p e n u m b r a (discontinued)

Chapter 5: Social Heirachy

The day seems to speed right by. I simply go to my classes and leave. It's like a very boring movie and I'm still waiting for the climax. I don't really try my best to make new friends or anything. I take it upon myself to lay low and observe. I should be mindful of who I can hang out with and who looks like trouble. This isn't exactly hard at all since there are so many cliques involved. All I have to do is ask Maya and Scarlette at gym, and they take pride knowing that I could come to them with my questioning.

"Believe it or not the social hierarchy chain is pretty organized. Here, let's draw a web." Scarlette tears a page out of her notebook and begins to draw. Waiting for her to finish, I feel shocked and rather disgusted by how strict it is to simply be in the same building with a group of people. I roll my eyes watching the progression of Scarlette's "clique web". This moment is so surreal, as if it came straight out of the "Mean Girls" movie. The notion that high school would be much more simple was naive of me.

"Does this look accurate Maya?" she handed the web to Maya, and Maya scanned it over with analytical eyes.

"Wait no, separate the hipsters from the grunge heads." This is ridiculous.

"Oh okay, so here we go, study this hard Katrina. You'll need it to survive. I've established what the cliques are, where they hang, and which cliques interbreed with each other. I've also shown which cliques Maya and I belong to!" This entire ordeal seems like school work, only I don't get any credit for it. I sigh, and look it over. It seems outrageously more complex then Scarlette described it would be. I didn't know so many cliques existed.

"The queen bees, Geeks, Nerds, Jocks, Thespians, Hipsters, Emos, Grunge heads, Scenesters.... What in the world is a scenester?" I ask confused and irritated.

"They are the wannabe queen bees. It's amazing how high they are on the social chain, They're like the second estate." She did not just say they're on the second estate. What do they think this is? There is no social class system, it's high school for crying out loud.

"Remember to keep that close, anyway time to dress out!" Scarlette and Maya go to the girl's locker room ahead of me. The second they turn away I crumple up the paper and threw it in the nearby trash. I don't need this. I'll just do what I want.

***

"I am so excited for this year's writing program you guys. I'm so very happy that all of you are here and ready to create some amazing works of art. How many of you have been writers for years?" Mr. Wright has an aura about him that was even more calm then before. The expressions in his face, and the gestures of his hands, they all indicate that this is where he feels most at home in this school. Shyly, I raise my hand along with a few other girls. This is not a classroom, rather it's the seminar room. One can compare it to a roman coliseum, like a small auditorium of desks that circle around a stage below. We all sit closer to the middle, circling around Mr. Wright, eyeing his movements.

"Excellent, who here has recently started writing?" The other half of the class raise their hands high.

"Awesome, this is a safe place. Nothing you say escapes our circles. This isn't just a writing class, it's about gaining the courage to tell stories with your own voice. Which is why we use this seminar room. You don't have to right away, but at the end of the year, every single one of you lovely young ladies will come center stage and perform a piece for us. Let's make a few things clear about this class. Here, we write poetry among other things such as short stories, articles, journalism reports, literally anything under the sun. And this will all be done in a journal. This class will require a classwork journal to write your notes, but your own personal journal where you will write your pieces for this class. You can decorate it however you like, you can include as many pieces as you like, but bear in mind that I will be using it to check homework. Sometimes I'll assign special assignments, but mostly every week I will want to see new pieces. We check by word count, and every week I will make that mandatory word count grow. Your homework this week is simply to find a journal that you feel comfortable with, and to find a poem, any poem, that you believe represents a significant part of yourself. It could be an original piece, it could be written by a famous poet, doesn't matter. But tomorrow, we're gonna share and get to know our classmates a little better yea?" I gently nod my head. It's then that I notice a figure in the far top corner isolated from the group. It's Jo, she's in this class? She's looking at Mr. Wright, but her expression is blank. She's observing, but not really paying attention. I wonder, every time I see her face, just where in the universe does her mind wander off to?