Her life in California

The wind was blowing the leaves out of the trees. Sarah could see it threw the clear glass of the window, as little raindrops landed on her window.

"Sarah, look at me." Her teacher said, not unkindly, and Sarah turned away from the window. When Sarah met her teachers eyes her teacher smiled, and pointed down at her work. "Sarah if you want to get the right answers you have to look at the questions, not at the yard." Sarah knew this was true, but the yard was so much more interesting. Even as she tried to stop herself her eyes dragged themselves toward the window. "Sarah!" her teacher said again, this time letting frustration bleed into her voice. "Pay attention to your work."

Sarah looked back down at her paper and tried to be interested in math. It wasn't that the problems were hard, it was simply that they were so boring, and the yard was so interesting. Right now a cat was trying to cross over to the shelter of the tree. The wind whipped its fur around and it looked utterly bedraggled in the storm. Sarah wished it could come inside were it was nice and warm, and she could go play in the tree.

Her teacher pulled the curtain over the window, shutting the yard away from Sarah, who sighed and looked up at the clock. She couldn't tell the time. Lately the clock had been getting blurrier and blurrier. Sarah supposed she needed glasses, but money was stretched so thin right now, she didn't want to mention it to her mom. It would just make another thing for her mother to worry about, and there wasn't really anything her mother could do. Maybe when her mom got the new job she'd mention it, and then all she'd have to worry about would be how dorky she looked.

Having nothing better to concentrate on Sarah looked down at her paper. 4X-2=14. Well that was easy, it was 4. All you had to do was add two to 14 and -2, which would make sixteen, divided by 4 made 4. She wished that there were more complicated problems out there, but most likely there weren't. She looked up at someone nudged her on the elbow. It was the girl who sat next to her, Lassie.

"Sarah, whats the answer to question 7?" She asked, and Sarah wanted to give her the answer. Sarah wanted to be nice. And if Lassie needed help she wanted to give it to her, but she had already got in trouble for helping someone cheat three times, and didn't want to be punished again. She shook her head, but far from being disappointed this made Lassie laugh.
"Yeah, I didn't think YOU would know." The three girls next to Lassie laughed and Sarah blushed.

So Lassie hadn't needed help, she'd just wanted to make Sarah look dumb. Lassie probably hadn't needed help the other times either. Lassie had just wanted Sarah to get in trouble and had known that she herself wouldn't get in trouble. This made  Sarah sad, so she looked toward the window again, but it was closed. There was no way to touch the outside, and she was locked in this class for at least three more hours. Not for the first time Sarah wished her family had never moved to this town.

They'd used to live in Arizona, and Sarah had lots of friends and was the top of her class. The teacher she'd had made everything sound interesting, and there was talk of putting her up a grade. Her father had been really impressed to hear that and her mother had insisted on a party. Sarah liked the new class even better than the old one, though she missed seeing her friends as often. They'd gotten to learn about a lot of interesting things, like how blood works and why gravity keeps everything from falling, while at the same time making sure things fall.

Then her father and mother lost their jobs because the business shut down. At first there'd been optimistic talk about how it'd just be a little while, then they'd find a new job and everything would be perfect. Then there'd been the talk about how they couldn't afford to keep the house, so they'd move into a apartment. It would only be for a while, then they'd get jobs and they would be able to buy back the house. Finally there'd been the talk about how there weren't any jobs in Arizona. Mom couldn't even get a job as a waitress, and the bills were stacking up. Then Dad got the job offer from the place in California.

It wasn't a great job, and mom still needed to find one but it was something. The family figured it would be better to move to California and make a little money instead of staying in Arizona and making nothing. Anyway the money Dad would be getting would be more than enough to buy a modest house, and then they'd be all right, right?

The first thing they found when they moved to California was that everything was way more expensive than in Arizona. For the same amount as you could use in Arizona to buy a mansion you could use in California to buy a shack. Buying a house was just not part of the equation anymore. They looked for apartments by day, and slept in their car at night. Finally they were able to find a one room apartment. Sarah was given a choice of the couch or the room, and she chose the couch.

Things were never the same again. The talk about how they'd move back to Arizona as soon as possible stopped. Instead mom talked about saving money for clothes and food, and could Dad remember that quarters were all the Laundromat took? Sarah was entered in a new school, and that was different also. While schools in Arizona made you feel relaxed and interested schools in California drained your energy. The teachers weren't all bad, but about half were. The worst part, however, were the fences.

They went around the entire school, and separated away the gym area. The field was surrounded by them. They were everywhere you went, and some had cameras attached to them. They looked like white bee hives with black bottoms. They scared Sarah. The idea that someone was watching her. Someone she couldn't see and someone she didn't know. It made her worry about the bathrooms because there were rumors....

And that was the last thing that was different about California schools. There were always rumors. If you went to the nurse at 1:00 by 1:15 there would be a hundred rumors about you all over the school. They ranged from you being pregnant to you being beat up, to occasionally you being raped. Some of the more sinister kids, with scars by their eyes would look at you after, as though trying to weigh you. A few of the grosser buys, with their pants hanging low as though they didn't know how to dress would ask you if it was good. Sometimes girls who came back from the nurse would meet a group of such boys and then they'd have to go to the nurse again, with ripped shirts and tears. That was, as the principle said, as far as it ever went. In Arizona it wouldn't have been allowed to go that far. Then again in Arizona boys knew how to buy pants that wouldn't fall down.

Sarah worked and finished her page. Even with her daydreaming she was the first one done. She got up and turned her paper in, then came and sat back down at her desk. The teacher picked her paper up and looked it over. Sarah knew all the problems were correct, but the teacher put ugly red marks all over her page anyway, and handed it back to her. It had in red at the top, Show your work!! Sarah sighed, and got down to writing out all the problems. She didn't bother to change her answers, and when she was done she took it up to the turn in bin again. This time she was the last to do so, everyone else already being done. Her teacher nodded, grabbing the pile of papers and starting on the grading. Sarah got a D because of how many she'd had to correct. Lassie got a A because she only got three answers wrong.

And outside the wind whipped the fur on the cat as it lay inside the tree. The cat didn't mind, because the wind didn't hold water anymore. The leaves on the branches blew away with the water and the tree cried out for its lost ones. Soon the wind stopped blowing, soon the leaves stopped falling. Soon the cat got up from under the tree and went searching for mice, happy in the knowledge that its life truly was great.