When I officially "wake up", the world is bright again with the clock hitting 7:14am. If I made a mirror right now, I'm 100% sure a homeless looking kid with drunken parents would be staring back at me. I wish I could say I don't care about my crazy look, but Ms. Lee is evil enough to try and put me in a metal asylum for this. Speak of the devel and they shall appear. Or apparently that's how it works now because I start to hear Ms. Lee's recognizable heavy footsteps far down the hall with another set of lighter ones. The voices sound muffled and quiet to me at first, becoming clearer and clearer as they near the entrance.
"-at this school." Ms. Lee is saying
"Of course. I love being a teacher here. These students are wonderful, and the facility has made me feel entirely comfrotab-"
"Yes. Yes. Let us discuss that later. I have another matter I wish to speak to you about."
"Of course Ms. Lee."
Honestly, I don't know how my teacher, Mrs. Evens, hasn't realized that Ms. Lee doesn't care one bit about how the staff in this school feel. She doesn't seem to understand anything and on top of that, she can't read people or their emotions.
"You have a troubled child in your class. His name is Ryan. I'm regretful to inform you that he'll be transferred from your class for the next several months. If he even makes it that far without getting expelled."
"Oh I see"
"Especially after that last stunt he pulled. We could get him arrested for that and sent to juvenile prison. But after meeting with our council and with much consideration and convincing on Mrs. Casin's side, we decided that alerting the police is not the best course of action. As a teacher Mrs. Evens you understand that our job is to raise these kids and shape them to be responsible, success, and well-educated adults. Some students, however, do not fit our standard and resist all attempts to better their behavior. And they will be treated as such." The steps stop in the doorway.
"I want to inform you, Mrs. Evens, without beating around the subject, that from here on out after Ryan's suspension this week, he will be supervised and taught by me personally in my office."
"Oh what a relief. He's been causing trouble, distracting himself and his fellow classmates, and disturbing the peace of my class. I thank you for this."
"Of course. That is my job. I will see you around"
This conversation helps me realize four different things. One, Mrs. Evens isn't as nice or as innocent as I thought. Two, Ms. Lee is going to make my life hell after next week. Three, Mrs. Casin stood up for me against the entire school council. And four, Mrs. Events is about to catch me, looking like a crazed kid shaking in a corner where he isn't supposed to be. My instincts suddenly turn on and I squeeze as far away from view as possible. I am known to be a trouble making kid that does everything to annoy adults, but I don't think even I can pull off being bratty and acting like a punk in my current condition. The shame would be too much to handle. Which means that for the next half an hour I have to use up my entire life's worth of luck in waiting until Mrs. Evens leaves to do something, sneak out of school, and slide under my blanket at home without anyone figuring out anything. The school is quite small and it is currently an hour before school starts so the hallways are significantly emptier than usually. In my head I plan my route to include as many bathrooms and deserted storage rooms as possible. I even decide to go the long way around the school to make sure my safety is almost guaranteed. This school is too poor to have cameras, which I use to my advantage as I tip toe down the hall I know is not used often. To my surprise, I hear someone coming down it.
"I still can't believe he actually did that"
"I mean, he did tell the teacher he would do it."
"I know but still. Vandalizing school property in the most insulting way possible is just bizarre"
"Ryan has the guts to do anything"
I'm curious as to why David and another one of my friends are here so early, walking down the hall laughing like crazy. But that's why I love making headlines in school talk. It's just so fun. Besides I need something to remind these poor people of me while I'm gone for a week. But no matter how arrogant I am, there is no way I'm showing my face like this, so I stay hidden in my spot. The rest of the sneak out goes pretty smoothly. Every once in a while, a teacher would walk by, sometimes chatting with another teacher, sometimes shuffling paper copies in their hands, but mostly they pass by quickly and I continue. The problem, however, comes when I have to leave the building. I obviously rule out the main entrance, but there are only two other emergency exists. One in the teachers' lounge, which for obvious reasons I cannot use. The other is by the cafeteria. Our cafeteria is small but as soon as I enter the room, I feel uncomfortable, my skin tingling all over. I look around. I'm walking in plain sight so if someone enters, they'll catch me right away. I listen but here nothing. I tell myself it's just eerie to see the school in such a quiet time and walk out the emergency exist. The wind smacks me in the face and all I smell is garbage and metal. How lovely. Then I accidently step into a puddle of green water. It is water and I'm not accepting any other answer. By the time I reach my house and enter my bedroom through a small window, I'm soaking wet, with mud and garbage covering my entire body. What the hell! What kind of destiny is this. I must've actually used up all my luck by sneaking out the school unnoticed. I put my backpack