The Start of High School

Shelly's first day of high school

I pulled into the high school parking lot in my beat up, blue ford pick-up. I had been sixteen when I got the vehicle. Don’t think for a second it was a sweet sixteen present from my parents. They were against me getting a vehicle from the very start. Mom took me places when I needed to go to them, so why did I need my own set of wheels? Well, mom didn’t always take me where I wanted to go, and where I needed to go was where my parents decided I needed to go was, and I had gotten tired of that.

I took to working at a nursing home just down the street from where we lived. My father had insisted I start the job shortly before I turned sixteen, saying a job would do me some good. Little did he know that making me work at a place where people seemed to die more often than in a horror movie would make me even less sympathetic to the pain of others. Those people lived in pain all the time, and if one didn’t develop a deep, emotional callus to their plight, they would slowly go insane. Guess it was a good thing I had already been pushed so far from the human world that it was nothing for me to develop this much needed trait to do my job. I made sure to never make friends with any of the residents by not acknowledging their existence any more than I had to. I think the other workers considered me to be the coldest, most inconsiderate person they had ever met, but by this time, I really didn’t care what others thought of me. It really didn’t matter to me if any of them liked me or not. Being liked wasn’t going to get me anywhere in the long run, considering I had no intention of keeping the job for very long. Working nursing homes was not my idea of a grand job, and I had no desire to keep at it for any longer than I needed to.

I worked in the kitchen, doing dishes and serving lunch with the head cook. She was a jolly, little thing, but her morality left much to be desired, and I found I could not live up to her standards of living, even if she was trying to be my friend. It just wasn’t going to happen. She was no replacement for the mother who had never had time for me, and she never seemed able to learn this. She spent a good portion of our time together trying to draw me out, and I do believe that she honestly thought she knew me in some intimate way that only a mother can know a daughter. I never lead her to believe differently, for I feared her trying harder and harder to earn my trust, and truth be told, I had no trust to be earned. Trust was a foreign concept to me, for I had no faith in anyone or their honest desire to be my friend. Those who had claimed to be friends in the past, I soon learned had only pretended to be on a dare, of sorts. For a while, to get initiated into one of the more popular groups in junior high, one had to be able to claim that they had been my ’friend’ for at least a week. I soon put a stop to this, and would take no one’s word at face value after that, regardless of how sincere they seemed to be.

I had worked and slaved at the nursing home for months, working weekends and a few evenings, to get the money I needed to buy my used truck from a less than trustworthy salesman, but it was all I had been able to afford at the time. My parents had refused to chip in even a penny to help me get my transportation, my mother saying it was a waste of time, and my father assuring me that if it was worth paying for, it was worth working for, whatever that meant. I just assumed they were both too cheap to even think of helping their only child out with one of the more important aspects of a teenager’s life, like so many other important events. I’m shocked at times that they even let me have a birthday. Granted, there were no parties for me, my parents couldn’t have that, but I at least got a cake and a few presents. Money had actually been my favorite thing to get even at an early age, as it seemed that no one could even come up with a single thing I would like. It seemed beyond their comprehension to come up with a book or two as a present. Most of the gifts I got just sat in the box they came in, since I could not enjoy any of them, they were so distasteful to me. What use were models I could not figure out who to put together and chemistry sets that mother would not have me use for it would dirty up the place?

I gathered up my old, worn pack, and got out of the truck. It was the first day of high school, and I was only nervous in that I might be late to classes, as I hadn’t been to the school more than once since I had enrolled in it. I didn’t want to draw attention to myself be walking in as one of the last people to class. I didn’t like people noticing me, because if they did, they were usually rather rude and crude about it, and I just wasn’t in the mood for childishness like that today. Not on my first day of high school.

