This is going to even more embarrassing than I could have dreamed.
Why can’t I be a happy student in my senior year of high school?
Just do my school work, talk to my friend, and go home.
Why can’t I forget about my tormentors when I go home?
Too driven. I fight with that most of my life. Still fighting to prove something. Still desiring to make something right. Still hoping to be that great child my mother hoped for.
Most of the other students believe I should be happy to be here. New York City is the largest city in the United States. This place is not even a midsize city.
There are many people here hoping to make a name for themselves. They do what their rich life tells them to do and that’s it. The guys here hardly think about females as a leader. The men here are traditional and still living in a time when a woman is supposed to know her place. They feel a woman should be grateful to learn something from their manly men. Talking to the few boys I would even consider giving my consideration, I have not found one man at GA who see me as their equal.
So driven in life.
This is my undoing.
All my hard effort will not pay off. This is not my fault, there are too many holes in the fucking life.
“What are you doing in there?”
Officer Levingston’s stern voice swings me back into the fact I am being escorted out of the building to my grandmother’s waiting car.
I am not ready to face the outside world. I have to grip on to something to make me strong. I should have listened to my mother when she told me to have a less exciting life and focus on truth and love.
I ease out of the stall and stare at myself in the mirror. As I wipe my face clean, there is a loud bustle of movement and voices shouting in the hallway.
Male voices are shouting and moving swiftly. I pick up my things and listen to the commotion. They sound like angry voices.
I peek out of the door.
Officer Levingston is gone. I see more security officers running to the front of the building’s entrance. They are telling them to get rid of the reporters. I forgot that the state representative is being brought in today for a tour.
I look in the opposite direction and see the door to the stairs. It led downstairs to some interesting files in the school records room.
I ease out of the bathroom and slip down the hall, disappearing behind the stairwell door.
My grandmother is teaching me to do the right thing during difficult times. I should obey instructions when they are given to me. My grandmother’s words are urging me to turn and go down the stairs and out of the building.
I can’t do that. I will need to have good reading material while I am bored stiff at my grandparent’s house. I can research them in private.
I run up the stairs. I continue to hear the voices in the hallway. I’m concentrating on getting the files of the Lowell group and the ‘Goodies Goodies’. There has to be some dirt in their past.
I feel uneasy as I pull open the door to the second floor. Nobody is working on that floor. I decide not to run to the school records room. A running student who is banished to work in the café on the way to the school records room would bring me further despair if caught. I make it to the room and threw down my backpack. I scramble to stuff as many files as I can inside it.
I fly out of the file room and walked down the stairs as fast as I can.
Making it to the ground floor with files in place is a miracle. I walk under the GA archway and look for my grandmother’s black BMW.
She eased the car out of the parking lot. I imagine her phone will ring or a siren coming after us.
No, we’re heading home. She drove normally, although I craved for her to drive faster.
Why is the day bright and sunny. Where is the rain and dreariness to keep everyone inside? I long to go invisible. I don’t the world to see me. I lean my head back against the headrest to think. I need a thirty-day plan.
The manicured lawns and tamed driveways lay on either side as we drive past them. I wish I could live in these houses where problems seem to vanish as soon as you walk through the door. The neighborhood we are driving thru is for the super rich in town.
I do not belong here. They have high powered attorneys to handle the problems for them.
We reach a street sign I am familiar with. Hurston Lane is my only refuge now. She eases the car into the long driveway and stops inside the three car garage. We are at home.
I think about my long day. I look at the stuffed backpack sitting next to me.
What have I done?
The disastrous moment to decide to take files is flooding my mind. I long to move away and hide from everyone. I want to get out of Palm Beach County. I have no purpose here. I don’t have any needs here. I have a mother that needs me.
I’m dreading the phone call to my grandmother from Headmaster Radforde. She will be fussing with me about doing the right thing. I will not go to jail for taking files and I’m still in school. I’m worried about all of this for no reason. I still can’t shake the thought of my mother out there in the world
