Change

 

“Today will be the day; the day that every thing changes,” I thought as I rode the bus to school that morning. I touched my book bag and felt it.

      “Okay,” I continued in my mind, “it’s still there.” I hadn’t chickened out at the last minute, the way I had the first time. I had actually brought it. And today every thing would change for the first time since middle school. I felt a sense of panic and exhilaration at the same time. My hands were shaking like crazy and my palms were clammy. But now there was no turning back because we were almost at school and I had brought it. I had actually BROUGHT IT!

      As I and my classmates exited the bus at White Wall High School, I clutched my book bag tightly in front of me. Everyone was standing around with their friends, their “cliques”, as they did every morning. Everyone had a group where they belonged. Everyone, that is, except for me. I was pegged as the “weird girl” in grade seven and now, five years later, I’m still the “weirdo”.

Nobody says anything to me as I make my way to the tree where I sit every morning until the first bell rings. I eat my lunch at the tree every day and the tree is where I sit to wait for the bus every day after the final bell. . I hold my head down as I trudge along to my tree. I hold my head down because making eye contact is only asking to be insulted, spit at, or worse. I hear them snickering as I sit down and pull out my favorite book, Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot.

   “Freak,” someone says, but I pretend not to hear it. I have learned to do that well over the past five years. Some days it’s harder than others to ignore idiots yelling lude, hurtful, disrespectful remarks at me. I’ve just learned to deal. But even after five years of enduring the bullshit, it still hurts. I touch my book bag just to make sure it wasn’t a dream, but it’s still there. And I smile because I know something they don’t know. Finally, I could be the one snickering behind their backs because the secret was all mine.

   Someone throws a half-eaten apple at me, and a whole group of my peers laughs like it’s the funniest thing in the world. The person laughing the hardest and loudest is Jennifer Daniels. We were best friends from kindergarten until seventh grade. Then in seventh grade she started a rumor that I always read and wrote horror stories because my family performed satanic rituals in our basement. Why, you might ask, would my best friend start such a stupid rumor? Because the guy she had a crush on just happened to have a crush on me. And the idiots I’m forced call my classmates either believed it or pretended to believe it just so they could have someone to ridicule; so they wouldn’t have to be the victims of such treatment.

   So now it’s my senior year and I’m still known as the “weird girl”. They can just keep right on laughing because the joke was on them. Then came the dreaded first bell, which signaled it was now time to enter Hell, better known as American History. This is the class where I couldn’t just blend into the back of the room and be silent. We always had to put our chairs into one big circle and “participate”. This is the class where I was ridiculed the most, where I was laughed at to my face. And what did Mrs. Healy do about this? She laughed. The teacher laughed and allowed these mongrels to talk to me this way. She sometimes evoked the humiliation that I endured.

 “Kat,” the cow would say, “what an interesting ensemble you have chosen to wear today.” At this, everyone would laugh and I would hold down my head in shame and humiliation.

 As I walked into the classroom Mrs. Healy smiled and said, “Good morning, Katherine.”

 “Good morning, you fat f**k,” I wanted so badly to say, but I opted for a nod of my head instead.

 All of the desks were pushed back today because we would be giving oral reports about Lincoln and the Civil War. I kept m eyes lowered as I found the desk farthest from the front and sat down.

 “Nice dress, Kat,” someone said, which invoked a riot of silly snickering and giggling. I looked up to see who had said this, and I found Jennifer turned around in her desk smiling back at me. “B***h,” I thought to myself. These people were a bunch of raving idiots with GPA’s so low they aren’t part of a grading scale, and I’m the one who’s made fun of. Life’s a b***h and then you die.

 I could hear Mrs. Healy asking if there were any volunteers to give their presentations first, but no one offered. Then Kyle Anderson said, “How about Katherine? I think she should go first.”

 And Mrs. Healy said, “Yes, Katherine, why don’t you go first?” I told her I would rather go last, but she said willful disobedience results in a write-up. So I went first.

 I stood, picked up my book bag, and slowly made my way to the front of the class.

 “Look,” said Sarah, “the weirdo’s taking her book bag up for her report!” Another riotous fit of laughter from the class.

   I stood nervously at the podium in the front of the room, facing my classmates, my enemies. I could see them all laughing and pointing, but I couldn’t hear anything. All I could hear was my heart pounding in my ears, my blood rushing in my head. Their faces were all distorted and they began looking like demons. These people had put me through hell since junior high. They had taunted me, humiliated me, and even beaten me once or twice. And now they mocked me again. As I sat my book bag on the podium, I could see Mrs. Healy gesturing for me to go on with my presentation.

 “Yeah, go ahead, you freak,” Jennifer laughed. I put my hand in the book bag and touched it. It was cold because the air conditioner was on in the class. Then I looked straight into Jennifer’s eyes, pulled it out, closed my eyes… and began firing the .22 caliber hand gun I had stolen from my father that morning. Today will be the day that every thing changes.