The building was split into sections, with two wings sticking out one side, and a third jutting out the other way. It was sort of shaped like a blocky Y, I guess you could say. The section off by itself housed the arts section, with art classes, music and band held at that end. One of the other wings held the science and math sections and the other was history and languages. I had enrolled in one history class, English, basic algebra, biology and pottery for that semester, and couldn’t say I was really looking forward to any of it. I hadn’t been able to find a literary class anywhere in the school’s limited selection of classes, and had just marked what few things I thought I might take interest in from the list of required classes I had to choose from. The offices, councilors and library were roughly in the very center of the building. I imagined I would be spending most of my time in that area, for one reason or another. That had been how I had spent junior high, and I didn’t think high school would be all that different.

I quickly walked through the parking lot that was off to one side of the building, passing a number of vehicles that were blasting intolerable, hate filled music from their speakers. You would never find anything like that in my cd player. If you can’t understand what the singer is saying, then what’s the point of listening to it. Nickleback, Seether and such would never grace my ears if I had any say in the matter. Popular, maybe, good…Oh, I don’t think so. I preferred stuff like Ace of Base and Nox Arcana, now there’s some music worth listening to, but I’d never get into a fight with these no brainers over music. Better talking to a tree. You’d probably have a more intellectual conversation that way. I made note of those who were listening to the really bad music just to make sure I wouldn’t be talking to any of them while I was in this infernal, adolescent prison. Didn’t want them to think that I might like them in any way, shape or form. I hated the people who listened to that crap almost as much as I hated the music itself.

I continued on to the building, and looked down at the paper in my hand that had my classes and the room numbers on them. My homeroom was A207. I looked at the nearest door to where I was standing to see that it was B102. I remembered someone telling me that the wings were designated by letters, and the rooms by number, so B was one hallway, and 1 and 2 meant first and second floor. I was looking for the second floor of the A hallway. Well, there was only three wings, so it shouldn’t be too hard to find. I walked down the hallway, and turned towards the hall on the other side. The letter A was staring me in the face, and I headed up the stairs, trying to ignore the jostling and shoving of the other students that were on their way to their own homeroom classes. I was uncomfortably reminded of cattle heading toward the slaughter house. It seemed that they moved just as mindlessly as those around me were doing, even if they would come to a much better end than the poor cows, or one would at least assume so.

I reached the top of the stairs to see nothing but a roiling mass of human bodies. I wasn’t even sure I’d be able to see the doorways to the classrooms through that mass of disgusting, human flesh. I could smell the body odor of a number of overly sweaty guys, and their vain attempt to hid that smell with cologne that smelled not much better than their own scent did. Could they actually not smell themselves at all? Did they honestly have no idea how repugnant they were? I guessed not. What was even more sickening was the number of girls who were actually hanging off of these guys as if they were the best thing since sliced bread. Did they have no dignity? Looking at the way most of them were dressed, I had to guess not on that too.

I pressed as close to one side of the hall as I possibly could, and took a look at the number on the door. A202. Wrong side. I pressed my way through the massive throng of mindless humans, and made my way down to my homeroom. Thankfully, the door was already opened. I would have hated to have had to pull it open with this massive press of bodies pulsating around me like some sentient monstrous ameba.

The classroom looked rather old fashion, with your typical, tacky green chalkboard in the front of the room with the name of the teacher scrawled out in sloppy letters with yellow chalk. Mrs. Bremingham. What sort of name was that? Well, guess I should have been happy it wasn’t my name. The desks looked no different than they did back in junior high. As a matter of fact, they might have been just as small, and I had to wonder if the school system actually thought desks were made for one size fits all from kindergarten to high school senior. Probably made the budget easier on them if they ordered all the same size desks. There was a map on one wall, and a row of windows on the other, giving one whole column of kids a great distraction from a boring lecture. How I prayed I would be one of those students, temporarily freed from the mundane world of the classroom by the sights of the outside world, or a small section of it anyway. If I was lucky, there’d be a family of robins in a nest in the tree right next to the window that would catch my eye as my attention started to wonder.

