In My Father's Shadow-Chapter Eleven

My English teacher has the most high pitched, grating voice on the face of the planet… and she loves to hear herself talk. Her hair is chin length and in a bob, blonde with dark brown highlights and glasses, shielding her blue eyes. She’s young for a teacher. She’s probably twenty five or so. Another thing about her is her height. I wouldn’t be surprised if she was six feet tall or more, and she’s skinny too. She’s just an itty bitty little thing… tall as hell and skinny as a pole. Damn her.

She passes out these worksheets that we are supposed to fill out about ourselves with stupid questions like “Are your parents together?” Not technically. “Do you have any siblings?” Negative. “Do you have any pets?” Negative. “What are your hobbies?” Listening to music, exercising. “What kind of music do you listen to?” Rock, punk, metal, ska, blah, blah, blah, blah. It’s pretty boring stuff, really. Maybe if we read far enough between the lines, we’ll see a contract saying we’ll hand over our first born child. Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t want my teachers to be my friends. It’s hard enough having friends who want to be your friend… if that makes any sense at all. I don’t want them to get close to me and worry about me. That’s for parents. When a teacher is trying to be your friend, it generally means that they will get really teary eyed at the end of the year when we all pass and it’s just not worth it.

She refuses to stop talking. Her voice makes me want to put a nail into my temple. It’s so high pitched that I personally think of it as a miracle that I can hear her at this frequency. I’ve been trying as hard as I possibly can to tune her out… now all that I can hear is a faint buzzing in my ear. I rest my chin in my hand, tapping my pen against my desk and debating on whether or not to actually fill out the questionnaire that she had given us.

The bell isn’t going to ring soon enough. I’m doing the questionnaire for no other reason than that I’m in desperate need of something to do. She wants us to write an essay too. “Who are you?” her voice cuts through my ears and makes me want to scream. “That’s what this is going to be about. I want to know who you are, and not just your name and what you do for fun. Give me a peek inside your world. Tell me what you think, feel and go through every day. I want to hear about your secret crush that not even your best friend knows… not just from you putting it bluntly on the page, but through subtle hints. I want to know your favorite movies. Tell me about your family and if you really want to, make me feel that teenage angst that we’re all so accustomed to. But don’t just write me a paper telling me what I want to hear.” As she says this, she’s passing out grammar books and literature books.

I pick at my fingernails and write my name on the inside cover of my books, my stomach threatening to growl. Immediately, I’m battling to keep my mind off of food, digging my fingernails into my sliced up stomach and grinding my teeth together to prevent any noise from coming out. My shirt feels wet under my fingertips and I know that a few cuts have opened up. Thank god for black shirts and hoodies. I’m not afraid of what will happen if I’m caught. I don’t care about that. What I’m afraid of is the fact that they will make me stop. They’ll take away the only form of punishment that I have. And I can’t allow that to happen. I can’t let the world win.

Plans for my essay race through my head; I’m wondering exactly what to write and exactly how to write it. But it’s hard. My mind is moving so slow that I can’t really decipher any of the thoughts… they’re hard to read. It isn’t that I can’t form the words; they just take some time for me to fully process them. It used to come so easily, now, it’s hard to even think of a single sentence to put down. All of my writing has gone down the toilet. I can’t focus on anything. I’ve been to five classes so far and I doubt that I’ve taken in a single word my teachers have said.

A lot of my friends and even people that I don’t know are looking at me strangely. As the day goes by, it’s just getting harder and harder to ignore. I hate how it feels like they just stare at me like I’m not even a person.

When the bell rings, it doesn’t happen soon enough. My books are quickly gathered into my arms and in seconds, I am out of the room, in the hall… free. My only problem is that this next period is lunch. I’m going to be surrounded by tons of food and have to watch people shovel the calorie loaded school slop into their mouths for forty minutes. Oh the joys. I’ll probably just eat an apple. As long as I take the skin off first… then sip on some water.

Aislin is waiting in the line for me and she grins excitedly waving me over. Rolling my eyes, I cross my arms over my chest and walk over to her.

“So what do you think of our English teacher?” She cackles and stands on her tiptoes, throwing an arm over my shoulder.

I snort, “Her voice makes me want to shoot myself in the head. But other than that, she seems pretty cool I guess.”

Aislin nods and sighs, “Yeah, same for me. I mean, sitting in her class seriously had me contemplating suicide just because of her voice. But I think it might be kind of a fun year.” She wrinkles her nose and shudders, “Sweet lord, what are they cooking?!”

My stomach churns, “I dunno… but I’m thinking the only thing safe is the salad. I can’t take the smell… I don’t even want to know what it tastes like.”

“Salad is starting to sound really good right about now…” Aislin groans clutching her stomach.

As we moved along the lunch line and finally got into the kitchen, I grabbed a tray, placed a bottle of water on it and scooped up some salad and an apple. I’m at the cash register in less than a minute and I give the attendant at the register my name and my cash. She throws me an odd glance and I just grab my tray, walking over to a table and wait for Aislin to show up.

The clank of her tray landing on the table causes me to jump and I look up from my salad, grinding a small piece of lettuce between my molars until there’s nothing left to chew. Swallowing is hard… but I have to eat something so Aislin will stay off of my back. I haven’t eaten in so long that my throat is stubborn and immediately tries to prevent the food from going down. Immediately, my bottle of water is in hand and I take several huge swallows of it to force the mush down.

“So what are you going to write about for your whole… essay deal?” She asks before taking a bite of her sub. Its turkey, with tomatoes, onions, lettuce and mayo… subtract the bread, meat and mayo and it might be considered a decent meal.

I shrug and manage another small bite from my salad, “I dunno… there’s really nothing all that interesting about my life. I mean, I wake up, I go to school, and I hang out with you, and then listen to music. The end. There’s nothing to write about.”

It’s a total lie. I could write about my diet. I could tell her exactly what it’s like. I could say how many calories are in the foods we eat every day and how disgusting they are, not to mention what they do to your bodies. It wouldn’t be hard. But it would be obvious.

“What about you? What are you going to write about?” I ask, needing to get the attention off of me long enough to spit my last bite of lettuce into my napkin.

“Are you kidding me? I absolutely blow at this stuff. I’ll start out saying my name is Aislin Birchrow and wind up writing a fucking autobiography. It’ll probably just be something along the lines of… this is my day to day life. Because I’m a half-asser and there’s really nothing interesting about me.”

I snort, “You mean besides the fact that you are the most random person on the face of the planet and could probably land the entire country’s population in a psych ward in a week after a huge caffeine and sugar binge?”

She laughs, “Yeah, well, you know, that actually takes quite a bit of effort on my part.”

“Oh, I’m sure. You know… because it’s such a killer getting off of your ass and pouring yourself another cup of coffee to keep the high up.”

“Shut up!”