There is less than a minute left, and I am still at my locker gather what I can of my Environmental Science books. I begin to run down the long, tan and light blue lined hallways, and hurry pass up Chris Rock with a flat top. One must get to class before he speaks, so I hurry even more. I pass up my blurry teacher, Mr. Mahon, as he looks at his watch. I hear Chris Rock breathe in, about to speak. I quickly jump into class. I slowly walk down the classroom. There are many empty seats, behind desks that are black tables for two. Before I sit down in my yellow plastic chair, I notice the paintings on the walls. There is one of a man’s sphere-like nose, and the same painting is repeated, just with different light sources. Mr. Mahon walks in, looks at me directly, and tells me that I would pass if I were only to do the one writing assignment, despite my lack of attendance. I look down at the shiny black desk surface and try to remember where I was if I were not in this class. I had always been in school, I never left the building, and never ditched, but have missed a near years worth of classes here. I ask Elizabeth next to me what the writing assignment was, she doesn’t know and Mr. Mahon begins showing slides of supposed to be known dinosaur bones. I flip through my book, worried about the final tomorrow, seeing familiar topics like overpopulation, and northern lights. Mr. Mahon looks at me again, with his longer hair, blue suit with a t-shirt, and red bandana, and tells me the assignment I was missing. I have no paper or pens on me, so look inside the desk. The desk if full of rotted, broken pencils. Even if one did have a sharpened point, the murky moisture inside would have softened it and it would break in my fingers. All the pens in the desk have dried out, leaving only the spine-adjusting scratch of the metal on paper. I ask Mr. Mahon if I can meet him after school to discuss this, and he replies no, and continues on with his class. The small room and chalkboard behind him dissolve, and expose the curved end of a race track. Towards the end of the track there is a rectangle translucent shower, which is occupied. I begin to walk towards the shower, exiting the classroom into the green grass, and off-green track. Seeing for myself now that the shower is occupied, I turn around and walk back, and search through my schoolbook, trying to memorize it for the upcoming final.
I see Mr. Mahon after school, standing next to his red minivan, throwing something on the ground. I apologize for not attending his class, and state that I had never ditched, but just never went to his class. He gives me a genuinely upset look, through his 7 o’clock shadow, and tells me that he’s extremely disappointed in me. He begins to pick circles of flowers off the back of his van, and throw them onto the ground. He tells me “you know, my friends said that you were one of the bad flowers”, and I look at the pile of yellow and white flowers on wooden circles. There is one that has strawberries on it, I imagine that one is me. I see now I will not be able to find an answer as to which paper I am supposed to write, so am on my way, walking home on the toll way.
The toll way is split into three parts. There is the light blurry blue sky, as irrelevant a color as it is to my being there, a light tan road, and the dark blue and black cars, blurring past me or behind me. I run at an incredible speed. I keep up with cars enough to hold my own lane, on this risen slab of traffic. I am not out of breath, but am running at full speed. There is a large olive-green car in the way of a sign that is necessary for me getting home the right way, so I guess and turn left. On the left is a giant forest, which I now cannot move quickly through. The sides are lined with giant moving, green, thin threes. The grass is as green as an ideal version of green crayola invented for us. The grassway is as wide as the road, and small blue and yellow flowers brush on my legs. As I walk by these shoulder high white plants, they stick to my legs. The flowers have a green stem and a white flower that sputters up like a feather, and waves in the wind like an underwater plant. The first flower I pass simply makes my legs and arms sticky. The second sticks to the already sticky parts and pulls my skin, and I struggle by in pain. I continue walking on the grassway, waiting for the opening of the main street. I quickly find it, and hurry by the white flowers, still stealing skin from my arms and legs. I begin to pick up pace again down the road, and speed away with traffic. My head bobs as if I was walking normal speed, but the blurriness of the road suggests otherwise. I see a sign that tells me I am on the wrong street, and that I must pass through the forest area again. The sign says I95, I need I94. I turn around, dreading the upcoming hike. Every part of my body is now sticky from the flowers, so every part that touches the flowers will either be removed or torn from the horrible feathers. As I enter the clearing, I hear an oncoming semi behind me. I walk as quickly as possible, to avoid getting hit by the beast of a truck. Every thing slows down as the feathers pull on me, and try to hold me back for the truck to surely end my life. I am nearly leaning completely over as I struggle to get through, no matter what cost. The area remains beautiful, and undisturbed by sounds of traffic, other than the semi, and the wind gently blows through the tropical area. I fall over after shortly exiting the path, and the truck never arrives. I start to suspect the white flowers of doing this to me. A small, dirtied brown pickup truck pulls over and offers me a ride, as I surely look lost and injured. I jump in and in the back there are two girls. One of them is sleeping, or passed out, and the other is speaking to me. The girl tells me that the other one is handicapped mentally, and cannot do much but sleep. I ask the girl her name, and she stares at me blankly. Her long blonde hair doesn’t even flinch, despite the wind blowing past. She is of a pale-pink fat girl, the kind you imagine who can afford that kind luxury, as is her twin sister. She then tells me more about her sister, and how she is limited to tasks, so the girl speaking herself has to do many of the duties around the house. The two men in the front of the truck are thin, dirtied by manual labor, and wearing baseball hats as brown as the truck. They converse amongst themselves, but I cannot hear a word. We hit a bump and the sleeping girl wakes up. She says hello, and the other girl looks jealous. The one that has been talking to me gets up starts hitting her just awoken twin sister. The twin says to stop, and asks me where I am headed. I answer that I am headed home. She then says that her sister that has been speaking is the one that is retarded and she only knows a few sentences, and all of them fibs. I stare off at the traffic passing us up. I wonder what I will write my paper on.