A number of the seats were already taken by loud, talkative boys and soft headed girls that hung on their every word and would laugh at all the appropriate pauses in the conversation. Oh, I could tell that I would not be friends with any of them. Most of the boys wore school jackets, leading me to believe that if they were not jocks, they wished they were associated with that most coveted group. I could want nothing to do with any of them, and went to sit at a desk near the back of the room. I made sure to stay as far from the window seats as I could, hoping this would lead the teacher to believe I have some terrible disdain of the sun, and should, therefore, be placed right next to the window. I have known many a teacher to think in such a cruel manner, and hoped that this ploy would work to my advantage today.

I watched the clock as the hands slowly crept towards the hour of eight o’clock. Students continued to trickle in as the hour of learning drew nigh, and I still had not seen a single person who I would have dubbed interesting in the least. There was so much ‘school’ spirit in the room that one could almost drown in it. As it was, I was feeling intensely ill at the sight of so many jackets with the school’s mascot on it. And the number of girls hanging on the arms of these guys was just atrocious to say the least. How could they demean themselves in that manner? Oh, yeah, that’s right, girls don’t want to be alone in life, so they toss all their sense out the window to make guys want them. Although, looking at some of these girls, I could honestly believe that they had been born completely without sense at all. Maybe that was a mercy on their part. I’m sure I wouldn’t have been happy that way.

It was only as the room started to fill up with bodies that anyone came close to sitting by me. There was a goth girl to one side of me, and a couple of nerds on the other, complete with thick, black rimmed glasses. If it wasn’t for the fact that they had different color hair, I honestly would have thought they were twins, so similar in appearance were they. I almost felt sorry for them, knowing that by the end of the school year they would suffer from at least one swirly, if not a whole multitude of toilet baths. The goth girl was dressed all in black with black eye shadow and black lipstick. I often wondered if goth just meant you were too lazy or too stupid to know how to color coordinate. The one time I glanced at her, she glared at me with a look of loathing. All I could think was if a person hated people looking at them, they shouldn’t dress like complete and total freaks.

In case you hadn’t noticed by now, I don’t get along with anyone, even the other outcasts of society. In my mind, they chose to be that way, and could try to fit in any time they wanted. I was born that way.

The bell finally rang, and the last of the students rushed into the room, laughing and screaming at the top of their lungs. I don’t think there is anything more annoying than the sound of teenagers having ‘fun’. I honestly think I’d rather listen to a thousand women giving birth than to have to listen to ten people my own age carrying on like a bunch of idiots. At least the screaming, pregnant women had a reason to be making all that noise.

They took what seats were left, fortunately none of them near enough to me that I would have to deal with them directly, and a few minutes later, Mrs. Bremingham came in. She was a short, stout woman with graying hair and a jolly looking disposition. I did not let this fool me in the least. I knew she would be as evil and cut throat as any teacher I had had before. They all were.

She set her books on her desk, and turned to us to address us in a sweet, grandmotherly voice that only added to my suspicions that she must be truly evil inside. “Since we are already in our seats, I will assume this is where you want to sit for the rest of the year. Let’s go through your names so that I can get a seating chart figured out.”

I suppressed a groan at my ingenious plan being so easily thwarted. I would not underestimate my opponent again. This I would have sworn with a blood oath, but it was frowned upon to cut yourself in class for any reason.

She called out name after name, and the students either enthusiastically acknowledged her, or called out in dull, uninterested tones.

“Shelly Marshells.”

I refused to respond to the name, even though it was mine. It was fun watching her sweat.

“Shelly Marshells?”

Okay, so she wasn’t sweating, and all this was going to get me was an early trip to the principal’s office. I just wasn’t ready for that yet.

“Shelly Marshells?”
I could tell by the tone of her voice that she was getting slightly annoyed with my silence, so I finally, and very slowly, held up my hand. “Here,” I called out in one of the dull, uninterested tones.

She glared at me for a few moments through her thick lens glasses, and harrumphed loudly enough for me to hear her from the back of the room before continuing on to the next name. Well, here was my first enemy in high school. That didn’t take too long, and all I had to do was be quiet. Boy, was I off to a great start.