on the bed making sure my body doesn't dirty anything in my room, then take a pair of pajamas and get into the bathroom. The relief of cleaning myself from all that gunk is incomparable. I go downstairs to eat in the kitchen where my father and sister are both siting. As soon as she sees me, the dumb girl smiles. My sister, even though 23, is more of a child than I am. She tries to convince everyone that she's smart and everyone believes her. Like, last week, she brought back 5 books and $150 worth of coding material. The books were abandoned by the end of the week. There are so many examples of this like the times where she was "mastering" computer science, psychology, nursing, marketing, then spent hundreds of dollars buying books, and online courses for that subject just to give up two minutes later. Somehow though, she convinces everyone that she already learned everything there is to know and is moving on to something more "challenging". Yeah, right. To make matters worse, she was an honors kid with amazing grades and behavior growing up while I can't stay out of trouble for more than 3 days and my grades haven't ever been higher than a C. So obviously one can imagine the comparison being made between the two of us. Because she is the prized child of my father, he lets her do whatever she pleases. Which on her side includes to do everything in her power to make me kill myself. She hates me but I hate her, so the relationship works. I fill her rooms with spiders, she blasts songs in the middle of the night. I throw a venomous snake at her; she changes all my grades to Fs. I still don't know how she did that. My father, sitting right next to her, is busy with his paperwork but looks up at me and sighs. Deeply.
"Ms. Lee called me yesterday afternoon-" damn her, "and told me you got a one-week suspension. I was very disappointed to find out why."
"Why?" I pretend to not know but my father raises an eyebrow.
"Don't pretend to have not heard the phone call I got yesterday evening. I know you heard the entire thing in your room."
Very typical of them to not notice that I was missing. I'm not even the type of child that stays in their room all day and despite that, they didn't notice or care about my presence. Or the lack of it. Everyone tells me I'm too loud and noticeable. But even that isn't enough. My father continues.
"Vandalizing the school. Really? I thought that would be too far to go, even for you. But I guess I was wrong.
"You usually are" I mumble
"Pardon me?"
"Nothing"
"Look Ryan. You are more trouble than you're worth. Why can't you just behave?"
"How about you focus less about me and more about your daughter that does nothing but lie and waste money on her useless lessons."
"RYAN!"
"WHAT?" I scream right back. I'm right and I don't care if he can't see it. And conversations like these remind me why I don't keep a relationship with my father.
"Ryan! You're a stupid damned child! Act like it! I don't have time for this!"
"You're the father! The provider and protecter! Why don't you act like it!" I see his face get red with stupid Stella sitting in the back, smiling.
"THAT'S IT!" My father whips his head around to Stella, smoke practically coming out his ears.
"Stella. Sign your brother up for the first few extracurricular classes in our community center. His suspension isn't for him to have fun. It's for him to learn."
Then he takes his briefcase and walks out the door. But not completely before he half turns to me and says, "This is why you will never get any kind of electronic device anytime soon. I don't need you having more accept to people and more accept to bring trouble," and simply walks out the door. Stella snickers at me, a face people never seem to catch her doing. Good things people don't see it because it is the ugliest thing ever. I walk up to my room and slam my door. Honestly, despite what happened, that could have gone way worse. Either way, the community center starts their lessons four days from now, which means four days to have fun and go against my father. Obviously, the lessons are long, about 5 months each, but I can just make up some lame excuse about starting to actually try harder in school and taking tutoring sessions and then I won't have to go to some stupid volleyball lesson or something. Besides, I plan to enjoy every second of free time I have before going back to school with Ms. Lee. I wince in disgust then sneak right back out my window with nothing in my hands. The weather is perfect with a little sunshine but mostly cool winds that don't smell like garbage thankfully. With it being late autumn but early November, tree leaves litter the floor with color. Most would like to imagine that the leaves are vibrant and beautiful but really, they're just dirty, faded, and almost gray, though slight differences show what color the leave used to be. I walk with no purpose other than to have fun. Now I know walking for fun seems insane but when the weather is nice, I enjoy moving my legs at my own pace. Like always, I walk around my neighborhood than move to other neighborhoods and then others, until I reach the street. I walk for hours outside, with almost no one in sight, from street to street, from town to town, just watching everyone. Ok, maybe I can a little insane, but when I come home late that night, I fall asleep dreaming about the map that I made in my head walking around all day. It stretches far and wide, much more than I had originally thought it would. My sleep is peaceful and fully makes up for the horror filling night I had yesterday. I really hope that situation never finds me again.