LOTF: Before and After

Phase 3: Chapter 55

Despite his inevitable separation from Jack, Ralph was otherwise optimistic about his return to school. He was entering his ninth grade year, his first year of high school. He was still attending Eastern Woodland Academy. The private school catered to students from Kindergarten all the way through senior year. This year, there were plenty of new kids in Ralph's grade as students from private middle schools were directed to ones like Eastern Woodland Academy that offered high school programs.

Ralph made a few new friends by the end of his first week back. Everyday, he had lunch with his friends in the cafeteria and then spent the rest of the break in the fitness room training. It was strange, though, the jump from middle to high school. It meant spending most of his time in completely new corridors. High school, middle school, and elementary school students were almost always separate from each other. Ralph only ever saw the younger students at the entry and dismissal bells each day. Their recess and lunch breaks were also different than that of other divisions.

It didn't take long for Ralph to grow tired of the thirty minute bus rides again. He didn't know anyone on his bus. Several of the students he travelled with were in different grades; most he didn't even recognize. He only ever saw them on the actual ride to and from school just before and after they'd all disappear through different doors of the school.

It was early in the last full week of August. It was brutally hot outside, and even more so as Ralph stepped inside the school bus at the end of a long school day. The bus, thankfully, had air conditioning but only when it was actually running. For the first ten or fifteen minutes he'd sit inside, the bus stayed off while the driver waited for the rest of the students to arrive. Ralph could feel the beads of sweat dripping down the back of his neck as he sat down in an empty seat. He reached his hand up to feel the strands of short hair that hung over his forehead; damp they were. It was an excruciating eleven minutes before the bus was finally turned on (and yes, Ralph was counting). The air conditioning finally flowed through the bus, the cold air pushing Ralph's hair back and off his dripping forehead; sweet, sweet relief.

As Ralph stepped off the bus a mere thirty-two minutes later, he considered begging his mom to start picking him up after school to avoid the heat and noise of the dreadful bus ride until the fall weather hit in mid to late September. He walked the half block from his bus stop to the house, sweating like a sumo wrestler, desperate for the ice cold shower he'd been dreaming about all day.

When he finally got in the door, his dad was there on the phone in the living room, pacing around as he talked. Ralph could tell it was a work call, and waved silently at his father when he noticed him. Jeffery smiled and waved back but quickly diverted his attention back to the call. Ralph hung his backpack up on the coatrack and decided to take advantage of his father being out of his office. Ralph trekked quietly down the hall to then sit down on his dad's spiny chair at his desk in front of the desktop computer. Ralph was just about to open the internet to search up the weekly weather forecast for East Point, Georgia when his eyes scanned the screen in front of him. His dad's email inbox was left open on the screen. Ralph nearly minimized the window just before his eyes found an e-mail that caught his attention. He was surprised to see Bainbridge Military Academy as the sender of the email at the top of Jeffery's list. Ralph thought his dad must've been looking through old emails until he noticed the date in the right hand corner: 08/17/1992; just over a week ago now. The email wasn't bolded in the inbox meaning it had already been opened and read. Ralph glanced out the doorway to see if his father was coming down the hall. All he could hear was the faint sound of Jeffery's voice talking in the living room. Ralph turned back to the computer and reluctantly clicked on the email from his former school.

"Dear Our Bainbridge Military Academy Community,

Here at Bainbridge Military Academy, the hearts of our staff and students are heavy as we approach the two year anniversary of a tragic event that struck our school community, city, state, and country. On September 6th 1990, students of our Unit 8 squadron here at Bainbridge Military Academy were preparing for the two-month International Military Training Program we offer in partnership with top ranking RAF joint military bases in the U.K. Unfortunately, we were devastated to learn that the plane our cadets and captain were on crashed in the North Atlantic Ocean during their flight to England. Of the forty-one passengers on board, only twenty-two survived the accident and were rescued from a nearby island nearly five months later.