A few slight changes, but its overall the same piece. Enjoy.
The Library with the Linoleum Floor
I ride the bus every day, and every day for the last 3 years my bus driver has said the same thing: Have a good day, to which every day I have thought in my head “In hell”. Have a good day in hell. I have always hated school, and can’t imagine ever liking it. School is a frame of mind; you’re either in it or you’re not. Somewhat reminiscent of flash-in-the-pan bands where you seem to either like it or hate it. When you tell people you hate it, you get an odd look, and when you tell people you like it, you get an equally odd look – no middle ground.
My name was James, I’m 16, and I hated my life.
I climbed the stairs of the first floor of Shady Oaks High School, which was half under construction. Due to the over crowding of the school in past years, money had finally been allotted to expand the size of the school to accommodate new students. Walking past under construction signs covering the library, I continued on past the west wing and up another flight of stairs to get to my homeroom class.
On the billboard there were many announcement fliers and schedules, but the one that stood out was a homecoming announcement. Screaming with a colorful desperation, it gave dates and times and prices and general announcement crap. I wasn’t going. No point, I hated dancing and even worse, had no one to go with. I wasn’t exactly a social pariah, but I wasn’t exactly accepted in many circles, if any at all. So I lived my life through things like computers and books, where I could pretend that I was anyone, and could do anything. I could fly through the clouds, or I could blow the hell out of an alien on ‘Duke Nukem 3D’ on my computer. Either way, it was more fun than actually living. But at the same time, that’s what I hated about my life, I lived a fake existence. Online I was known through many different names, same for my books. It was almost as if I never existed, which on many days was a good thing.
Turning up the volume on my CD player, I took a seat and waited for the steady trickle of people to flow in through the door. Andrew, Mike, Cheryl, Chet, George, Jon, Amy, and….Janis. Janis was a good friend of mine. She talked to me, and she was a friend of mine – if my only one. I was glad to have her as a friend, not many would. She was about my height, and slim, with a nice rack, and a cute butt. But other than that, she was just Janis. She cared, and that was a good thing.
During my thoughts of Janis, I had completely missed the last person who walked in; Mason. Mason, or Mace for short, didn’t exactly like me, and it was mutual. However, there was little I could do to harm the 6’4 bulky black thug. Last few guys who had gotten in his way had the sense beaten out of them. Not a pleasant sight, and not one I wanted to reenact. Mace liked to take pokes at me, and while the CD player rocked for keeping him out of my head, that was soon to go. Snatched up by the teacher, who had a grin that could scare crows from their perch. Mace snickered.
“Damn James, can’ even hold onto yo playa man. You need to hang onto ya stuff befo someone snatches it” He grabbed my bag and threw it to one of his friends. Things like this happened on a regular basis. “Knock it off jerk, give it up” Mace’s smile grew. “Nah dawg, do I look like uh third grader ta you? Boy you need to shutcha face before I shut it for ya. But wait, maybe you can just do that fo me, like you did the last time.” I felt an anger rising inside me. The poor excuse of a human, if only he knew what buttons he was pushing. Suicide was an answer I took a shot at last year. Put myself in the hospital with bandaged wrists; wasn’t cool. Janis came and visited me in the hospital though, so that was definitely a plus.
Mace’s friends were tossing my bag around in the air. Someone managed to catch it and “Baby girl, come on now, you might wan’ me to change my mind about takin you ta Homecoming.” Janis stood defiantly, and cocked her head. “Your mind may change, mine won’t. The day I go with you to anything is the day frozen pork chops fly in Satans front lawn.” Mace gave a look of being shot down, and retreated to his seat. Janis came over and sat down in the desk in front of me. “I figure you’re okay, but I never miss a chance to give a good one to that sorry excuse for a man.” I chuckled, He was hardly a bad player, rumor had it that he was in for a scholarship to Ohio just for football. “Well, it was appreciated.” I just looked into her eyes. “So James, are you going to homecoming?” I couldn’t tell her that I wasn’t going to go. I mean, after all, she’ll probably be there. I could score a dance, that’d be cool. “Sure I am. Are you?” She was screwing with her hair, “Of course! I wouldn’t miss it for anything. I love dances.” Well, she could dance. Last dance I went too was a few years ago, and she was ripping up the floor with some guy who had moved away a year ago. She hadn’t dated much since then, but whatever. I had a better shot of hitting a dartboard drunk and stoned in a dark room than having a chance with her. “Ok, so I’ll see you there?” I shook my head “Yea…” and she was gone.
School drudged on in its normal bullshit way. School was a never-ending cycle of quizzes, homework and tests. I hated it, and I hated it a lot. Why the law required school was beyond me, its pure torture. And what was worse was now I actually had to go to homecoming. For some reason, I really wasn’t interested in seeing snobby rich kids prance around like fools and call it dancing. But I sighed, and rode the bus home.
