Читать книгу Inanimate Heroes - Zack W. Van - Страница 4

Walking from the commons to my first class seemed awfully daunting for something so minute. But then again, it was high school. Coming from a small-town K-8 school, it was a much bigger step up than what I was used to. It was almost as if they took you from your happy comfortable indoor environment and then shook up the box before dumping you in the woods like a cruel pet owner.

I searched frantically for class 204, Mr. Vue. When I finally found it, after the kind help of 4 or 5 teachers, I was relieved to finally just sit down. I looked around at my surroundings, as If I was drastically trying to clutch to a familiar face and strike up a conversation. Maybe I could say “man this is so stupid” and a friend from my grade school would just appear from the doorway and agree with me.

However, much to my despair I didn’t know a soul except for one. She was a girl from my graduating 8^th grade class. The only problem was she never spoke more than a couple of words, and even then it was because she was answering a question asked by someone else. I figured it would still be best to sit by her as she was a nice girl. For some illogical reason, my largest fear was that I would sit next to a person and they would show no more than utter disgust at my existence. I smiled and sat down next to her as I greeted her, as if trying to politely say “well I don’t know anyone else so you’ll have to do.”

She looked up from her book and gave me a quick acknowledgement that she was alright with my choice of seating. In order to pretend I was busy, I sat down and read my schedule while trying to correlate it with the map of the school I was given. After a few moments, a small Asian man, who I presumed to be Mr. Vue, walked in the front of the class and started speaking. His accent was as thick as blackstrap molasses, but he had a kind and gentle demeanor about him that made me feel temporarily at ease.

He explained the process of how our day would be going and why high school was so fun and enjoyable. I disagreed to my utmost ability. High school was like some unbearable and unlawful experiment that should have been instantly considered inhumane by those in power. He explained to us of how today was mostly for the freshman to get involved and that it was a typical day for the upperclassmen. The remedy I felt when he began to speak slowly dwindled in its effect.

As he spoke, I pretended to feign interest while trying to find a path to my classes in a panic. I wrote in several different inks and super-circled places I thought would be the hardest to find. The quiet girl just listened to her iPod and drew her drawings. She was, after all, in an art class; so I suppose if she was caught she wouldn’t be too terribly punished.

I surveyed the room once more for any possible friend that I could find; maybe there was a kid I had overlooked. But I was unfortunately correct in my first tallying of the kids. Suddenly I heard Mr. Vue stop speaking and his desk chair creak. He sat down and started an art project of his own on a large piece of white construction paper. Meanwhile, I looked back down at my map. 4 out of 9 isn’t too bad for having what seemed like 5 minutes to look them all up. The bell rang a short moment after Mr. Vue had sat into his rolling chair.

“Have a nice day and enjoy the rest of your four years at Tomliw High School.”

We all knew as we trudged out the door that he simply must be telling a joke we didn’t quite yet understand. The punch-line seemed awfully mute on the ears of a terrified freshman.

Walking in the halls I did notice one thing that was suddenly noticeable. All of the younger kids had bags and the older looking kids had an arm-full of books. Was it fashionable to walk around as if you didn’t really give a damn? Of course it was. But for a kid that had no interest in getting lost in the high school mosh-pit trying to find a locker nowhere near any of his classes, a bag would suffice perfectly. I finally walked into my study hall where I was greeted by a teacher named Mrs. Stafford. Her hair was in a perfectly pinned bun and her makeup and clothes were as tidy as her desk was kept. She stated the do’s and don’ts of our freshman study hall and what the consequences of our deviance would be.

Apparently when it came to establishing yourself in high school, study hall was a key component. If you wanted to let the others know you were a bad-ass and wouldn’t take anyone’s crap, you would freak out at the teacher and storm out for a generally piss-poor reason. If you were a class clown, you made fun of something in particular about the teacher or a student; even if there was really nothing to make any founded remarks about. If you were the kid whose parents had an aneurysm for a B+ on your mid-quarter, you got out your books and started to jot down notes in a notebook, regardless that it was the first day and second period. My group was the “don’t honestly care for this waste of space in my day” group. We consisted of the girl in the corner that popped her gum and drummed on her desk, the guy in the middle who slept every day, and me, who drew meaningless scribbles to pass the time less painfully than passing a kidney stone.

