I glared at the peanut butter and jelly sandwich in front of me with absolute repulsion. I utterly despised each and every single inch of it. Of course, you think I am being dramatic. What is so wrong with a little peanut butter and jelly on bread, right? It wasn't the texture or the taste that bothered me. It was what the sandwich stood for. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches were the lunchtime staple that mothers sent their children to school with. They stuffed them in their kid's plastic lunchboxes or paper sacks, sometimes adding a little note that said something overly cheery, like "Have a nice day!" or "I love you." Then, the kid went to school and ate it with the other kids, who would also be consuming their peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. They would talk and laugh and joke over their peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, like normal people did. I couldn't do that. I was incapable of having a normal conversation. My conversations consisted of me trying not to have a heart attack, while the other person tried not to stop talking about themselves. How could I blame them? Who else was there to talk about since I was practically dying? Now, I could see how some people would have an easier time with that, but laughing? People. Were. Not. Funny. They were horrifying. That is it. Period.
I quickly slipped the sandwich into my dreadful, new backpack, glad that it wasn't covered in transformers and I wasn't about to go to elementary school. That was supposed to be a lot worse than high school. People were crazy as children. I was sure that it didn't get much better as time went on, but maybe, just maybe, when their brains had a little time to develop they would become a little more approachable, a little more sane. Probably not. There was one thing that I would be able to miss, though, the school bus. I had heard many stories from both my parents about the horrific things that happened on school buses and I did not want to experience any of them. Fortunately, my mother would be driving me to the high school, which was pleasantly called Golden Oak High, a beautiful name for a place filled with my nightmares. I shuddered just thinking about it.
I walked to the door as slow as humanly possible. That is actually a slight exaggeration. Anyways, I had a good reason for my slow pace. All the lights in the house were turned off (we were trying to save money on electricity bills) and I didn't want to trip on anything and break my neck. If I broke my neck, I would be dead and that would be just a little worse than my current situation. So, I was being as careful as possible and taking as much time as I needed to make it to the front door. No, it had nothing to do with the fact that I was terrified of going to high school. Why would you think that? I would be ignorant if I thought prolonging it would help...
Mom was already in the driver's seat, ready to go. Her face was pinched and her brow furrowed. She looked like she wanted to get the hell out of there, as if the sight of our house was too shameful for her to bare. See, we used to live in a structure that I could only call a mansion. It wasn't the biggest of mansions, only about 7,000 square feet, but it was still a mansion and on the coast of California. Our current house was a little less... spacious, not to mention the fact that it looked as though it had been vacant for about ten years, grass three feet high, pieces of roof falling off. You get the picture.
I trudged to our "new" car, which was not new in condition, only in circumstance. Once I got to the outside of the car, it took me probably around two minutes to get the door to open. I even resorted to body slamming it, which is NOT something that I liked to do, in public especially. I am pretty sure that half the neighborhood saw me throwing myself against the car. A wonderful impression I must have made on them...
"As soon as you get home, that grass needs to be mowed...." I nodded my head, accepting the challenge. I was not about to tell my mother that we didn't have a mower or weed-eater. That would stress her out way too much. My lips twitched a little as I saw myself trimming the small yard with a pair of hedge clippers. It would take about the same amount of time as it did to mow our humongous ex-yard with a driving mower, so it wasn't a big deal.
"I'll even find a couple of pretty weeds and relocate them to the front of our house." I reassured her. Mom laughed, her face crinkling in amusement. Honestly, I was a little surprised that she still had the ability to laugh after the past couple of weeks.
"I saw an old bucket of paint in the basement, blue paint, I think. Do you think the house would look good blue?" She asked. Right now, the house was white with a layer of yellow on top and some green over that. Like I said, ten years of vacancy.
"Anything color would be better than that," I said, nodding toward the house with a grimace. This elicited more laughter.
After a couple of tries, the engine finally started with a low rumble. We rocked along the very straight, very smooth road, pretending that all the strange sounds and jolts were just potholes. Our street was mostly classic, little houses with little welcome mats and little lawns and little dogs and little trees and little mailboxes and little fences with little gates. It was a little neighborhood, but I found myself enjoying it. Everything seemed so calm. Pleasant.
I could tell we were approaching the high school when we reached the line of cars, trailing after one another, sluggishly slow. My stomach dropped to the soles of my NIKE running shoes (which I brought for emergency situations, you know, in case I needed to get out fast). My hands started sweating like crazy and my throat tightened up, but Mom didn't notice. She was too preoccupied with thoughts of bills, thoughts of work, maybe. For some reason, I was glad that she couldn't see the fear creeping up my spine, the nervousness knotting itself in my stomach. I was glad that she didn't have to put another point on her list of things to stress over. But mostly, I was glad that mom could never know how much of a coward I was.
