Rolling Stone Savior. (Discontinued)

Chapter Six

“Could you hurry up?”

I looked back at the speaker, who was a highly annoyed brunette girl with piercings everywhere possible. To avoid irritating her any further, I finally dug out the Metro-Card and pushed it into the slot, receiving it a few seconds later to walk to the back of the bus. No one really stared at me like I thought they would. That was a good thing. I sure didn’t need anyone staring at me now—soon enough, I would get the most stares of my life.

The bus rumbled into motion once the long line of passengers was finally on board. The only people here were workers and students. I fell somewhere in between the categories. Living this way was sure a lot of hard work, maybe harder than the jobs these people were going to now. But I was also a soon-to-be student—by choice, at that.

It was a reluctant, contemplated choice, but I had to do it. I’ve been desperate for somewhere to be anyway. Why not school?

The bus stopped once again, this time right in front of Medgar Evers College Preparatory School. This school was one of my problems, the school that took me about over an hour to get here every single morning. This was the reason that I had so much makeup, covering up the constant painful bruises checkering my skin. Some of them still remained, faded but visible on my forearms as I pushed the door and entered the vestibule. Teens sat and conversed on the radiator in front of one of the windows, as usual.

The main area of the school, the first floor, was always busy, for it was the center of school, where the security desk, cafeteria, school grocery, conference room, main office, and principal’s office were located. The same security guards that were here when I left sat behind the desk—two fat men, and two women with extravagant weave.

“Hey, you can’t come in here if you aren’t a student or staff.” Fat Black #1 warned me as I approached the desk.

“Oh, she’s a student.” Redhead assured him. They all looked at me more keenly now, as if just recognizing me. Then an understanding expression came upon their faces.

“What period is it right now?” I asked modestly, not wanting to dwell on the fact that this was my first day back in a while.  I just wanted to return to class unnoticed.

Little did I know that that was going to be extremely hard to do.

“It’s fifth period. It’s your lunch period, isn’t it?” Blue-hair asked. I nodded. “Well you might as well head back up to your sixth period class. It’s almost sixth period now.” She checked her watch.

Again, I nodded, and then headed for Staircase A to go upstairs. The staircases were clear, fortunately. But as I progressed along the floors, I saw more people. After all, my sixth period class was all the way up on the sixth floor. By the time I got to that floor, I was receiving more stares than ever. One boy even tried to squeeze my butt, but I managed to wriggle away in time. Why were they treating me this way, like I was fresh meat? I was in the tenth grade; they knew me well around here. There was no reason for them to act like I was an alien.

Except for maybe the fact that my parents had put up posters searching for me while I’d been gone for days.

“Stephanie?” A somewhat squeaky, female voice called. I looked up to see my US History teacher, Ms. Guerrero.

“Yeah?”

“Come inside. Good thing you’re early, we’ve got a lot of work to do…” She said. I could clearly tell she only said this to butter-up the blatant surprised—and a little disgusted—expression on her face. Glum and ashamed, I slumped down in the back of the room and watched her write the aim and do-now on the board right before the bell rang. One-by-one, the students came into the class until it was all of them.

And they all were staring at me.

This wasn’t the type of staring you would normally imagine. I don’t mean catching someone’s eyes on the train, and then looking away to be polite. I mean literally, boldly looking someone in the eye—turning your neck if you have to—and devoting all your focus on glaring right at them. By the way, they had no regard for how I  might feel as I tried to remain looking at the notebook I was writing in.

Once Ms. Guerrero caught on to the staring (well, as soon as she bothered to address it) she stopped writing, examined the situation, and went right back to writing. I wasn’t having that. I stood up out of my seat forcefully and called her name.

“Don’t you think this is a little uncalled for?” I asked assertively.

“What’s uncalled for?” She asked obliviously. My insides were fuming, but a few inhales and exhales helped me keep calm.

“I know you see all your students grilling me like I’m some piece of meat. Make them stop!”

“Wait a second there!” Destiny, a very opinionated girl in our class stood up and said to me. “We have every right to stare at you any way we want to. You’re a fugitive! Girl, you have people looking for you left and right. Even Abigail tried to give us some info on your whereabouts.”

“Abigail?” I uttered to myself. Suddenly, I noticed a crowd had gathered outside the door. This room had a very wide doorway, allowing for a large crowd to look into the classroom. But this doorway was now overflowing with students. They were all here for me.

You’re a fugitive!

This was a very, very bad idea.

“Stephanie, I’ve held out for too long. I’m calling your parents right now. I tried to just ignore it, but they’ve contacted me asking that if I see you, to report to them. I don’t know if the security downstairs has called them already, but I’m getting them on the phone right now.” Ms. Guerrero informed me confidently.

Slowly, I stood up from my desk, packed my things in my bag, and then looked around the room. They all knew what I was about to do. In a matter of seconds, I zipped out of the class and pelted down the stairs to the fourth floor and locked myself in that bathroom. I went to that bathroom in particular because it had a wide enough window for me to escape through. It was perfect.

Well that is, until the principal came through the door.

“Stephanie, don’t even think about it.” Ms. Rosenthal declared. “Come outside. Your parents are here for you.”

My heart fell all the way to my knees when I heard that. I was now sure that killing myself would have been better than enduring this. What was I thinking?

That’s just it, though. I wasn’t thinking.

And now I was here. Now it was over.