Leaving today

                “Are you gonna have a good day at school today?” my mom asks in a half paying attention kind of way; which of course can only be expected in the morning. Beside her sits my older sister who doesn't reply. I scoot up in from the back and lean on the armrest in the middle of them. 

                “Sure, the time of my life,” I mutter. “But if you want to go for me I can stay home…”

                “I’d love to but no,” She says. I sigh and sit back in my seat. Four minutes later we’re driving through the school’s gate and getting in line so our car can drive up to the school’s door.

                “Don’t have too much fun,” my mom says.

                “No promises,” I say getting out of the car and crossing the street. I walk to the side of the school and enter a long hallway that’s already full of people standing in groups talking and walking this way and that to their classes. The border of the ceiling is lined with flags from colleges all over the country and underneath every one of them is some kind of colorful decoration telling you to recycle or do well in testing.              

                At the front of the hall, standing outside of her Spanish classroom is Mrs. Owens. “Buenos dias,” she says when I look at her. I smile and mumble something in response but I’m walking too fast to really acknowledge her. The bell rings; a loud chiming noise that lets me know I have four minutes until I’ll be late to class. Four is such a weird number for a bell schedule; I silently make up an argument for the school board to get them to change it to five. .

                I take the long way and walk three extra hallways to get to my class instead of taking the straight one so I won’t have to wait alone for people to start showing up. When I get to the science classroom there are only a few people sitting down and I have to wait for people to move before I can get to my seat in the middle of a tightly packed row. It really is a pain trying to get in or out when everyone is sitting down, waiting for every person to either move their chair so close to the table that they are barely there or stand up to let you through. I sit down early and squeeze next to the table to let people through. Nobody around me talks to me as we get our notebooks out to do the bell-work on the board but the talking everyone else is doing is loud. The teacher gets up from her desk and stares at up from in front of the board until all the voices die down.

                “Thank you. Welcome to your first day of 10th grade,” she says. Whispers and small group confined giggles erupt for a second and then fade as quickly as they appeared as Mrs. Bhatt talks again. “If any of you have not been in my class before raise your hand…” Nobody raises their hand but everybody turns their head to see if anyone else did. “Okay then so now we can skip the casualties and get started. Open your new biology textbook and turn to page 1,” she says. The class clown, Jessica, and some of Mrs. Bhatt’s favorite students sigh loudly at the same time and Mrs. Bhatt grins at them. I open the book and am instantly met with a dozen stick figure doodles with intricate detail and things written like ‘YOLO’.

                Mrs. Bhatt has no different protocol this year than she had last year. I am still able to read the chapter she has planned long before everyone else in class finish reading it and have nothing to do for the rest of class but listen to her go over things I have already memorized. This is what I prepared for when my mom asked if I was excited about school starting this year. I lean my head on my hands just like I’ve done before and stare at the textbook without focusing anywhere. It’s actually a very intense skill to learn, sleeping with your eyes open but I don’t quite want to sleep, just day dream. I see everything in front of me but once I let myself think of other things it’s easy to forget that it’s there and soon the images in my head are clearer than the view in front of my eyes.