| It Has a Beginning |
[Aug. 24th, 2006|10:15 pm] |
Karen had always hated riding the bus to school. It was the sort of experience that made you wish that you could just fall asleep and wake up when everything was over. Unfortunately, that luxury never came to her. How could anyone ever sleep through this nightmare?
The seventeen-year-old girl lived basically out in the middle of nowhere, as she liked to call it. She felt that calling it "Middle of Nowhere" was appropriate because the location she resided in was stuck between two tiny Texas towns, with the space in between having no real name. That was exactly where she lived. In the middle of nowhere. It certainly didn't make the bus ride to school very comfortable, for more reasons than just one. Karen lived about as far away from her high school as she could get before crossing into the next school district's boundary lines. What this meant was that she had to wake up extra early to await her morning bus. It didn't help that she was the first student the bus picked up en route to towards the middle and high schools. Waking up at 5:00 in the morning was really becoming a pain.
There were times when the bus driver would completely forget that Karen existed. Sometimes she would see her bus coming from far up the hill and beyond the trees, and she would grab her backpack and extra books and prepare to board her bus. But then she would watch as the bus came down the hill and turned down another street just before hitting the one she lived on. "Oh, Karen, the bus forgot you again?" her mom would exclaim. "Don't they realize that they're going to make me late for work? Come on, get in the car, we'll chase the bus down at the next bus stop." Despite how many times Karen's mom had to help her chase the bus down via car the bus driver never seemed to remember to come back around for very long.
Then again, the bus route was so bad that this particular route could never seem to keep a bus driver around for very long. During Karen's Junior year she could think of four different bus drivers she'd had, and it seemed as though she might lose the new one relatively soon. These bus drivers were forced to handle a lot of pressure on a regular basis, and Karen ocassionally felt quite sorry for the kind of crap they had to put up with daily. Today, the bus driver was a man with pure white hair, probably in his 60's, and no doubt had retired but came back to bus driving for a little extra money. Karen didn't particularly feel like the man deserved the treatment he received from his passengers.
This morning, Karen grabbed her blue single-strapped backpack and carried the extra books she couldn't fit in her bag up the staris and inside the large, junky vehicle. The worn-orange bus creaked under her feet like wooden floorboards as she walked down the center aisle. She had been riding for so long that she had made one particular seat her "regular", a spot next to a window right in the middle of the length of the bus, along the right side so that she could look out onto scenary instead of onto highway. Sitting in the front was where the hyper middle schoolers, the ones who took ritalin and had been placed in Special Education for not being able to focus, had designated their spots. The back seats were reserved for only the most elite high schoolers, usually Seniors who had yet to take their driver's test. Karen didn't feel as though she fit in anywhere. But seeing as how she was an only child she didn't have a problem keeping herself entertained for the next hour on a bus. She placed her bag at her feet and carefully placed her extra books in her lap. Bending down over the books, she unzipped her backpack and pulled out a sleek, attractive, dark blue CD player. She had saved a lot of money from her part time job to buy this CD player, her pride and joy. Placing the ear buds in her ear, she pressed play and allowed her mind to disappear into her tortured rock music.
Crossing the highway and entering another subdivision, a drastic change of working class was suddenly apparent. Mobile homes and trailers were to be seen left and right with only the most affordable cars from used parking lots occupying the gravel driveways. Karen didn't have a problem with trailers or mobile homes. She did, however, have a problem with how these places were kept. In the case of one house her bus stopped in front of daily, and was usually a reoccuring appearance throughout the subdivision, the outside walls were covered in mud and muck with filthy toddler toys littering the front yard, either never getting used or getting used far too often. Trash would pile up in any place that wasn't regularly walked or driven through, and often times Karen would see entire armies of cats and kittens in one yard, making it obvious that someone was feeding these animals but not giving them the greatest of care.
The bus creaked up a steep hill like a train car on an unstable wooden roller coaster and finally came to a stop at the top of a hill infront of one such filthy mobile home. The family inside often kept their blinds wide open, and Karen could see straight into one bedroom window. As the bus driver honked to let the people inside know he was waiting Karen could see a middle aged house wife clammering to wake up her middle school aged son. She watched as he lept out of bed in a panic, threw a shirt on, grabbed his backpack, and stormed out the door, with his three sisters close behind him. The driver opened the bus door, and the four siblings took their individual seats on the bus, surrounding Karen where she sat. That's when the stench hit her nostrils. The smell wasn't anything new or any sort of a surprise. However, it was equally as horrible every time she encountered that smell. This family was notorious for not bathing. The eldest sister, the high school Senior, was by far the worst. Her hair was greasy and was peppered with what appeared to be dandruff, though in all honesty Karen could never be sure what it was she saw in the girl's hair. The girl never shaved her arm pits, and that wouldn't have been so much of a problem if the girl would only wash the daily body odor out of that hair. After the initial wave of sibling funk hit her in the face, Karen reached up to her window with both arms, pressed the devices on both ends, and cracked her window open.
