The Four: Senior Year

Chapter One - Icebreaker

     Ding. Ding. Ding.

     7:50. Opening bell rings. I hear it as I follow behind a large group of people into a grungy, creme hallway. At the top of the hallway, three stripes race horizontally down. The first two stripes blue and the last one, a sun-faded yellow to a lackluster yellow. Carver High School, Home of the Blue Devils, painted just underneath the last stripe in a black script font. The whole school can use a touch of new paint, everything is faded because of the sun coming in from the collection of windows and doors at the entrance of the school. A monstrous, wooden trophy case crowds the wall, with glass shelves and doors. Each shelf is full of trophies, awards, and medals. I pause to study the school's remarkable achievements. Five state titles in football, three L.A. City and California State soccer title trophies, several city and state trophies for the girl's basketball team and the school's most recent accomplishment, an International High School Basketball win.

     I can't believe that I've made it to my last year of high school. Senior year. I pray that this will be the last school I'll ever have to attend. This is the sixth school in the last three years that I've attended. I never stay long at one school, not long enough to finish an entire year. Mom and I were always moving because of her huge marketing career. We have lived in all the major cities across the United States. New York City. Chicago. Philadelphia. San Antonio. San Diego. And now Los Angeles. She is great at what she does. So great that WE have to keep relocating. Sometimes I wish she had a normal 9 to 5 job. A nurse, a beautician or a call center agent would be ideal. She could have a set schedule and actual days off. Days that we could spend together.
As I navigate through the rowdy crowds of teenagers and blue lockers offset with yellow lockers, I take a glimpse at my school map and class schedule to reassure myself that I am traveling in the correct direction of my first period, Biology. I make a left into a hallway and pass the cocky jocks talking about what piece of ass they got over the summer. Pass the cool kids, comparing their latest gadgets. Pass the band geeks shoving their hefty instrument cases into their lockers. Pass young couples in love, sharing long, hard, wet kisses, as if they had been separated for years and just reunited.

     I never made friends.

     Why should I? 

     What would be the point? 

     I won't be in school long enough to learn their names. I don't have time for friends when I'm too worried about when the next move will happen. I don't have time for friends when Mom is always on time to drop me off at school and to pick me up. I don't have time for friends when education comes first like Mom always preaches. No friends, no sports, no band, no high school crush, no connections. No connections meant no ties and no ties meant no tears. No tears when it is time to pack up and move on to the next city.

     I weave through multiple cliques of fellow teenagers making their way to their classrooms like myself. I make a right then a quick left turn into an off-white painted stairwell with blue and yellow paint splattered on the walls and stairs. The school really embraces its school colors and motto. The motto is painted on alternate stairs as you climb them. I climb the stairs, reach the top and see my destination ahead on the right. The chaos in the hallways begins to taper off as I came closer to my target.

     I walk into the classroom and pause to view my surroundings. I am in unknown territory. I am in a new school, in a new classroom. I have all new teachers and new classmates that I won't get to know. Take it one day at a time until I am walking across a high school stage, receiving my diploma and proceeding to the next adventure in my life.

     Old wooden cabinets and shelves hold up black counters. Eight stations. Only six stations numbered. Each station hosting four steel lab chairs. Each station resting four pairs of safety glasses, four folded white lab coats with blue and yellow stitching and a piece of notebook paper with four names written on it. At the front of the classroom stands, a tall, slender, dark skin man with a salt and pepper goatee. He's wearing a forest green and white checkered button-down Hollister shirt, khaki Dockers and black shoes. The sleeves to his shirt rolled up to rest below his elbows. On his right exposed arm, he wears a black and grey California Republic tattoo. His clothes fit well, not too baggy and not too tight as if he jumped out of a Hollister advertisement. He is no more than thirty years old. He is quite a bit younger than most of the teachers I passed in the hallway.