She finished with the silly seating chart, as if that would help her remember our names any better. I always assumed that seating charts were for people who were too lazy or too uninterested to learn the names of the kids in their class. And I was supposed to believe these people actually cared about me or my future? Please.

She went over the code of conduct for the school, a boring list of rules that half of us would follow, and the other half would break often. She then explained the purpose of a homeroom class. We weren’t going to learn anything in there, it was just a place where the school could do a quick headcount to make sure who was there and who was not, and, supposedly, a place where we could get some help with our other classes, some extra tutoring, if you will. I almost laughed at the thought of coming to this ding bat to help me with my math homework. Oh, well, maybe this would give me a few extra minutes to read during the day.

The bell finally rang for the class to end, and the riot that is high school students started up again. I honestly have no idea who the bell was meant for, if not the teachers. Anyone who knew anything about kids my age would have known that all of us were watching the clock by now, eagerly awaiting the minute hand to fall upon the magic number that would release us from our hellish prison. I could hear the terrible cries of joy echoing off the walls, and it was all I could do not to clap my hands over my ears. I pressed on to my second class of the day, world history.

The teacher was a dark skinned woman by the name of Harrison-Gray. Her name was hyphenated, she explained, because she had refused to drop her family name for the name of the man she had married. I refrained from pointing out the futility of her display of feminine rights in that her family name was the name of her male ancestors, and had nothing to do with the women of her family at all, thinking that this would not be the way to start off the new year. I had already ticked off one teacher, why start out with making enemies of the whole staff. That could wait until later.

She let us sit where we wanted, and didn’t even suggest making a seating chart. This impressed me greatly. Either she intended to do her best to actually get to know us, or she just didn’t give enough of a damn about us to even try to learn our names. Either way, I liked her style from the very start. Honest and to the point.

She introduced us to the book we would be using for the year, a huge tome with a picture of an Egyptian sarcophagus on the front. The saddest thing of all during the class was the fact that it seemed as if I was the only one who knew what the cover picture was of. She even congratulated me on my answer, quiet shocking to say the least. I thought I might be able to actually get along with this woman.

The class ended sooner than I would have liked it to, and it was off to English.

The teacher was a small, thin man who made me think of a fairy, take that term anyway you wish because he probably could have fit any definition of that term you can think of. He was fair of skin and hair with blue eyes behind the largest set of glasses I think I have ever seen on a man. His name was Patrick, and he had a friendly enough disposition, even though he seemed a little out there, if you know what I mean.

Again, we were introduced to the class, and once again we had a seating chart. Guess they can’t all be like Mrs. Harrison-Gray.

That class ended, and Biology was next.

Again with the seating charts, although I thought the guy probably needed a seating chart at home to remember who he and his family were. He was like in his eighties, and seemed to be easily distracted at any given time. He kept going off track with his thoughts, and I’m not sure that we finished half of what he wanted to discuss before the bell rang. His name was Mr. Davis, but the way, and I can’t say I much cared for him at all. If he was getting paid to teach me things, I expected him to at least know what he was doing.

My first day of school ended with the pottery class, and that wasn’t much fun at all since it was nothing but a repeat of the rest of the day. Like I really cared what the names of my classmates were. I very much doubted I’d make a single friend.

Things weren’t looking good in that area, considering no one had said a word to me all day, not even for the half hour we had been given for lunch. There was no leaving the grounds to go find something decent to eat, so we were all forced to make our brave way through the cafeteria food. All of us, that was, aside from those who had been smart enough to bring a sack lunch. I had not been among this group, but after seeing what they called food, I decided I would have to soon follow the example of my foresighted brethren. I won’t even attempt to tell you what we had to eat that day. I sincerely believe it is beyond description, or at least beyond my powers to describe, and I’m sure I would get it wrong even if I tried.

There was no recess, that was for kids, and so I had very little free time to read that day, the book I had packed for my own entertainment had gone mostly unused that day.

