started decorating and choosing paint colors, and the painters where coming in the next week, but she hadn’t nested; the house had this empty feel, like we where living on the surface of it, and not really in it. I had never moved before, I had lived in the same house my entire life, but I couldn’t help but wonder when this house would stop being someone else’s and start being ours, start to feel like home and not just the house in Vermont that we happened to live in. This was supposed to be a new chapter in my life, a new beginning, but I felt a bit like I was on an extended vacation, not like I was somewhere new to stay.

Mom made her way out to the car shortly after I got there. I had placed my pack next to the passenger side door and waited for her to unlock the door, standing out in the nice fall weather I couldn’t help but be a bit uncomfortable with the coolness of the day. When I started school it was usually over ninety degrees and more humid then the human body was supposed to be able to stand, instead it was barely eighty degrees and there was a light breeze that was making everything feel like late October. I really didn’t think that I would ever get used to this kind of weather, and I felt out of sorts with the climate change, but there really wasn’t anything I could do to help myself feel better. I had to keep reminding myself that this really was the first day of school, and I wasn’t starting in the middle of the semester, because I kept forgetting.

The ride to school was in relative silence, mom really didn’t know what to say to me, and I did want to talk about nothing just to pass the time. I felt like a small child being escorted to kindergarten for the first time, because mom insisted on coming in with me. I had gotten all of my classes during my trip with dad, but the principal wanted to meet with my mom and me before I went to my first class, and welcome me to the school. They also wanted to have a student escort me around for my first few classes to make sure I knew how to navigate the school; I thought it was completely ludicrous, the school was about the size of a postage stamp, and I was pretty confident that I could troubleshoot my way though the halls in the five minutes that was aloud for passing time.

The principals office was just a clinical and boring as every other room I had been in thus far, the walls where white and the window looked out onto the school parking lot, everything on his desk was placed precisely and neatly away from everything else. The entire room looked like one of those pictures in a magazine that depicted a perfect office, and it made me uncomfortable.

“Good morning, Ms. Fischer and Mrs. Fischer welcome to Madison County High School, home of the fighting Timber Wolves,” why did it always have to be the fighting something’s, why couldn’t there be another adjective to describe the team, like the combative or the warlike, or even something pleasant like the hospitable or friendly mascots, I knew that was a bit of a stretch, but it always bothered me that the school teams always seemed to be at war. “Our school colors are gray and green, and if you want to support your school and our teams, you can get any of an assortment of products with our school logo in the cafeteria during lunch.” He sounded like a TV commercial, and he looked as weirdly clean cut as an infomercial spokes person. He instantly made me as uneasy as his office had me feeling upon entry. I couldn’t wait to get out of the room, and just get on with my day so that I could go home and forget myself in a book for a few hours. Unfortunately, mom had other ideas, and started asking Dr. Trevers, as he finally introduced himself, questions about the school and activities and the area, all things that I had covered with Mrs. What-Ever-Her-Name-Was when I came to get my schedule with dad.

The bell finally sounded to alert students that the first period of the day was beginning, and Dr. Trevers escorted in a girl who had to be my age, and because we shared our first few classes together she was to show me around the school. She was pretty, in a too small almost boyish way. She had short blonde hair and piercing eyes that where almost eerie, but other then that she was just pretty, nothing that really stood out at you. She smiled weakly at me, as if it pained her to do so, and introduced herself to me, but her name didn’t stick in my head. She told me to gather my books and then left the room without another word. I dug my schedule out of my bag as we walked and looked to see where I was going; the room numbers didn’t seem to go above ten on either floor, but then that could be because I didn’t have a class in any room that had a number above ten; my first class was English Literature. I was actually excited about Lit, I love to read and the prospect of being introduced to new books always made me happy. At my old school I would have had a different class, I would have been taking an intensive in Renascence Literature in Europe, which bummed me out a bit, but this was an AP class and I really wanted the college credit, it was my only AP class other then Biology.