I threw my stuff on the floor of my room, and set my alarm clock for 7:30. Should give me plenty of time before the 10:00 dance starts. I stared at my ceiling. Maybe I did have a chance with her? Could I? Maybe… She is a nice girl though. Sleep eventually overcame me, and I drifted into slumber.
Jerking at the sound of my alarm, I blot upright, sweating like crazy. My clock reads 8:07. I had had an odd dream…something strange, that just didn’t feel right. Getting out of bed, I go to my closet, and grab some clothes, a belt, and some shoes, and lay them on my bed. My head really hurts, and I can’t remember anything of what I was dreaming. I was left with a feeling of overall weirdness and I felt a little scared. Whatever, it was just a dream. Going downstairs, I go into the kitchen and make a ham sandwich. I sit down at the table with a glass of milk and start to chow down when my mom walks in. “Are you ok? It sounded like your bed was shaking. You didn’t have a girl up there did you?” She smiled as she said it, and poured herself a glass of wine. “No, I was just dreaming. It feels pretty weird, but I don’t think its anything.” She shrugged, and went off somewhere.
I watched some TV until about 9:00, and hopped into a cold shower. Cold water streamed down and I thought about maybe getting lucky with Janis. Could it be possible? Could it even come close to happening? Nah, probably not. After all, she is Janis, and I’m just James. That alone makes it not possible to happen. Afterwards, I threw on some black pants and a dark khaki shirt and headed out the door at around 9:45. I got there a little after 10:00 and meandered in. I scanned the room. The dance was being held in the school cafeteria. Not enough people normally went for it to require anything bigger. The room was big enough to hold lunch in with standing room and such, so space wasn’t a problem. I was pretty much just interested in getting my dance with Janis and leaving, the rest of the dance could rot. I was partial to having the last dance with her, but I didn’t think I wanted to stand around that long, or wait that long either. Not a lot of people were dancing; a few people were in the corner getting high as a kite off of a chemistry faucet being used as a pipe.
I stood against the wall, and looked around. Shitty pop dance music was being played; a problem with school dances. Not only did they play exceptionally crappy music, but they played music you could hardly dance too. I wanted to hear some Rage, some Manson, good stuff, with actual meaning. A less than steady flow of people came into the cafeteria, and a more than steady flow left as time went on. It was odd though, because people who had never talked to me before were talking to me, and treating me like an equal, like a friend. Something I had never experienced. I think one of the girls asked me out on a date, or maybe it was just coffee and a movie. But whatever, I thought it was cool. I kept looking for Janis, and I couldn’t find her. I started to get worried. What if she didn’t come? Then I was here for nothing! Well shit!
She isn’t coming. I knew she wasn’t. I kept looking at the stairwell out of the corner of my eye waiting for her to come down the stairs, in her silent, blissful beauty. She would light the room with her beauty, and walk amongst the mere mortals. It never happened. She never came down the stairs, never lit the darkened room. I felt crushed, like absolute shit. I decided to do a little walk around the school. Some of the construction had been finished and finalized, so I guess I could tour some of that.
I walked up the stairs that led to the second level of the school. The hallways were semi-lit, and were very quiet. School at night is a creepy thing, because you are always used to it being loud and crowded, and at night, it isn’t that at all. A single squeak could scare the piss out of you.
My shoes squeaked, and I was scared pissless.
I took off my shoes, which were not only adding to my fear, but were also killing my feet, and lurked the halls. I slid every once in a while, across the waxed floor. During one of these slides, I slid right in front of the library, which I could now see clearly through the glass windows in the locked door. The one thing that caught my eye was the lack of carpet – it looked like linoleum. I had never seen a library with a linoleum floor before. Carpet just felt so much… homier than the cold, hard linoleum floor. But linoleum was probably much easier to clean, and probably lasted longer. So I guess it was a wise choice for a school. Still, it was just plain strange.
At the end of the hall, I saw a classroom that seemed to have a light on. The door was shut, so light wasn’t spilling into the hall or anything, but just a small divot of light came out through a crack in the door. I slid up to the door, and peeked through the window in the door. It was covered, but there was enough of it not covered that I could see into it. There was a lamp on, the lamp was on the teachers desk. There was some movement, and it looked intimate. I wasn’t sure exactly who it was, but I was sure that it was a guy and a girl. They moved around a bit, and I caught a glimpse of Mace’s face. So, Mace actually got play? Wow, I figured he was just some jug head. Must be pretty good at it from the sound she was making. More moving, and… it was Janis. Were Janis and Mace…fucking? It sure looked like it, but I couldn’t be sure…but… I… I thought she said she never would… Maybe she’s drunk? She doesn’t look drunk. Maybe I don’t know Janis as well as I thought I did. Maybe she is like the other girls at school. I had hoped she wasn’t. Guess I never talked with her as much as I thought I did. Maybe we weren’t as close as I had thought.
