Growing Pains

Chapter 1 - Making it to school was an inevitable defeat

S K Y L A R 

I had given up most things. Time was perhaps the biggest of them all. I had close to none. When I wasn't at school, I was studying. There was nothing else. I lived my life according to the admissions profile of any Ivy League college in the country. If mom asked, Harvard. Mom didn't ask. She knew we had the same dreams. She and dad had given me mine. To become something. The future was mine for the taking and all I had to do was follow the rules.

I was exceptionally good at following the rules. I had been following the rules my whole life. I had never been grounded. Never been sent to the principal's office. Never missed school. Never been late. Never had less than an A.

I had gotten myself a perfect record by accident - I didn't think I was sitting in kindergarten thinking I had to color inside the lines because Harvard said so - and now I couldn't stop. Now there was no other way. Even if this way also meant having a perfect record of sitting alone in the school cafeteria because people probably thought I would want to go over mitosis with them over lunch. I wouldn't. I wouldn't want to go over anything. I had given up most things. Socializing had been one of them. I didn't have the energy to do it right, and so I didn't do it at all.

Mom told me once that intelligent people weren't known to be very happy, as if both things couldn't exist together, intelligence and happiness. I hoped she was wrong. I didn't know what I would do if she wasn't. If it turned out that I would go off to some Ivy League college just to be miserable too. Just like I was in high school. Just like I had been in middle school. Just like I had probably been in primary school too. If it turned out I would do all this becoming and come out as one big miserable someone.

I rolled out of bed. I felt the most miserable in the morning. I always woke up before the sun did, and somehow that made me feel more alone than having no one to sit next to me on the bus. I was also awake, which always seemed like a tragedy to me.

When I was in eighth grade, I had realized I spent the day waiting to go back to bed. If I could, I would be in bed by 8 p.m. I couldn't. There was always a textbook chapter that needed revising. Always a value of x that needed finding. Still, it was a relief to think that half of my life was spent sleeping.

So, mornings were the worst. When I was younger, I resented waking up so much, I cried myself through most. I didn't anymore, but only because crying wasn't as acceptable now that I was almost eighteen.

I was always ready in fifteen minutes. I didn't have the energy to look good, so I didn't. My mother had tried and failed to get me to start wearing makeup. It wasn't that I didn't like how it looked. I just hated the idea of having to put it on and then take it all out again before going to bed. I didn't have the energy.

On my best days, I had exactly the amount of energy necessary to put on a pair of tights, a skirt, and a nice sweater. Most days weren't my best. Most days, I wore only jeans and whatever sweater was closest. Mom thought I could do better. I knew I couldn't.

I made it to the bus stop on time every day. I sat in the back every time too. Next to sleeping, the bus ride was my favorite part of the day. I was where I was supposed to be, going where I was supposed to be going, and none of it depended on me. I just sat there and listened to my music, most days, classic.

Making it to school was an inevitable defeat. If I could have all my classes back-to-back, I would. If I could avoid the school hallways, I would too. There was always someone who wanted the answers for some homework they hadn't done or a copy of a paper due soon. Or there was no one.

I didn't mind the latter so much if other people didn't mind it either. But everyone did. It made me a loser. They saw me alone and assumed there was something wrong with me. Why didn't I have any friends? Was it because I sucked? I supposed it was, but it was also because I didn't have the energy for it.

So, most days I did what I was perhaps less proud of. I locked myself in a toilet stall, put my earphones in, and waited it out. Was this a sad and ridiculous conduct? Of course, it was.

It was on my way to the toilets that I saw someone taking out Mr. Colton's precious newspaper clippings off one of the many bulletin boards in the hallway. Our principal's pride and joy was the school's football team. For years now, every time someone somewhere wrote an article about the grand doings of our boys, Mr. Colton not only had it framed and placed in the school's trophy case but also added a copy of it to a bulletin board in the hallway. Naturally, that board was out of limits for everyone except him.

"Hm, ex-excuse me, Sir," I started. "I don't think you should be doing that."

Last time someone had - Allora King had once tried using some of the space for a flyer recruiting volunteers for a woman's shelter - Mr. Colton had called it vandalism of the school grounds. After all, it was a memorial of all the feats of our glorious football team.

"Sorry?" The man turned around. He was holding a bunch of flyers of his own against a white dress shirt and I had never seen him before. He couldn't be a new student. I was yet to find a boy who could grow a decent beard around here, and also, he looked like he was well in his twenties.

"Mr. Colton takes his collection of newspaper clippings very seriously," I said, pointing at all articles he had collected over time - years and years of funding the football team while students impaled themselves on old rusty chairs and stopped going to art class because there wasn't much they could do with a handful of crayons.

The man seemed amused, "I can see that."

I didn't say anything else. He could see that, but he was still replacing a bunch of Mr. Colton's articles for flyers advertising spoken poetry shows and volunteer programs abroad. There was even one promoting mental health awareness.

It's Okay to Ask for Help, it said.

"Is it any good?" he asked me. "The football team."

I looked at most of the articles' headlines. None of them mentioned a defeat.

"I don't think we would get to know if they weren't." I shrugged.

The man pursed his lips together and nodded. He was still amused.

"But really, I don't think you should be taking them out. Mr. Colton considers it vandalism." I was trying again, but I could see I was failing. I looked at the other bulletin boards. They were full of flyers with way less emotional value than the stupid football clippings.

"I'm sure you can take some of those off," I said.

The man looked over too, "Those are from students. I would rather silence the old man."

Because the flyers were the students' voices and the newspaper clippings were Mr. Colton's, and all it said was, Go Tigers Go!, if that was even what our school mascot was. My school spirit had gone into the light a long time ago.

"Well, I hear our prisons serve good food." I didn't know why I said it. I guess I thought it was funny. It probably wasn't. I had lost my sense of humor somewhere along the way too.

The man laughed. Shrugged. Said, "I'm not a picky eater."

I didn't think he was a teacher, or if he was, he hadn't checked his paygrade yet. He looked like a man built for great things, the ones who made their way to the top without trying, naturally, almost accidentally. He didn't look like a teacher at all.

"Are you a teacher here?" I didn't like to be wrong.

He turned away from his crime, smiling, "Oh, yeah, sorry, I forgot to introduce myself. I'm Mr. Wyatt. I'll be teaching English this year.