The room was ordered to stay quiet but within 5 minutes the kids spoke as if they were passing by at the mall. The teacher chalked it up to being the first day. That poor clueless soul had no idea that the light at the end of her tunnel was an oncoming train. The weak ringing bell had finally sounded and I was out of my desk and off to another adventure of finding the correct classroom. Mrs. Stafford gave us a kind “have a nice day” to which no one had replied. I gave her a weak smile and the thought that before the end of the year, her bun would be in shambles and the contents of her desk would be in a box. She would snap on a kid that never listens to her, run through a cement wall and leave a silhouette of her body like they did in old cartoons. I’ll give her 2 months.

My third period was next and I wasn’t particularly thrilled. It was a class that I didn’t quite understand the concept to. World Geography was not only incredibly boring, but it was also redundant. We learned nearly everything we were taught in grade school years before. One of the better points about it was that it did have a nice, laid-back teacher. Mr. Booker was the kind of teacher that would smile and try to make a joke, but the students would be lame if they laughed due to the laws of being a teenager. He always tried to make it so class was interesting for the student. I assumed that it was a learned mechanism that he needed to acquire in order to cover the stench of his course’s boredom.

We instantly began taking notes on rudimentary words such as Geography and Location. I began to look around me and wonder if anyone else had felt that this was utterly pointless. I later learned to just write the definitions of words I didn’t know. The main thing I focused on in that entire room was the inhumanly gorgeous guy that sat in the corner. I didn’t know his name yet, but I was determined to find out. He had a smile that could quite effortlessly substitute the irritating florescent lighting. Unfortunately within the first 10 minutes of class, he simply had to open his mouth and speak. His words spilled out into the room like a marching band that was far too ill equipped with talent to be marching in the first place. His very essence shifted before my eyes and it was tainted just as quickly as it first began to shine.

I looked at my notebook and realized that I had nothing other than Geography and Location written down. Not that I was too startled, however. The girl in front of me was also daydreaming; of what I’ll never be sure. For some reason, at least when it came to me, so long as someone else was doing something stupid it was ok for me to do the same along with them. As if there was some cosmic consensus that so long as stupidity was in a group, it couldn’t be traced down to just one person for their own actions. As if I was saved by the grace of god, the bell had finally rung once again. Mr. Booker, just as the study hall teacher before him, bid us farewell by saying have a nice day. Once again, it was bleakly reciprocated by the students. I, once again, just left a weak smile for him. I felt that maybe if someone else had acknowledged his kindness, maybe then he would understand that someone appreciated it and would keep it up.

Fourth hour was quite possibly my darkest hour. Even as a kid in grade school, my math skills could be fairly considered as deplorable. The plus sign and the dash all made sense to me. It was when the plus sign fell over and the dash had dots above and below it that I started to suffer. My teacher was one of very few words, which I didn’t honestly appreciate when it came to this subject. Maybe I would with world geography, but simply not math.

Mr. Henson would teach us the lesson and then sit down at his desk and talk to the jocks about sports. I couldn’t say I blamed him though. Math was boring. I would often imagine that a math teacher was just a person that wanted to teach but drew the shortest straw. Pre-algebra would seem like an easy class to most but to me, it might as well have been Chinese Calculus. I did however, have several grade school friends in this class that helped pass the time along tremendously. My friend Natalie was a very nice girl, but she was also the kind of girl that was quick to speak her mind. She told it as it was, why it was, and why it shouldn’t be. I also had a friend named Jeremy, who was pretty mellow in terms of opinions on things. His primary goal in life was to just keep breathing until he decided what to do with the life he’d been given. Our collective primary goal in that class was to just barely squeak by. Natalie and I would sit and talk with Jeremy instead of doing work until Mr. Henson would eventually snap and tell us to quiet down. Obviously we were interrupting the sports talk at the round table.

Due to it being a class of general ease, it was also my first introduction to the stoner crowd of kids. In elementary school they didn’t quite exist and in middle school they were the kids sniffing the expo markers. They were always there, but just masked by their inability to acquire weed. Pot heads would have 5 major topics of discussion: where they bought it, where they hide it, how they smoke it, who they smoke it with, and where they were when they smoked it. It was one of the main reasons that I, to this day, have removed myself from the possibility of even trying it. The thought of being reduced to that level of thought was enough to keep me at bay throughout my teenage years. Suddenly, just as a paper airplane lurched into the air and glided onto the floor, the bell rang. Mr. Henson’s conversation had not even been slowed down as the kids began their trek to the next destination on their list. I decided in this instance, no smile was necessary. My next period was lunch, where there was only one terrifying aspect to consider. Where the hell am I going to sit?