The noise level inside the bus became increasingly louder as the driver made his stops throughout the subdivision The jerks at the back of the bus started throwing beads from a broken bracelet at the dweebs in the front of the bus. Once or twice Karen felt beads peg her in the back of the head. She could never be sure if they were actually aiming for her or not. She was always somewhat of an easy target. But she counted her blessings. The girl sighed, thankful that this time it was beads getting pelted off the back of her head instead of the time someone behind her threw chewing gum and it got stuck in the middle of her long hair. That day, rather than cutting her hair, she painfully ripped out the folicles of hair that had gotten stuck. She wore her hair in a pony tail until the small bald spot grew back. It was more worth it to her at the time to keep her long locks than to painlessly cut it all off. She knew she was foolish, but even then, she decided to chalk it up to a high school girl's paranoid mentality.
Thankfully, the bus unloaded the high schoolers before it unloaded the middle schoolers. Karen stuffed her CD player back into her backpack before picking up everything and exiting the vehicle. She slung her single-strapped backpack across her chest and carried the rest of her books close to her chest as she stepped down off of the bus stair. The hot air on the bus ramp blew up to meet her, blowing her freshly-brushed shoulder length brown hair back and forth in the wind. She squinted her shocking blue eyes in the diesel smog and stumbled across the pavement to the doors of her high school.
Deep Valley High, home of the Sheriffs, the school's mascot. How embarassing, Karen thought. I've had to go to western-themed schools the entire time I've lived in this state, and here I am stuck in the most embarassing one thus far.
She walked through the doors from the bus ramp and inside the building. The room she entered was the cafeteria, which somehow doubled as an auditorium. Directly in front of her were the main glass doors. Only Freshman and Sophomores getting dropped off and Seniors driving their cars would be coming in through those doors. Far down the left was was a hallway leading to classrooms, and far down the right wall was a hallway leading to the arts department. Closer to her along the right wall was the lunch line. Today they were serving something that looked like French toast. It was hard to be sure, though. All of the food was rather misshapen and miscolored.
But standing directly beside her on her immediate right was the Theater stage. This was the only place Karen found her comfort. Had she wanted to, she might have made her way down to the Choir hall and waited for class to start, but the people in her Choir classes were all stuck up and knew exactly how wonderful their voices are and were thrilled with having been picked for a Varsity chorus. Karen decided that the Theater people were more her type. Since she was participating in an after-school theater production she was allowed to come up on stage and hang out with other Theater members during mornings and lunch hours.
Karen made her way up the stairs and onto the stage. Two other girls and three guys were sitting around a gray square table that had obviously been crafted by a tech theater student years ago. One of the boys turned to face her. "Karen! What's up?"
"Hi, Carl," Karen replied with a smile as she dropped her heavy load of books down onto the table.
"Geez," Carl huffed. "You think you have enough books there? Why don't you keep those things in your backpack?"
Karen ripped the velcrox strap off her chest and slammed the blue backpack onto the table next to the books. The bag was obviously already filled to capacity and wasn't going to take a single pencil more.
"You obviously took on a heavy load this year," Carl said, stuffing some candy into his mouth from his jacket pocket. "Why don't you put that crap in your locker?"
"Pfft," Karen breathed, "Are you kidding me? This school is way too huge and extremely overcrowded for its own good. I'd never have time to go back to my locker, grab what I need, and get back to class in only seven minutes."
"Well, hey, maybe when they open up the new wing on the other side of the school it'll reduce the crowding," Carl replied hopefully.
"Yeah, sure, whatever," Karen said, rolling her eyes. "No new development for this school has ever been a good thing. You remember the football field? Remember how we just got that new sprinkler system installed? Well now the new jerk Superintendent wants to rip the new grass and sprinklers out and put in astroturf! Can you believe that? I hear he's using the fundraiser money from the marching band, too!"
Carl chuckled. "Well, you know, astroturf will save us money in the long run."
"Yeah, but that money wasn't his to spend. And did he have to do it right after we'd already tooled with the football field just this past year?" Karen was starting to become empassioned over her argument, and her arms flailed a little as she spoke.
Carl smiled. "Okay, little miss Injustice Police. Just write it down as something new to add to your web site about how much this school sucks."
