Undercurrent

Two

May 5th

"Three more weeks, that's all you need and then you can attend graduation and be able to start classes at the state college in the fall.  Don't mess this up for yourself, you can still salvage what's left of your senior year if you do well on your finals."

The guidance counselor droned on about my future while I still wondered if there was any point to putting in any effort at all whatsoever considering my almost failing marks in every class besides journalism. The only reason I had been accepted into state college was due to my conditional acceptance before Adam's death nine months prior, and I was surprised it hadn't been pulled considering my lackluster performance in the aftermath.

My mother had said she sent in a letter describing my 'situation' and that the acceptance committee had been 'most understanding' according to their correspondence with her.

"I'm not even sure I want to go there anymore.  I'd rather go to the community college for the first two years, it's cheaper that way anyway."

Mr. Salina narrowed his yellowing, withered eyes in my direction and although I knew his concern for me came from a good place, his methods were unorthodox to say the least in making students do whatever he 'advised'.

I wasn't having it that day, however, and I heaved a breathy sigh as I averted my eyes from his judgmental bushy eyebrows and paid more attention to the dust particles floating in the air made prominent from the beaming sunlight streaming in through the window to the left of the desk in front of me.

There were hundreds of them, if not thousands, and some even sparkled in the bright yellow light as my mind catapulted me back to that fated day in August almost a year ago.  Instead of air, the dust was floating in water so dark it was almost black, and there were millions of tiny specks of life leeching minerals.

Nothing could live in that water because of how rich in minerals it was, an irony not lost on me and the boy that had died in it.

My attention snapped back to my guidance counselor tapping his brittle fingers on his cherry oak desk in front of me, the lines on his time weathered face pulled down into a bitter frown.

The disappointment in his stare was thick with callous discontentment and finally I relented.

"Fine, I'll study for my finals.  Can I leave now?"

The change in his appearance was immediate and I would have laughed had it not been my life that he was pressuring me into changing course with.

"Great, I've set up a few after school tutoring sessions with our math and science labs since you seem to be doing better in history and english.  Mr. Anderson will be overseeing those classes as part of his extra credit, I trust you two will get along and not cause anymore disruptions like the last time?"

I internally cringed at his words, remembering the last time Beck Anderson and I were in the same room together.

He still blamed me for his brother's death and I didn't blame him as I still had crippling nightmares about that day, the guilt weighing heavily on my chest.

Mr. Salina, however, didn't seem to care about my obvious objections to this as he handed me the list of times that I was signed up for in the tutoring lab and I gave him a mock salute as I escaped his smirking presence.

I breathed a sigh of defeat and relief as I made my way down the almost deserted hallway of the high school that I was soon to be rid of in a few short weeks.

Being one of the oldest seniors at the school as my eighteenth birthday had already occurred the past September, I was more than ready to get on with my life at college and finally be rid of the same people who'd made my life an absolute living hell since Adam's death.