My teachers name was Ms. Hart, no ‘E,’ and she seemed nice, if a bit unapproachable. She didn’t bother to introduce me to the class, the way that I had seen new kids who would start at my old school introduced, she just shooed me from her desk and told me to find a seat. I was late, there where only a few desks left for me to choose from, and all of them where in the front row. The girl who was supposed to show me around had already abandoned me for her friends, and was chatting with them in the corner, where they had undoubtingly saved her a seat. I felt a surge of jealousy, once upon a time, it would have been my friends saving me a seat; it was my first day of senior year, I should have people to save my seat and wait for me to get to class, but here I was, gazing over the classroom trying to decide where I should sit. I chose the seat closest to the door, so that I could make a hasty exit as soon as class was over. I was already getting unfriendly stares from my fellow students, and I hadn’t even said anything yet, I didn’t really want to stick around for them after class.

Ms. Hart handed out the syllabus and then spent the class going over it, telling us how she wanted each paper written, what we were going to read; I felt like a kid again, none of my teachers at home still went over the syllabus, we read them on our own, because we were all expected to be able to read, and then if we had questions, we would come to the teacher later and ask. Our first book was Pride and Prejudice, a book that I had read thousands of times over, on the syllabus was scheduled time for us to watch one of the movies based on the book. I was disappointed, I wasn’t an advocate of teaching by movie, I always thought that it just made the lazy kids lazier, and gave them an excuse to not read, but since the teacher didn’t ask my opinion, and didn’t seem in the least open to it, I kept my thoughts to myself. At my old school, where I was well known for speaking my mind, I would have said something.

I spent the class period reading the syllabus and avoiding saying anything to anyone. I could hear the kids in the back of the room chatting to each other, like the teacher wasn’t even there, and she did nothing about it. I was happy when the bell rang and the forty minutes where over.

I practically ran out of the room, trying to avoid any more glares from my classmates, and only earned myself more glares in the hallway. I felt like a freak, absolutely everyone looked at me as I passed though the halls. I ducked into the bathroom as soon as I found one, to see if I had anything on my face, or if I had spilled something on my shirt at breakfast, but I looked fine, nothing was wrong; I didn’t even have funny hair. My face was clean, with only a light dusting of bronzer and some mascara, and my tank top was as pristine as it has been when I put it on in the morning, regardless I felt like I had ‘New Kid’ written across my forehead. I leaned against the bathroom door for a moment, collecting myself, unsure as to whether I wanted to go back into the hallway, but finally pushed off the door and headed to the second floor for Art History. Mr. Sorensen as a severe looking man, with a black goatee and long black hair pulled back into a low pony tail; if he hadn’t been wearing jeans and a button up shirt I would have thought that he was one of the villains from my fantasy novels. He glared over the classroom as if he was a medieval king and this was his domain. The syllabus was already on the desk as I sat down, choosing again the seat closest to the door, I began to flip through it to see what would be expected of me as students continued to filter into the room.

I was just about to put up the paper and pull out my notebook, hoping that there would be some actual learning in this class to make the time pass more quickly, when a shadow fell over my desk. I looked up and there was a tall boy, who must have been one of the football players, or at least I hoped he was, because he was almost as broad as I was tall. He was handsome enough, in that cruel way that lots of girls in high school tended to go for, dark hair cut close to his head and hooded eyes, a mean jaw and a forehead that seemed to overhang a bit too much for my liking; he was scowling at me.

“Can I help you,” I asked, looking up at him.

“You’re in my seat.” His voice was so low it sounded like he was growling, which wasn’t possible, since he was a boy and not a dog.

“It’s the first day of class; we don’t have assigned seats yet.” I looked around the room, seeing that half the seats where still empty. “There is a nice seat right behind me that isn’t taken.” I smiled at him to let him know I wasn’t being sarcastic, but trying to be friendly.

“You’re in my seat.” He repeated, trying to use his height to intimidate me into moving, and I had to admit that his height was impressive, but I was already seated and settled in, and I really didn’t want to back down to this guy.

“You can sit here tomorrow, but today, this is my seat.” I was annoyed now, he was just glaring at me uncomprehendingly, it was obvious that this was a guy who got everything he asked for, and I had no intention of moving. I glanced at the teacher, who wasn’t five feet away, but he was ignoring what was happening. I thought of calling for him to help, but I didn’t want to look like I needed the teachers help, I wanted to be able to handle this on my own.

“Get up, or I’ll make you get up.” He growled even lower at me, placing his hands on the desk and shoving his face close to mine.

“Are you threatening me?” I glanced at the teacher again desperately, hoping that he was finally paying attention to what was happening right in front of him.

“He won’t help you. Now get up.” His face was contorted into a sneer.

