Submerged

“Mercedes Brown, please come down to the main office.”

The classmates around me whispered like the immature, pretentious morons they were, like I wasn't really even there in the first place. Even the teacher gave me a knowing look, as if I was so conniving that I had blackmailed the principle into calling me out of class early. If only.

I packed my books as slowly as possible, using that logic that if I was interrupting this lame excuse that passed as class anyway, I might as well make it the longest interruption this school has ever seen.

“Sometime today, Mercedes. I have a class to carry on with,” the teacher, whose name I obviously didn't find a need in remembering, said, her voice crackling with every word. I slung the backpack over my shoulders and kept my ignorant comments about how a pack of cigarettes will completely destroy your vocal chords to myself.

Hadn't she ever paid any attention in health class? Hadn't she ever seen the pictures of black lungs? I mulled this over in my head, at the fact that people can be so oblivious to such a potent poison, while listening to my flip-flops smack against the tile flooring in the empty hallway.
Looking back on this moment, it seemed pretty oblivious of me to be so intrigued by my old history teacher's unhealthy habits than to prepare some clever response to whoever happened to be waiting to talk to me in the office.

In hind sight, everything leading up to this was pretty irrelevant. From the first day of kindergarten until now, my third week as a senior, could really just be considered a past-time. The names and places we learned, even to the mathematical equations that we were forced to memorize, served no true purpose. How many of us would actually go out into the world, grasping this knowledge like it was the only thing holding us afloat, and use it toward out advantage? Some of us are meant to succeed and some are meant to fail.

It was easy to say I belonged to the second category.

The door to the office opened before I could even put my palm on the handle and a lady who looked like she had a stick up her ass with a clipboard grasped in her arms stared back at me. Voices hushed instantly and I remember immediately becoming suspicious. Did they know about me borrowing the principle's car to go down the street and get some pizza during lunch last year? Or that I had accidentally set the window shades on fire during during detention last year?

“Nice to see you again, Mercedes,” Principle Richards said, pushing himself off the desk he was leaning against and taking off his glasses dramatically. Normally, I would have made a joke about how cliched that one action was, but the tension alone in the room strangled my sense of humor before I even had a chance to crack a joke.

“Hi,” I responded skeptically, easing my petite frame into one of the horrid lime green plastic chairs he had in his office. “What's this about?”

The rigid lady in the corner, still gripping the clipboard so tightly her knuckles were white, said, “Mercedes...what's life at home like for you?”

I froze, every muscle in my body becoming limp. It was simple, after putting the pieces together, but the fact that my worst fear came true didn't ease the surprise. I knew what the lady, who was probably some Child Services worker, was going to say before she even said the words.

My mother had finally left.