An Apple for the Creature

“Oh, we will enjoy having you here, Miss Weinstein,” the bird-woman said. “We will find you a delightful challenge.”

“Too bad, because I’m not staying.” I walked to the door and went to pull it open. It wouldn’t budge. That boy had opened it easily enough and there didn’t appear to be any kind of lock.

I turned back to the teacher and she was grinning now, her face lit up with amusement. “You don’t get it yet. You will. Now go back to work. I say when this exam is over.”

I stood by the door. “Would you please open this door. I want to go home.”

“Unfortunately we don’t always get what we want, do we?” she said, going back to the papers on her desk. “We get what we deserve.”

“I don’t deserve to be treated like this. None of us do.”

She glanced up briefly. “Have you never treated others as if they were beneath you? Have you never gloried in your power over them?”

“No, never.” I blurted out the words but an image flashed across my mind—and I heard someone say, “Texas Chemicals versus Rodriguez.” What on earth did that mean? And yet it seemed vaguely familiar, something I had heard or read about before.

The bird-woman went back to her work and I went back to my desk. I turned over the next page hopelessly. Then suddenly I saw questions that I could do. U.S. Government and Constitution. I looked down the page.

What preceded the constitution, and why was it unworkable?

Yes, I could do this. I started to write furiously.

Which amendment . . . Yes, I knew that. I’d obviously just found the few stupid pages before and now I was back on track. They’d see that I knew my stuff—after all, if anyone knew about Congress, it should be me, right? I stopped writing and frowned at this thought. Why should I know about Congress?

“Ten more minutes,” the bird-woman said.

I went back to writing and then there was a snapping sound and the finely sharpened tip of my pencil broke off. I stared at it in dismay. I tried to write with the stub but it was impossible.

A bell rang, jangling loudly above our heads.

“Leave your papers on the desk and file out in silence,” the bird-woman said.

Reluctantly I left my unfinished government paper and joined the line. I saw a couple of kids take a look at me and then snigger. I joined them as they walked back down the six hundred hallway to the stairwell and fell into step beside a studious-looking girl. She was wearing glasses and was dressed in a dorky manner, like me, so at least I figured she’d be someone I could talk to.

“Hi,” I said. “What was that exam all about? I mean, did you know that crazy stuff?”

“Oh, yes,” she said. “I read the study sheets ahead of time. It was a cinch.” She went to walk on ahead of me.

“Wait,” I said. “I’m new here and I don’t like it.”

“Don’t like it?” She looked as if she was about to smile. “That’s funny. Do you think anyone likes it?”

“Then why put up with it? There are plenty of better high schools around. Normally, I go to Oakmont. It’s great. Very modern. Very academic.”

“I don’t know of any Oakmont.”

“Near the civic center and the freeway.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. This is the high school.”

“Well, I’m not staying. Can you tell me the way out?”

“Way out?” She looked puzzled.

“Yeah, the way out.”

“The way out?” she repeated, and she started to laugh.

“What’s wrong with you? Do you happen to have a cell phone on you so I can call my parents?”

“Cell phone?”

There was something seriously strange about this girl, or about this school, or both. “The office then, so I can call my parents to come and get me.”

“Nobody can come and get you, don’t you know that yet?” She pushed past me and almost ran to escape from me. I followed her down the stairs, staying close to the handrail because a tide of students was coming up.

“Out of the way, freak.” A boy in a letter jacket deliberately knocked into me. Luckily I held on or I’d have gone tumbling down.

This is like a nightmare, I muttered. Nobody will tell me how to get out. An exam with questions I can’t possibly answer. Then I stopped halfway down a flight of stairs, making those behind me barrel into me and start cursing. And I actually laughed. A nightmare. Of course. It was the classic nightmare that had plagued me all my life—the exam I was perennially late for. The exam with questions I couldn’t possibly answer. The strange building with no way out. That was it. I was dreaming. Now it all made sense. I’d been in some kind of accident and I was in a coma or something. And I’d wake up and everything would be back to normal again.

I finished the flight of steps with an almost jaunty tread. All I had to do was keep reminding myself that it was all a dream and I could handle anything. The students now seemed to be streaming along a different hallway.

“Where is everyone going?” I asked, hopeful that it might be the end of the school day and time to go home.

“Lunch, stupid,” a skinny freckled-faced boy said.

I followed along, although I didn’t feel hungry. The cafeteria was a huge subterranean room that echoed with noise, the clash and clatter of plates competing with the shouts of students. What’s more, it smelled terrible, like drains and boiled cabbage. I stood in line with the rest and inched my way toward a counter. Someone took a tray, so I did. A plate was banged down in front of me.

“Stew?” a helper behind the counter asked, and before I could answer, a great ladle of grayish, glutinous stuff was slopped into my plate. The helper gave me a toothless grin. “Vegetables?” she asked and dropped some gray boiled cabbage on top of the congealed mess.

“Wait,” I said, fighting back revulsion. “Is there a choice? Pizza maybe?”

The toothless grin widened. “Do you want it or not?”

I was pushed forward to where an old woman sat at a cash desk. “Five dollars,” she said.

“Five dollars? For this—” I went to say “crap,” then swallowed down the word at the last second. Then I remembered. “I don’t have my purse with me.”

“No matter. Put it on your tab, Miss Weinstein.”

How did they all know my name with all these thousands of students?

I carried my tray and looked around for a place to sit. Hostile stares or stupid giggles greeted me. I found an empty table far in a corner and sat down. I’d really have to do something about the way I looked. If this was a dream, I’d dream myself better looking. Better still, I’d dream Sally Ann into my dream and she could help me get back to my real self. I sat alone at that table and thought wistfully of Sally Ann, the first real friend I ever had. The only one who cared about me when I was a fat, clueless freshman and other kids picked on me or teased me. If it hadn’t been for her, I’d never have changed. I might not even have lived because when she came into my life I was seriously thinking of suicide. I’d started reading up on how many pills it takes to kill a person and I’d begun stealing my mother’s sleeping pills and my dad’s heart medication. Then she’d arrived and suddenly everything was fine.

“Hey, you.” A figure loomed over me. She was a gorgeous blonde, wearing a cheerleading outfit. “You’re sitting in my seat.”

“I didn’t realize we had assigned seats,” I said.

Her friends had come up behind her now, more cheerleaders and a couple of jocks in letter jackets. They burst out laughing.

“Are you totally clueless?” the blonde said. “This is the table we want and so you move. Got it?”

“Why should I have to move?” My fighting spirit had returned.

“Because we say so and we count and you’re nothing. Go on, beat it.”

“And if I won’t move?”