Freak School

If you’re reading this, then I guess you broke my encryption. If it’s the 2400s or the 2500s then I suspect I’m still alive, and I hereby curse you. If it’s later than that, well, I guess I’m dead so maybe I’ll just haunt you or something. 

This is an English class assignment, and it seems to be the only one so far that isn’t totally lame. But if Miss T’Bek, my teacher, thinks she’s gonna get me to hand this in, she’s got another think coming. I’ll edit it big time, and I bet all that’ll be left will be a few indefinite articles. She won’t get my nouns or my verbs. Maybe an adjective or two, if she’s lucky. 

So, I should start. It’s August 27th, 2413. Now, I know, you’re probably wondering why I’m not using a star date. Well, it’s because my Mom always used the Earth date when we were all still together in Connecticut. I figure I’m just carrying on her noble tradition. 

I should tell you who I am. My name is Rayna Montgomery. That’s my mother’s last name, ‘cause my Dad’s, well, it doesn’t quite work in human talk. Yes, maybe you can tell already, but I’m a mutt. 

Through no fault of my own, I guess, I got the worst set of genes from both sides. I have ugly cranial ridges and they look really stupid with my yellowy-red hair. Thanks to Mom for that, not!  I can swipe, hard, at people, but I’ve got no confidence in it. So I don’t swipe much, don’t growl, don’t eat stuff that’s barely dead – ugh – but I get mad easily, so I get into trouble. 

When I was fourteen, I had heard one too many cherry jokes – I used to get them because of my hair color, yeah, thanks Mom – and they were all about my virginity so I ended up doing this guy just because I was so tired of having honor to defend. Then my Dad found out, and he went ballistic because I didn’t wait. I mean, I totally don’t see why he got so upset. It’s not like I was pregnant or anything. 

The guy’s family ended up moving away. I don’t miss him. He was a jerk. 

I got into more trouble, some petty theft, that kind of thing, and my grades really took a nosedive last year, ‘cause I just stopped caring, know what I mean? 

And that’s why they ended up sending me here. I know, I know, the real name of this place is the Archer Academy at Oberon, but everybody calls it the Freak School. 

See – and if you’re some archaeologist digging this up in, like, a thousand years, you should know that there are all of these species in the Federation. Before we all had Warp Drive, we just went our merry ways, but now that there’s been peace for a while – ugh – there’s all this interspecies marriage. So kids like me are born. 

I mean, it’s not like we all didn’t try. I tried while I was in Connecticut, but there were just too many rules. And, like I’ve said, I got the worst of both worlds. I’m too short and soft to be menacing, and I’m too freaky-looking to fit in, in Connecticut or anywhere else on Earth. 

Let’s just say – despite what my Mom used to say – I am not a pretty girl. Not for humans, and not for Klingons. I’m just a sixteen-year-old waste of time and DNA. 

=/\= 

September 18, 2413 

Sorry I haven’t written in a while. I had a lot of assignments. Miss T’Bek is really riding us. It’s all so useless. Not like I want to go to Starfleet Academy or any of that old BS. Not that I have anything else planned, but really, I am sixteen and I just think it stinks to even be thinking about deciding that kind of stuff. 

But there is some news. We’re all freaks here, all hybrids of some sort. Everybody’s been teased and stuff. They make us go through these, like group therapy sessions. We all share about how isolated we all were at our old schools, how the hairy half-Tellarite girls felt during Swim class, how the half-Bynars were all mortified if they were separated for talking. You know the drill.