“No.” I said with a note of finality. I thought that that would be the ending, he stood up and started to move away, but then I felt myself being lifted out of the chair and dumped onto the ground, my school belongings discarded on top of me.

“Mr. Davis, perhaps that could have been settled a bit differently.” Was the only response from Mr. Sorensen, who was now officially my least favorite teacher.

I picked myself up off the ground and gathered my things. I moved to the seat behind Mr. Davis and resettled myself. I pulled out my notebook, but was too angry at the teacher for doing nothing to really take notes while he lectured about the course we would be taking this semester. I watched the clock tick off the minutes until the bell, though I really couldn’t remember the bell schedule that I had been given several weeks ago. As I was watching, the clock seemed to slow down, taking longer and longer to tick off each second.

When the bell finally rang I grabbed my stuff and tried to bolt from the room when a hand on my arm stopped me. I was pulled out of the flow of students and shoved up against the wall of the classroom, feeling the posters and papers crunch beneath my weight.

“You need to leave Mr. Davis alone.” It was Mr. Sorensen, he looked me directly in the eye, as if he was trying to convey a message that I just wasn’t getting. “He’s not someone to mess with.”

“I didn’t mess with him, Mr. Sorensen, he threatened me, and if you had been doing your job I wouldn’t have been thrown onto the floor.” I pulled my arm out of his grip with a bit of difficulty, and I hoped that he didn’t leave a bruise, that was really the last thing that I needed today. “And it’s a bit inappropriate for a teacher to be manhandling a students like this don’t you think?”

“Look, young lady, your new to this school, so I’m going to give you a break today, but if you lip off to me again, and cause a disturbance in my class like the one you did today, we’re going to have to talk to the principal.” He stalked back behind his desk, and started pulling out slides for his next class. I wanted to cry. I was only two classes into the school day, and I couldn’t wait to go home. Back in St. Louis, school had been like a sanctuary to me, a place where I could feel comfortable and safe; I felt anything but safe at Madison County High School, and I didn’t know who to talk to about what had happened in class. Mr. Sorensen had seemed so sure that the principal would take his side, threatening me to visit him after I had done nothing wrong. Mrs. Hogan would have listened fairly to both sides and come to an unprejudiced conclusion, I didn’t feel the same way about Dr. Trevers, he was too neat and tidy, to perfect to really be real or approachable to the students.

My next class was in the gym, which I didn’t know how to get to, going up and down the stairs was easy enough, but I hadn’t seen the gym yet at all, and I wasn’t sure how I should go about getting there. I was afraid to ask any of the students, and my guide had abandoned me in favor of spending time with her friends. With five minutes to get to class, and already a few of them gone, due to being stopped by my teacher, now I only had a few minutes to scramble around the school and find the gym and hold back tears of frustration and anger. As first days go, this one couldn’t be worse.

The gym turned out to be a building that was out behind the school, not actually attached to the main building. I would have never made it if one of the custodians, who saw me wonder around looking lost, hadn’t directed me. I couldn’t help but wonder how miserable this walk was going to be when there where several feet of snow on the ground during the winter and I had been assured that there would be several feet of snow, nothing like the measly inch we may get in St. Louis that melted in the sun the next day, once the snow hit, it was there for the entire winter.

When I got inside, I was definitely late, and the teacher, who looked like a slightly smaller and less green version of the Hulk, stopped talking, and glared at me; which was the reaction I pretty much got from everyone at the school with the exception of the principal that morning, and I was starting to get used to it.

“Can I help you?” the teacher asked in a nasty voice making me feel even less at home then the previous two teachers had.

“Sorry I’m late, I got lost, I’m new.” I tried to look as pathetic and waif like as I could, though at five foot seven and well proportioned and curvy, I don’t think I pulled it off well at all.

“Well, then you should have stuck with your ambassador. She was here on time.” I really didn’t want to argue with him, or deal with anymore attention, so I just nodded and took a seat on the floor; as soon as I did, several of the kids who where sitting near me scooted away, not much, but enough to let me know that they where unhappy that I had sat near them. The teacher gave me a look of disgust and continued to lecture about the ‘team’ sports that we would be playing for the rest of the semester. I hated gym, which I had to admit was strange for someone who was as admiment about sports as I was, but gym class was just unpleasant, and I was just glad that we weren’t expected to dress out, because I really didn’t want to have to be in a locker room alone with any of these girls, even though, I was pretty sure that the teacher wouldn’t break up a fight even if he did witness one.

