I stood on the sidelines in the middle of the soccer field. At one moment, there were people running around in the field. I could still hear the cries of my other classmates as they raced around the field and tried to pass the ball to one another.
Inside of my hand, I held the letter that I had always wanted to give to my best friend, Alexis. Setting us all up in a line, the teachers started to roll-call attendance. After what had transgressed back there, I thought that they were lining us all up for the firing squad for us to be shot.
Alexis walked up to me. She looked very tired—and scared. All the faces of the bullies that had tormented me when I first moved here looked like something had overpowered them. Finally there was something that had humbled them to the point that they could no longer do any form of harm to me. However, perhaps there was something that was much worse that had come into my midst with the rest of what I had come to in my own life.
I tried processing the events that had happened leading up to this; the gun shots that had been heard. The cry to “evacuate the school!” The sound of shooting that was heard outside in the middle of the school. It all sounded so random.
Alexis ran up to me and hugged me. I couldn’t believe that a shooter had broken into my own school. Now mother was seriously going to think about moving out. I could imagine her voice right now:
“We need to get out of that school!” she would say. Once again she would be the one that would be ruining my life.
I saw a blue Mazda drive up around the corner. Running out, my mother looked at me for a second before she dashed forward and hugged me. Her arms wrapped around me like tentacles from an octopus. “It’s going to be ok It’s going to be ok,” my mother kept whispering into my ear. The sounds of the alarm faded into the distance. The shouting of the police officers as they blockaded the school and pulled the shooter out of his hiding place.
For a second all of it seemed like the entire world revolved around my mother and I. For a second, I thought for the first time we were actually connecting with one another.
October 4, 2005
I looked outside of my new room. After traveling from Woodbury, New Jersey, my mother and I had just arrived at our new home in Fairfax, Virginia. I gazed out the window as my mother began placing boxes on the ground with the moving crew. The sun shined down as the first few days of summer started to emerge from the outset of the day. I felt like today could have been a good day to go to the pool if it was nearby.
My eyes scanned around the walls of my room. It almost felt like I was looking for something. I walked around a little, trying to get a good feel for the place. A drafty scent entered into the walls of the building; for every step that I took, I could hear the ground creak underneath me. This could take some getting used to, I thought to myself.
“Honey, how are you in setting up your room?” my mother asked. Her hair was tossed a little with the sun-glasses over her head. A lining of a wrinkle also passed over her brow.
“I think it’s a great room,” I told my mother as I hugged her. My mother’s hands were cold. As she hugged, I could tell it was not firm.
“Seriously Mom,” I said inside her arms. “I think it’s a great room.”
“Good good, I’m glad,” she said. “And a couple weeks from now you start school.” I nodded.
“Yeah, can’t wait,” I said.
“Right, great, maybe after the moving crew moves in everything, we can travel around,” Mother said.
***
Driving through Fairfax, Virginia, I rolled down the window, feeling the breeze entering in as my hair started to pick up. Looking over in the slums area, I thought I could see a girl as we passed by Her locks of hair flowed down to her waist like vines descending down from branches. She had her back against the wall and her arms were crossed. I could hear a tune hum out of her mouth as we drove by.
Oh, coming age. Oh, coming age.
How long will it be? Weird things
Happening. Why must you be so long?
Oh, coming age. Coming age.
How long must you be? Strange things
A-happening, and we know not what to do.
I watched her. Her words descended away into the wind as my mother drove past—becoming softer and softer as my mother continued driving her car throughout the streets. The horns blazing in the streets drowned out her singing.
“Mom, did you see that?” I asked. My mother looked at me, confused by the question.
“See what?”
“That girl singing in the middle of the slums,” I said. My mother turned around.
“I didn’t see anything,” she said. I looked back. I wanted to go back there badly and meet her. She would have been the very first person that I ever would have met in Fairfax, Virginia.
“I’ll be right back,” I said as I opened the door and ran out.
“Lauren Baxter! You will come back here right this instant!” My mother screamed. I ran on the side-walk in my sandals and flip-flops. I caught up to the corner where I thought I saw the girl. She looked up at me with those pale eyes and smiled a little.
“Why hello there,” she said. “What brings you here on this beautiful summer afternoon?” “Hi, I just wanted to let you know that I am Lauren,” I said, extending my hand. The girl looked at me. After a second or two, she laughed.
“Kids these days. I see you are new around here. Nobody in Fairfax ever goes up to a stranger and tries to talk to them like that,” she said, walking away from the wall and going into a little hole in the side of a building.
“Wait, where are you going?”
“Away from you. You bothered my peace. Now go out!” I paused at her animosity. Indeed I was in a different world.
ns 15.158.61.18da2