Dazed and confused, I back away from the door, and walk back the way I came. Passing the library with the linoleum floor, turning the corner, going back down the stairs, and out the front door, I took a seat on the curb. I didn’t know what to think. I couldn’t decide if I wanted to be oddly surprised, in that eyebrow-raising sort of way, or betrayed, or lied too… it was all a blur of jumbled and confused emotion. I hadn’t cried in years, yet, I felt like crying would make me feel better, yet I couldn’t bring myself to cry in public, or at all for that matter. I had never felt this torn over anything at all. It was mind-boggling. Janis was always pretty straightforward with me, and I really don’t think she had ever lied to me. I couldn’t tell if I was supposed to hate her, or just… be unpleasantly surprised and shrug it off or something. It was confused. I had never felt like this before.
I decided to walk home. I went to the gym, and changed into my gym clothes, and put my dress clothes in a bag that I found in the coaches office. I slung it over my shoulder and walked out of the school, and onto the midnight road. It was quiet, and dark, almost eerie. I walked in some sort of direction, I wasn’t sure if it was the right direction or not, I just walked.
Goodbye, my name is James, and my life is only moderately better now than it was this morning.
I’ll now take this time to Give you a glimpse of my newest work, which is still in the works:
The Diary of a Madman
December 7th, 2001
Wow, it’s been a while. As an early Christmas present, mom decided to give me a new diary. That’s cool, the old one was really filled up anyway. I’ve always wondered, since this is my diary, do I really need to introduce myself? I’m only writing to myself, and presumably only I will ever read it. Since at the moment, I really don’t have anything to write, I’ll just start with that, and maybe something else will come to me. My name is Joseph, I’m 14 and in the 9th grade. I live in a trailer park in Rural Springs, Arkansas with my mom, dad and my sister Sara. Our trailer isn’t too small, in fact it’s one of the biggest on the lot. We’ve got a nice assortment of stuff – a few TV’s, rooms for all of us, a nice desk for dad and his work, a fully loaded kitchen with a working fridge, which is a little more than some people around here can say. We’ve got a nice ’92 Chevy Tahoe, which runs a little cranky, but that’s ok, it moves. My mom works at a bank, as a teller, while my dad is a construction worker. They don’t make a whole lot of money, but they do make enough to provide. That’s really all that’s important, making money to survive. We don’t need a lot of fancy things, and we don’t need a lot of expensive stuff that’s just gonna break anyways.
My sister, Sara, is 17. She has a boyfriend, named Chris. He lives in a house, so she isn’t here much at all. She sneaks out a lot and goes and parties with her boyfriend and their friends. She does a few drugs, but she’s ok. She isn’t gonna die or anything, she says so. I love her a lot, she’s really a great girl. Chris is a little out of line sometimes, but other than that he’s cool too. I wouldn’t want them to get married though, Chris smokes too much. Chris’s family runs the construction firm that my dad works for. Sara and Chris going out was originally a bit of a ploy to help dad get a raise; however that changed once Sara and Chris developed actual feelings for each other. Dad still got his raise, but the ploy was gone, and his little girl had developed into someone’s little misses.
It’s dinner time, I’ll talk to you later.
December 9th, 2001
Today has certainly been an interesting day. It’s Monday, so I went to school. Josh, a friend of mine, pushed me into a locker and called me a queer. I know what a queer means, and I’m not gay. At least I don’t think I am. Why would Josh do that? It’s awfully random. It’s not like I check guys out or anything. He just randomly pushed me into a locker, called me a queer and kept going.
We had a geometry test today. It was pretty easy, it was over parallel line theorems. I think I got my opposite interiors and opposite exterior’s mixed up. No big deal, I think I did just fine anyway. In Literature, we started reading a book called “The Picture Bride”. It’s a book about a Japanese immigrant in the 1900’s. She came over to the US to marry someone who had left her island many years back. She’s pretty young, and he’s kinda old. She is marrying him and she doesn’t really know much about him. Like, the picture they showed her back home was from 10 years ago, and he had lost some of his hair since then. It’s kind of a crummy book, but I think I could get into it. My World Geography class is still a joke – Mrs. Springston still isn’t doing anything. Which isn’t too bad, because it’s a free period to just goof around.
It’s dinner time. It’s hotdog chili night, yum.
December 12, 2001
Sara got arrested for “possession with intent to sell”. There’s apparently a legal limit to how much pot you can have on you and it be a greater crime than just having a smaller amount. She had enough that they booked her on the greater charge, intent to sell. Apparently, regardless of whether you were gonna sell it or not, you can be charged with it. Right now we’re working with a lawyer from the state. She, the lawyer, can probably get it worked down to a lesser felony by pleading the court and stuff. I hope this turns out ok, I don’t want Sara to go to jail. If it’s anything like it is on TV, which it is and probably a whole lot worse, then she wouldn’t survive there for very long.
Hopefully should be done by fall.