Alayke Tru lost everything in her life with a single bullet. All her family is dead. She's ignored by almost everyone. All she wants to do is go home but home doesn't exist anymore.
If Alakye is willing to take the risk, she can disappear in...
My hand moves casually over the drawing paper. I draw out the lines of the old woman at the head of the class. She must be fresh out of retirement, another victim of the recession. I feel sorry for her; she's got to be over eighty easily. Her wrinkled face wears that permanently-creased frown caused by years of students that misbehave.
Math class for me has always been a mix of numbers that float completely out of sequence. It's another guaranteed D grade. I draw numbers on the scratch paper, float them through the drawing of the teacher's hair on the page. The numbers zip around each other and intertwine on the drawing paper. Then a quick swap of the regular pencil for a color pencil
The bell sounds. I shove the scratch paper with my drawings of the elderly teacher in my backpack. The teacher begins the class with a cough to get our attention. I take out my multiple-choice paper from my binder.
It's weird, that a multi-choice paper with all its endless ant-like rows of bubbled options can be so optionless. I scrawl my name on the top of the paper.
Name: Alayke L. Tru
We have a lot of people with the same names at my high school. All the duplicate required your whole name on everything in the class. No one has the same name as me.
A steady stream of names rolls off the teacher's tongue. I casually listen for the landmine of my name during today's roll call. The teacher pauses. Dead silence as she stares at my name on the page. The name becomes like a turd pooped out on the page.
"Hi, my name is ah lah KAY. I'm here," I answer the blank pause and the teacher's unspoken question. Her deeply lined face relaxes noticeably. It's very close to that relief face someone makes after a smelly fart. I return to fill out the choice paperwork.
"Oh, that's," she pauses, "beautiful, really," the teacher replies with the canned political correct response. She makes faster work of the rest of the roll call.
I always thought my name was beautiful. It flows off the tongue. Wraps around the syllables like water flows through a stream. It only happens when someone says my name correctly.
I was born a month early at night. No time to leave the renovated barn we lived in. No time to call for help, or have me at the hospital.
My baby screams could be heard hours later downstairs on the couch. Dad told me I couldn't wait to be born. He cleaned me off, kissed my forehead, and named me that very second. I always feel like with my name, my dad was giving me a message that I could hold forever you are loved. That same day my dad handed me over to my big brother to take his first look at me. When my big brother picked me up I peed on him, first win for team Alayke.
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The teacher passes out the test instructions. A gleam her large glasses when she describes lovely how to fill out the bubbles. My whole worth to this woman is shoved into a bubble system that I'm awful at. She looks each student in the eye like my filling in this bubble is going to save the world.
I can guess the result to the test already. All my other test results are pretty awful. The test can join together and make fucked up test-results babies.
They can take those test results babies and go fuck themselves. It's an uncharitable thought but what's the point of all this?
I always remember those old prison movies. That one inmate that has a spoon, who is spending most of his time digging his way out of prison. Ready to make his big escape even though he's getting out of prison in four years. That is the high school day for me.
Just another day digging my way out with a spoon.
I was told by my social worker this would be my last new school. I'm pretty sure the overworked social worker lied to my face
The school's loudspeaker sounds off a crumbly distorted drawn out tone, "beeeeeep."
"Will Akkkklake please come to the nurse's office, Akkkklakge nurse's office please?" The woman's voice is garbled by the static on the loudspeaker.
My eye rolls at the woman who turn my name into fruit salad. I've got to the point where I react to anything that sounds close to my name. I was going to sneak away and skip the pills.
Blue and gold colors blur by in my race to the nurse's office. I won't miss the bus if I'm quick.
I am quicker than I look, which always shocks people. I played basketball when I lived with my brother. We battled on our makeshift court all the time. The hoop was old and rusty. My five feet near nothing versus his six-foot-plus shooting hoops. I always wish I was a little taller. On the days he didn't have to work overtime at his construction job where the best. I treasure those memories of him.
My brother didn't always fit in, but I always felt loved.
I slipped into the nurse's office through the back door. The nurse waits for me to take those days pills. Popping them back without water, I turn to head back out the door to catch the bus.
"Wait, your ride is in the front office." The door to the front office is still open wide. My foster-brother walks through the door. He scans the room for me. All friendliness and charm that he briefly showed the front office secretary vanishes. His eyes harden when they contact mine.
A chill moves through my body. I take an unconscious step back.
Running might make whatever he has planned worse?
I take another step back.
Breathe.
I struggle against my mind screaming at me to run for it. My feet moves to the front door. Panic wells up in my gut, as he crowds the small space.I walk passed him through the doorway. He leaves the least space possible for me. My cheats tightens and he leans in even more. His eyes moves up my body until he stares me in the face. I pass him. Coldness moves down my back with a shiver. He turns his head reptile slow. His frigid eyes follow my walk to his friend's car.
I see two of his greasy friends with him. The car door is open and I get into the back of his friend's car. The car pulls out heading to the house. I feel the familiar rush of the drugs through my system. My heart slows down. Thoughts skip and haze me out.
My foster-brother stares me down in the car. His overprice cologne is thick in my nose. The smell fills the small space in the back seat. Sweat trickles down the back of my neck. His face is so close.
