Trampoline

School is just a blur. I took my time getting ready the next morning, and even slept in an extra thirty minutes. Mom was gone by the time I finally got up anyway, not even bothering to check if I was awake. As I drove to school, my mind wandered to think about the future ahead of me. What would I do after high school? What is even the point of high school and actually trying in it? It’s not like I’m going to college anyway, I can’t afford it. I can barely afford to ever fix my POS car. Sure, there are scholarships and dual enrollment, but I probably wouldn’t ever get let in. I have a hard time focusing as it is. Years ago, I used to actually have a motivation to actually try to do well in school and have a dream of going to a good college. It used to be all set up for me; all I had to do was fill in the blanks with doing well in all of my classes. But slowly and surely, the motivation started fading away. The classes started getting harder, and I started getting stressed out faster. Then one day I gave up, and it was so easy. It became too much stress, added with the stress that came from my parents divorcing and any other stress I had with my friends, so I started to not care. Now, the motivation is just gone, and so was the path I had. I’m going nowhere.

By the time I’ve finish thinking up all of this, I’ve already parked my POS in the school parking lot, and I barely remember driving all the way to school from the driveway at home. It’s already 9:15, just in time for the last half of first period.

The rest of the day carried on tiredly. I’d barely paid any attention in any of my classes, just opened my book to a random page, and started at the letters on the page while my mind was farthest away from where I physically was. All I could think about was yesterday, and my unexpected coming of events that happened.

In Culinary, I pretended as if I knew what it was that I was doing. I moved my knife over the onion I was supposed to be cutting, and down over a small section of it. Seemed easy enough, so I kept doing it and repeated. As I kept cutting the onion, the aroma came off of it and stung my nose and eyes. I was forced to squeeze my eyes shut in reaction, but I did so the scene from the diner played over again. There Kyle was, clearly sitting at the booth with his slick smile pulled across his mouth, and his eyes—full of secrets and mischievous—stared at me. Suddenly a pang of shock wiped over me and my eyes snapped back open. There was a line of a cut stretched across the palm of my hand, and a line of fresh blood running down my skin from it. I had no idea how to react to it, but the pain was already gone from the split second the knife cut into my flesh. So I dropped the knife onto the stainless steel table with a metallic clang, and lifted my other hand that was holding the onion to observe the cut.

“Would you like to go visit the nurse?” Mr. Farley, the Culinary teacher, asked as he came beside me. The only response I gave him was a nod, and he scribbled down a pass for me. I took my time going there, as I held a paper towel against my left palm. It didn’t even hurt, but only stung.

As I walked, my mind lingered back to the original subject when I finally reached the nurse’s office and sat next to three other kids waiting to be mended for whatever reason. Two boys and one girl. One boy was holding his nose in his hand, the other boy had his face in his hands with his elbows on his knees, while the girl just sat there awkwardly staring at the blood on my hand. I tried to ignore it, and just stared across at the wall.

Why is it that I’m always so weak when it comes to thinking about him and all the times he’s hurt me the most? Maybe because the good times we had together were pretty rare. Almost as rare as four leaf clovers. He is a guy, and most of the time I could only actually make him happy by doing things I wasn’t even comfortable doing, and that I didn’t even want to do, but he forced me to. I would try to get away, but he was too strong against me, and he forced himself onto me.

Suddenly I felt naked and embarrassed next to these kids waiting for the nurse as I was, like they knew what it was that I was thinking about, and I knew that I had to get away. I had to get out of here, somehow.
After a few minutes, the nurse finally cleaned my cut with a bandage, and sent me back to class. There were only a few minutes left of class, and when the bell finally rang, I grabbed my backpack and walked out to the student parking lot, to my POS. Once I was finally safe inside, I slammed the car door shut and ripped off my bandage with a sting for just being put on.

All the other cars were empty in the parking lot, and once again I felt too out of place. Leaning forward, I pressed my forehead against the leather steering wheel, leaned back straight, and fell back against it harder. I kept repeating that process, until a raging headache dug its place inside my brain. I laid myself in the backseat, after pushing aside the countless jackets, textbooks, and fast food bags. As my eyelids slowly kept getting heavier, I stare at the cut on my palm, wondering how something so clean could get damaged so quickly.