When you attend a Catholic prep school for high school, nobody really wants or expects you to choose go to a community college.
At the same time, nobody really wants or expects you to take a gap year, either - so when I chose to do both, they balked.
"Al," my school advisor had nearly begged. "Please, please, please rethink this. This is your educational future that you have in your hands."
It was an interesting sight to see, the names of my high school class in the graduation leaflet, the names of their chosen colleges next to them like medals of honor. Some of the lucky ones were going to Ivy League schools - just like their parents had dreamed of them doing, or at least paid for them to do. Others were legacy students from public four year universities - children of established members of society who had been underdogs before they succeeded.
And then there's me, with the weird ass name that my parents had given me, bless their hearts. They didn't even give me a middle name to fall back on. To be honest, I don't even know how they came up with it, or why they determined that it was a perfectly good name for a girl.
Alabaster Márquez, Southwestern Community College. Future plans: to take over America from the Trump administration and make America gay again.
There's actually something prideful in being the odd one out. Something that fills your heart at times, realizing that you're not one of the herd. You discover that by standing out, you are other, and that is something worthy of pride.
I guess, now that I think of it, I suppose that was the reason why I went on my insane yearlong road trip in the first place. I wanted more of that otherness, I wanted to discover things I hadn't before, and I didn't have a passport. So Europe had been out of the question. I wanted to isolate myself more than I had already been in high school.
Funny that I thought that when I started, because once I left, the exact opposite happened.
La lengua castiga.
The tongue mocks.
YOU ARE READING
The Inevitability of Al Márquez and the Flytrap
Teen FictionAlabaster Márquez is a girl without a passport, and a gap year between high school and her first year at a community college. After graduating from her preppy high school, which she attended on a scholarship, she's determined to see as much of Ameri...