Gym went quickly, possibly because I had missed the first five minutes, and I was more then happy to get out of the building, which smelled like old sweat socks and dust bunnies. History flew by, my teacher was about as friendly as the rest of them had been, and I was really starting to feel unwelcome in the school, like they where a secret society of some kind, and they where tolerating my intrusion only because they had to. In biology the teacher seemed a bit too excited about the prospect of getting to dissect animals this year, and when I looked at the syllabus that had been handed out I noticed that there where several dissections scheduled in the first semester, which I thought was a bit strange, but since it wasn’t my classroom, I wasn’t going to try arguing, Ms. Metzger might decide that she wanted to slaughter me instead of the rabbit that was on the table for next week. The room smelled like formaldehyde and had an undertone of something else, it smelled almost the way pennies tasted, not that I spent that much time putting coins in my mouth.

When biology was over, I couldn’t have been more happy, I finally had lunch, an entire forty five minute period where I could get away from the stares of my classmates and teachers, I could go to my locker and I could eat my lunch in peace. I put all the books that I had gotten so far into my locker, since I wasn’t going to need any of them for homework. I was surprised that not one teacher so far had assigned homework, since it was my senior year, and I expected a hefty back to school load, but there wasn’t even a ‘what you did this summer’ essay that we needed to write, or book introductions to read, nothing. I shrugged, not wanting to jinx my good luck, and locked my locker before getting my lunch from my bag and heading outside to a small grove of trees that I had seen off the parking lot.

No one was outside when I got there, so I pulled my book out of my bag and read while I munched on my sandwich. Lunch used to be a highly social time for me. I’m not saying that I was super popular or anything, but I had my group of friends, we all played volleyball and a good deal of the time our boyfriends and some other girls we hung out with outside of the team would come and sit with us too. I was up for captain this year, and had been a junior captain last year, and that had a sort of cashé in the social world. Here, I couldn’t even get a friendly look. Wasn’t there always supposed to be that one group of kids, who weren’t necessarily the most popular, but where kind hearted, that welcomed in the new kid? Well, this school seemed to be lacking theirs. Lunch was quickly becoming my favorite class of the day, it was quiet, no one was looking at me like I was some kind of alien and I wasn’t being threatened. Though I know I was going to have to do something about second period and Mr. Davis, I still hadn’t come up with anything other then tattling to my parents, and that just didn’t seem like a solution. It was one o’clock when lunch was over, and I had two more classes to suffer through; I had given up looking forward to any of them, despite the fact that they where my calculus class, and I liked math, and my creative writing class.

Math wasn’t bad, I got there after the rest of the class and the teacher basically ignored me as I walked in and took the only available seat. If asked before today, I would have been really upset that the teacher didn’t pay any attention to me, not even looking up when I walked in the door, but today I was grateful for it. No one looked at me, or talked to me, I took notes while the teacher talked, packed my bag and got out of class as soon as the bell rang. We had no homework, again. Creative Writing was the nightmare I hoped it wouldn’t be. The teacher grilled me on where I was from, what I did this past summer, what kind of writing I had done in the past, all the while the entire class looked at me like predators on the hunt; waiting for me to say something they could pick at, make me feel bad about, hurt me with later. Their looks made me sick to my stomach with nerves, the teacher’s feral eyes didn’t help at all, and she didn’t take them off me until the bell rang at three thirty. She hadn’t asked any of the other kids anything.

After class I contemplated running to my locker and throwing the last of my books in, but decided that I would much rather be in my mom’s car then anywhere near the school. I bolted outside, praying to anyone that would hear me that my mom would be on time, and we could get out of there quickly. I hated school for the first time in my life, and all I wanted to do was cry in my mother’s arms and to be at home in St. Louis in my pretty blue bedroom.

Mom’s car sat a few back in the line in front of the school. She had all her windows rolled up, and looked like she was huddling in on herself, which was unusual, because my mom was a social parent. Normally, I would have found her chatting with another parent, whether she knew them or not, to her, the fact that we went to the same school was enough of a connection for her to start a conversation with someone. Some thing about these people made my otherwise talkative mother hide in her car, and I really couldn’t blame her.