Sleeping On Daisies

III: The System

Kingsgate isn’t a normal high school. 

Here, everyone is dressed like a nun or a bachelor. For the girls—long pleat skirts, blouses, stockings and oxford flats. For the boys—sweater vests, neckties, slacks, tube socks and penny loafers.   

And then there's the restrictions: no outlandish hair dyes, no revealing tattoos, jewelries and piercings are banned, and zero-tolerance for makeup. Principal Floyd even went as far as having the bathroom mirrors removed, simply because she decided that painting our faces and focusing too much on our appearances is what distracts us from our true priority: graduation. 

To worsen the matters, school officials allows this. 

A ‘Whatever It Takes’ policy was pronounced after the aftermath of Englewood High. In terror of the past, the school board is appeasing Principal Floyd. She is permitted to continue with her ridiculous policies and codes of conduct to keep Kingsgate titled as the school with the ‘utmost discipline’, and ranked with the highest grade average in the county. (Kingsgate has this ‘Forbidden C Average’ policy that forbids students from acquiring anything below its average. Within the end of each semester, if our grades are below the average, we will be recommended to transfer schools.)

Principal Floyd even set up this disciplinary system where insubordinate students receive different color bands for different level of offenses.

Level one offenses —such as Clair’s outburst of profanity, or breaking other minor codes of conduct, like the restrictions—receive yellow-bands. Level two offenses—such as insubordinating teachers or other staff members—receive green-bands. Level three offenses—such as being caught with any lethalities or drugs—receive blue-bands, and level four offenses—such as threats, theft, or violence—receives red-bands. Clair refuses to speak to me because of this; because I am responsible for her receiving a yellow-band.  

It is after school now.

The library is densely filled with students. I scurry to the back area, where a throng of different cliques and personalities socialize and study at the tables. My only reasons for being in such a place is simple: the philosophy section. If there’s anything that intrigues me, it’s spiritual philosophy. 

“The Celestine Prophecy,” someone says, startling me from behind. 

The book fumbles out of my hands and onto the carpet. 

“I-Isaiah,” I stutter.

“Been there, read that.” He says, leaning one shoulder onto the bookshelf. “I knew I’d find you in this aisle.”

“You were looking for me?” The question sounds desperate.

He raises an eyebrow at me and I quickly change it.

“I mean...how’d you know where to find me?”

“Well,” he began, picking out a copy of the same book, “I know that you’re still in search for that identity of yours...” 

I don’t like the sound of his tone.

My teeth grits. “And?”

“Calm down,” he says as he flips through a few pages. He meets my eyes.

My heart misses a beat.

I palm my chest instinctively.  “I am calm.”

“Your words were ragged a few seconds ago.” He stops studying the book, placing it back to its position on the shelf, and starts studying me. 

I try to fix my posture, to appear more tall than slouched. I shift my legs, placing more weight on my right instead of left. My throat and mouth dries. The earlier taste of breakfast and lunch becomes bitter. I swallow my saliva to remember it all—that the banana bread was sweet, that the chicken sandwich was spicy, and that his piercing stare shouldn’t make me feel so uncomfortable, so angst.