Hype

~Chapter 10~

              Dad came home a few hours later.  I had been dreading dinner for the longest time.  It was one of those things that you just knew was going to be awful.  At six-thirty, he walked in the door.  He had his usual tired appearance−running a restaurant can drain a person.  Around five-thirty, I went to hide up in my room.  I figured it would be best to avoid the situation.  I sat at my desk on my computer, trying to manage a situation that was going on online.  It was frustrating to the extreme and not to mention, unexpected. 

           So, like all the other millions of people in the world, I have a page on one of the popular websites where you connect with people.  From work, church, and school, I have about two-hundred “friends.”  It may seem like a lot, but I know there are people who have thousands.  To the rest of the world, it seems apparent that anything under four hundred is nothing.  Anyway, I went on to my profile to see that it was flooded with messages, and I had about twenty people were trying to live chat with me at the same time.  Here’s how many messages I had: fifty-six.  Almost every person in my class, plus people in chorus, plus the girls from basketball.  Everyone wanted to know what was going on.  One stupid fight, and now there’s all this hype over it. 

           For every person who tried to chat with me and asked what was going to happen, I just had to keep telling them that I had no idea.  Once they realized that they wouldn’t be getting anymore gossip, they left me alone.  As for the messages, after trying to answer five people individually, I decided to give up.  I couldn’t please all of them, so, I figured: why not just post a universal status that answers all the questions?  And so, this is what I posted on my profile for everyone to see:

            “Thanks to everyone for your concerns, as many of you know, today I got in a fight with Mackenzie Williams.  I’ve had multiple issues with her beforehand.  She stuck gum on my backpack, and destroyed all the pictures in my locker, one of which was my little brother’s drawing.  During the fight, Mackenzie kicked me in my bad knee several times. In order to get her off of me, I punched her in the nose.  My leg is fine, but Mackenzie’s nose is said o be broken.  She was given a two week suspension.  Because I started the fight, I was expelled from Mercy Christian.  I don’t know what will happen now.  I will post an update when I have one.  Until then, I’ll miss every one of you at Mercy. I love you guys.”   

            And there you have it.  Of course, people started commenting as soon as I posted it, but I just ignored them.  Nothing else needs to be explained.  What’s done is done.  Mercy Christian is no longer a part of my life.  Now all I had to do was figure out a way to graduate.  I tried to keep my hopes up.  There’s ways to get a GED, or do online classes…it should work out somehow.  Things happened to be a lot worse for me because it was so late in the year.  I was clueless, so out of curiosity, I decided to search something.  I typed in: “people who get expelled in senior year”.  I wasn’t expecting to find much. 

           Not true−the results came up with tons of people like me in the exact same situation.  I even found people who had it worse.  There was a message board where I saw a post from a girl who was expelled only three weeks before her graduation.  My graduation was supposed to be June sixth, just about two months away. 

           Dinner was like I imagined, harsh.  Nobody said a word.  The food was good though.  Mom made a roast beef and potatoes.  I heated myself up some leftover pasta so I didn’t starve.  Being a vegetarian in a house full of meat-eaters can get a little tricky sometimes.  It’s a constant struggle try to make it work.  At the table I usually sit across from Fox, and Dad will sit next to him.  I just stared down at my plate the entire time and picked at the stick noodles.  I was so terrified that if I even did so much as to make eye contact with Dad, our table would turn into a warzone.