"Good idea," Karen grinned. Her web site was getting a lot of hits lately. She had been posting photos and reports about her school on a small free web site under an online screen name and had changed names and events to keep herself safe. She had been doing it in fun, but she had heard that another group of kids at the school who had built a web site similar to hers and been discovered by the staff and were forced to stop their deviant behavior on their site. But Karen was smart. Karen knew how not to get caught. And she knew to never use real names when dealing in this sort of yellow journalism. It was a fun past time, though, and she wasn't going to let anyone stop her.
Carl looked away from Karen and looked out across the cafeteria. "Oh, Karen, look who it is! The man of your dreams!"
Karen turned her head and looked in the direction Carl was facing. A Hispanic man standing at six feet, two inches with a thick black moustache, nicely trimmed hair, and a deep brown leather jacket was walking from the front doors towards the stage. Karen smiled at the sight and sighed in happiness. It was her boyfriend, Garret. They had only been dating for a couple of weeks, but she was the happiest she had ever been. This was the only person who had ever shown any romantic interest in her, and he treated her very nicely. So far, she couldn't complain.
Garret clunked up the stairs in his steel-toed boots and sat down on a gray bench beside the matching gray table, encouraging Karen to sit down with her.
"Good morning," Garret grinned.
Karen blushed and could barely look him in the eye. "Hello, Garret," she managed to spit out of her lips. She sat down slowly next to Garret as he unloaded his backpack from off his shoulders and under the bench. He held her hand as she sat with him, and her heart raced. She loved the feeling. It was all small and innocent, but it gave her a sort of adrenaline rush that left her fuzzy and dizzy all at once.
Garret smiled at Karen before turning to face Carl. "Hey Carl, what's happening?"
Carl shrugged. "Not much." He thought to himself for a second. "Oh, hey, did you catch Dragon Ball Z on Friday?"
Garret's eyes gleamed. "Oh, no, I didn't, but I recorded it, so I'll be able to watch it tonight when we get out of Theater rehearsal."
"Oh, okay," Carl said somewhat disappointedly, "then I won't spoil anything for you. Let me just tell you it was absolutely kick ass!" He looked over at Karen. "Hey, Karen, do you watch DBZ?"
Karen chuckled before she replied. "Um, no, actually, I really don't like anime."
Garret and Carl both stared blankly at Karen until Carl broke his stare and turned to Garret. "Should we kill her now, or should we kill her later?"
"Oh, come on!" Karen started. "There's very few frames per episode so the animation is all jumpy. the characters all look the same, all pointy and everything, and the voice acting is terrible! On top of that, the characters rarely blink and never change the shape of their mouths. I personally find Don Bluth to be a far better animator." Karen crossed her arms and nodded confidently.
Garret patted his girlfriend's hand with a look on his face that seemed to only humor her. "Right, Karen. Whatever you say."
Cody stuck his hands to his hips and jutted his chin out toward Karen in a joking fashion. "Well, just see if we ever invite you to any anime-watching gatherings in the near future!"
"Hah, fine by me," Karen cackled. "Actually, I have plans with Christine and Amber this weekend. We're gonna watch some anime movies and do a review on them for my web site. And trust me, they're not going to get good reviews." She stuck her tongue out at Cody like a Kindergartener.
"That just makes you a bad judge!"
The school bell rang. Or rather, the school bell hummed. The bell was nothing more than a single tone humming over the PA system. Either way, it alerted the students that they were to be getting to their designated classes at that time.
"Seven-Fifty," Garret announced. "Wanna get going?" he asked Karen.
"Yeah, I guess we should," she replied. She gathered her things together and held Garret's hand as they walked down the stage stairs. "See you at lunch, Carl," Karen called back.
"Yep, I'll be here," he shouted, waving. He gathered his bags and his candy wrappers and headed down the opposite stairs.
"You know, Karen," Garret started, "I'm gonna get you to sit down with me one of these days and make you watch one of my favorite animes in my collection."
"Oh, yeah?" Karen inquired. "Just how big is your collection, anyway?"
"Oh, not too big..." he said, trailing off. "...Just somewhere around one hundred different completed series in their perfect boxed sets."
"Holy crap, that many?" Karen interjected astoundingly. "How can you afford that?"
"I've been working ever since my mom couldn't work anymore. I can afford it," he replied proudly.
Karen shrugged. "Well, so long as you can."
The two parted ways at their respective classrooms. Karen sat down on the risers that had been set up in the Choir hall. All she could think about at that time was how wonderful Garret had been to her. She was so concerned with this guy in her head that at that moment Japanese animation was never going to cross her mind. |
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