Right as the blade went into my skin and blood was drawn, the door to the bathroom opened up, startling me and the blade lifted up off my skin. "Hey David where are you, you've been gone for almost 7 minutes and the teachers are starting to wonder where you are," a voice said to me. "I was just finishing up," I answered. I felt the blood going down my arm and into my open palm as I stood transfixed, pondering my next choices. Should I finish the deed off or should I just stop and continue with this shit-show of a life. I remembered my friends Ethan and Jonathan, and my family, Mom, Dad, and Daniel, my brother. How would they react, to me being dead?, I wondered. Would they be able to move on or just take my death as their own fault?
I don't think my soul could take it, them putting my death on themselves. I could not put that on them, ever. I put the knife into my right pocket and took a deep breath and strode out of the stall, shaking with nerves.
I went over to the sink and washed the blood off my hands and and tried to act normal but to no avail. "Hey what is that on your hand."
"It's nothing," I said while hoping beyond belief that he would just look away and just walk on by. "Ok," was the response and he walked on out of the restroom as if nothing had happened. I breathed, knowing I had narrowly dodged a bullet. I finished washing up, and went back to class and pretended as I did not try and kill myself in the bathroom. I spent the rest of class trying to forget what I tried doing. When the bell ran I zoomed out of my chair and out of class and walked to my next class, Advanced ELA. While going there, my head was spinning with all of the different possibilities, the possibilities of me actually beating my depression, succumbing to it, or continuing on this road of never knowing when it might strike again and some days being better than others.
I walked into Advanced ELA, trying to figure out my uncertain future. I wanted to end myself and my problems so, so much, but doing so would hurt my friends and family. I just couldn't figure out what to do.
Just hold yourself together until school ends, just until school ends, I told myself. And then maybe I could find an answer to this dilemma. I grabbed my binder and pencil, and started to open my notebook when suddenly the door opened and out popped in Tenner, who was unfortunately part of the class. He went right in front of my desk and whispered to me "You do realize that Jackson is out for blood, after that little stunt that you did back there, huh. And I personally want to beat the crap out of you, but Jackson wanted to do it first, so you're lucky on that part. Now, you're gonna meet Jackson out on the field after school and he is gonna take you to special place in which nobody is ever going to find your body. And if you don't come, well then your little friend Jonathan is gonna die, so take your pick, you die or your friend dies. Enjoy," and with that done he sauntered off to his spot. I was stunned, and I sat in my spot as if I was suddenly struck by lightning. I had not a moment to pull myself together because the teacher came into class, almost suddenly without me knowing.
"Alright class, how was your day yesterday?" Mrs. Unwaloo asked with a crisp voice and tone. "It was good," the class said in unison. "Ok then, now can any one tell me if they did anything interesting yesterday, hmm." One person raised their hand to answer the question. "Yes Maria, what did you did you do yesterday?"
"Oh I just practiced cheerleading yesterday with a couple of my friends." "Oh that's good, anybody else want to share? How about you Tenner, what did you do yesterday?" Tenner, unprepared for this question, shot back up in his seat and hastily answered with "Didn't really do much yesterday, aside from hanging with my friends."
"Ok then I need one last person to answer the question, umm David, what did you do yesterday."
I waited for a little bit, trying to formulate an answer in my mind as fast as possible. "I just did really nothing yesterday."
"You can tell us something more than that, can you David?," Mrs Unwaloo pressed. "There really was nothing that I did yesterday besides read."
"Well there, is that not something that you did yesterday David." I shrugged while saying "Yeah I guess so." "You guess so?"
I sighed, knowing that she was not going to stop until she was proven right. "Fine it was something that I did do yesterday," I acknowledged.
"All right now we can start class, so open up your notebooks and today we are going to talk about the short story, The Story of an Hour by Kate Chopin. Now can anyone tell me the theme of this short story?"
"It is human nature to want freedom when life has only brought forth repression," someone answered towards the back of the class, with a very unusual accent. "Who said that?," Mrs. Unwaloo asked. A person raised their hand up and the class looked at the person. He was unfamiliar, but then again I did not know everybody like Jonathan. He had brown hair that was kept in bangs that grew long, but not too long. He wore faded jeans and a long sleeve t-shirt with an old rock band on the cover of it. His nose was pointed, almost upturned as if he was smelling something awful. He face was sharp and angular, with what looked like a proud and noble heritage, dating back centuries.