I went out to my little, blue truck, and ended my school day by heading home.

I pulled into our drive to find that father’s car was, shockingly enough, not there. He would be getting home in about half an hour, more if he decided yet again that he needed overtime. Maybe because it was my first day of classes at high school, he might come home early, but I really doubted that. More than likely, he didn’t even know it was my first day at high school. I was probably lucky if he even remembered what my age actually was.

I went in through the kitchen door. Mom has a fit if anything gets on her beautiful, white carpet in the living room, so I learned at an early age to go through the side door, that way all the imaginary dirt I tracked in would be on the linoleum, where it would be easier to clean up.

Our kitchen was white. Heck, most of our house was white. I think the only room that actually had any color was my bedroom, and that was because I had painted it just last year, insisting that if I had to stay in this miserable hell hole, I was at least going to have some say over my environment. Thankfully, my mother’s councilor agreed with me, and I got to keep the sky blue walls.

Mom was no where to be found, but that didn’t mean anything. Dinner was in the oven, warming up, so she could go and be with her true love, the guys on the daytime soaps. Oh, how I hated them, but that was enough of that. So she loved a bunch of sick freaks over her own daughter. I was sort of use to this by now.

I headed up the back staircase that went from the kitchen to the second floor where my room was without even uttering a hello. If she had wanted to talk to me, she would have called for me. Since she hadn’t, I knew it was best not to bother her. She was obviously enthralled with her programs.

I got to my room, and sat at the desk father had bought me just for this year. It was the only acknowledgement of my age, and he had done it mainly because I had pathetically begged him to. I put my book bag, now filled to the brim with various school texts, on the desk and pulled out the history book. I was intent on getting a good grade in that class. Mrs. Harrison-Gray had left quiet an impression on me this first day, not an easy thing to do, and I had every intention of returning that favor in kind.

It was nearly an hour later that I heard the car door of my father’s Camero slam shut, and I closed the history book with a deep and disappointed sigh. It was time to go down and face my family.

I trudged down the steps to the kitchen, and there they both were, looking expectantly at me. “How was your first day, Pumpkin?” my father asked. He either called me Pumpkin or Pumpkin Head, as if being referred to as a gourd that got its insides pulled out once a year to make a Jack-o-lantern out of was a complement in some way. I had thought to call him Melon Brain a few times, but had decided against such rash behavior. I’m sure the humor of it would have been lost on him anyway.

“Fine,” I uttered, not really wanting to have this conversation. I knew he really didn’t care about how my first day went, but he wanted to act like he was a loving and caring parent, not something he usually excelled at.

“Oh, come on. You have to tell me more than that. What did you do today? Find any boyfriends yet?” he asked with a goofy grin on his face that made him look all the stupider than he already was.

I tried to refrain from snorting, knowing this would only make him angry with me, and I sort of wanted to eat dinner. The school food had left much to be desired. Instead, I just said, “I haven’t had that much time yet, and it was just getting to know the classes today. Really, nothing much happened. It was actually sort of boring, but most first days are.” My philosophical diatribe left them speechless for the time being, and I could only breath a sigh of relief at that.

We sat down to the lasagna mom had gotten from the store, and had managed to burn slightly, and ate in quiet. I actually enjoyed this bit of silence while it lasted, knowing that later that night, there was sure to be a fight between my parents that would end in one of them slamming the door and one of the cars speeding off.

Of course, they did not disappoint me. I think the fight was over something along the lines of money. It usually is these days. Dad doesn’t make enough money for mother’s tastes, and my mother didn’t appreciate what my father did do for us. It was an old fight that they just kept rehashing over and over again. It was so old, I no longer had to listen to them to know what they were fighting over.

I think it was dad who left that night. Probably to go back to work. That was usually where he headed out when they were done fighting.

I went to bed that night, feeling much the same as I did most nights. Rather bored and irritated with the world.

Author's Note

First Draft