"Ah, the new student. Introduce yourself to the class," Mrs Unwaloo said. That explains why I had not seen him before. He walked almost regally in front of the class and said with a haughty tone "I am Daniel Irwin Chapman, and I recently moved from Lancer-shire, England." And that explains the accent. "The only reason I am in this class is due to the fact the school board is asking themselves if I should be in gifted or still stay here." Great, he has an inflated sense of self-importance, I thought to myself with an eye-roll. "And who might you be," he said looking at me with a sneer growing on his face.
"I am David Nathan Carter, from Kansas City, Missouri," I said with a mock British accent. I heard some people snickering after that comment. I wanted to continue, until I saw the sneer to continue to grow on his face, and then quickly said back "Relax mate, it was just a joke," and backed down. After that little comment I made, he straightened himself and cleared his throat and continued talking. He told us all about how his father wanted him to be here in, and I quote , "This garbage heap filled with obesity and laziness" to try and expand his fathers influence. At his quote people started to look around at each other and we all knew in a heartbeat that nobody really liked him.
"Well while that all that is very fascinating, how did you know the answer?", Mrs. Unwaloo asked him politely. He answered "Simple, in Lancer-shire we already went over this around 4 months ago."
"Wow, 4 months ago, really?", Mrs Unwaloo said in a surprised voice.
"Yes 4 months ago, and this is why I should be in gifted." I raised my hand and said "You do realize you have to take a test to get into gifted right?". He looked at me snobbishly. "I know but I already was good previously so why should I have to take the test," he drawled ."Well," I said in a tone that one uses to talk to a child. "This is America, which is apparently a garbage heap filled with obesity and laziness, so people here take a little bit longer for those that are "supposedly" gifted and we have to verify that before we set someone into the gifted level. The test is the way of doing that. So are you now able to connect the dots together, o so "gifted one"?".
At the end of my speech, there actually was some applause at my witty banter against Daniel, and Mrs. Unwaloo was actually chuckling while shaking her head. Daniel was furious, and it was very apparent at who he was mad at. I didn't care if he was mad any more. He showed his true colors to everyone in class.
We managed to last until the end of class without him being an absolute pompous bastard. I left class with a smile on my face as I remembered how Daniel tried answering questions but I beat him to the punch every single time with answers that were better than his. The look on his face when he realized that I was smarter than him was priceless, his face open and aghast when I answered the tenth question Mrs. Unwaloo asked in a row.
When walking to my next class there was this ominous feeling in the air. I looked around to see if anything seemed off but all was normal with kids hanging out in groups; teacher talking to each other about that one student who was the best and worst in their class; janitors cleaning hallways and putting down signs telling people that the area is wet. I shook my head and told myself that nothing was wrong and it was probably my nerves after my near suicide this morning, and walked into Spanish 4.
Spanish was taught by Mr. Perez, who was from Ecuador. He tended to talk very fast in Spanish when something was amiss, like when there was a pop quiz or a new project we needed to work on. Today he was speaking very fast and he almost seemed to start sweating. I ignored the signs, assuming that it was a very big project that we had to start working on.
"That must be some big project we're gonna have," said Zach. "Yeah it must be," I replied back. I started writing the verbs Mr. Perez put on the board and noticed that something was wrong with the verbs. Most of them were missing accents over the letters. I remember this from the paper he handed out earlier this week. Mr. Perez started slipping into Spanish more and more until he was almost rambling like a madman and no-one could understand him. "Um, sir, are you feeling ok?", some students asked. He tried replying but no-one could understand him.
Something isn't right, I thought. He never goes like this when speaking. What the heck is going on that has him so nervous? And then, disaster struck. "Mr. Perez," someone screamed. I looked back at him only to find that he had passed out, and just lay there on the floor unmoving. "Hey someone go and get the nurses," someone shouted. "On it," said another voice and then there was a rush of air behind me. I turned to look at who answered it, but they were gone.
People were starting to freak out, wondering out loud whether or not he was going to make it. One minute later the nurses came in, walking as fast as they could while simultaneously projecting calmness into the classroom. They knelt down, took a quick look at him, and checked his pulse.
"He is going to be ok." Everyone in the class breathed a sigh of relief as they carried him away. "Now just stay in class and a substitute teacher will come. No messing off in here understand?, spoke one of the nurses. "Understood," the class piped back as one. When the nurses finally walked away, the class burst into conversation wondering why he passed out, and when is the sub coming. And then the single most important thing in my life happened.