Getting Out

            The steps of my apartment are the best place to witness a storm.  The cement on the bottom step is crumbling and the awning is cracked, but my apartment steps are the safest place in the world to me, and I often sit there to watch raindrops fall.  My mom, a teacher at the local Parkwood public high school, used to yell at me to come in when it started to rain.  Now that I am older, she just tells me that it’s not her fault if I get struck by lightning. 

If you saw my apartment you would say that it is made of brown cement bricks, but I know my apartment to be made of what this city is made of: passion, individuality, and the slightest sense of hopelessness- for the cowardly.  I’m not saying I live in the slums of hell, but things could be better.  Every day, when I walk to school, and I pass boarded up vacant lots, and empty basketball courts littered with glass, I let my mind drift, to a place where I’d be happier.  I feel like only God knows if this place will ever become a reality.    

            The first day of my junior year of high school was today.  And I ditched my first two classes with my friends.  At my school this isn’t atypical, but for me, and to my teachers, this is something unfortunate.  Throughout the past three years I have had numerous teachers tell me that I have enormous potential.  Don’t waste what you’ve got, Annabelle, they say, you’re something special.  What can I do with that something special in this place, though?  One would easily say the answer is getting out- getting out of this neighborhood, this city, but it’s not that easy.  What’s the point of trying to get out into a different world when you think that you’re pleased with what you’ve got?

            After school I sit on my steps.  There is supposed to be a lunar eclipse tonight, so I make a note to myself to take a walk later to see it.  I see my mom walking towards the house.  She is looking down, with her teacher’s bag slung over her shoulders.  She looks up to me and smiles.  She’s always smiling.  I don’t know if this is good or not because I can never tell if she is genuinely happy. 

            “I need to talk to you for a moment,” she says, nodding towards the front door. 

            She swings open the screen door and we walk up to our apartment.  My mom exhales loudly and opens the door with her keys.  We walk through the dining room and into the kitchen, where we often talk.  I sit in a chair at the table.  She pours a cup of cold coffee that is left over from this morning from the coffee pot, and then she pulls out the chair next to mine and sits.  She looks me directly in the eyes and says, “You ditched school again today.”

            “So?” I ask.

            “You promised me last year that you would quit that.”

            “Beth, James and I wanted Starbucks.”

            My mom remained quiet for a moment, put her elbows on the table, and smiled.

            “How about this,” she says.  “If you do well in school this year, and don’t get into any trouble, and get into college…I will help you pay for it.”

            I tap my foot on the tile floor for a moment and think.  College has been in the back of my mind for a while now.  There are plenty of kids at my school going to local universities, even far away ones, but whenever teachers asked me what me plans for college were, I always say that I don’t know.  The ACTs’ were coming up, and at that moment, in the sudden sense of seriousness in my mom’s eyes, anything was possible.

            “…Maybe,” I say.

            “Maybe?” she asks. My mom sighs.  “Well, if that’s as good an answer I’m going to get….You’d better start to be concerned about your future, kiddo.”

            I look up to the clock.  It’s 4:14pm.  I stumble to my bedroom, intent on calling Beth.  She was the one who suggested ditching class.  Beth was the editor of the school newspaper, the Daily Cardinal.  The last article she had written was about the city elections.

“Mudslinging never solves anything,” Beth told me at Starbucks, “so why not disperse insincere compliments instead?”  Beth is very observant.  James, my other best friend, is athletic.  He is probably going to college on a softball scholarship.  When I ask my friends at Starbucks how they would describe me, Beth says, “Deep.”
            “Why?” I ask.

“Because you’re so intellectual. I ask you a simple question and you can go on for an hour, but then I ask you something really complex and you sit and ponder and give me a one word answer.  You’re just…you, Annabelle.”

I call Beth and she isn’t home.  Her mom says she is picking up her younger brother from soccer practice, so I call my boyfriend, Brendan, instead.  I tell him to come over so that we can take a walk and see the lunar eclipse.

Brendan meets me wearing sweatpants and a hooded sweatshirt.  His hands are dug in his pants pockets and his sunglasses are sitting on the top of his head.  He turns to my side with is elbow sticking out.  This is his queue to put my arm through his.

“Where to?” he asks.

“Let’s go to the park and sit on the bench.”

Brendan and I leisurely place one foot in front of the other.  When we reach a street light, we look to each other and smile, and he kisses me on the cheek, like a couple out of an old movie.  Brendan is only my boyfriend because he is my best friend.  I feel like he is the person that knows me best and the thought that that could change just by leaving to go to college scares me.  What if I leave and met some other guy that I fall completely and madly in love with?

We sit on the park bench and look up to the moon.  We can only see part of it because of the eclipse. 

“I’m getting out of here,” I say.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

“Somewhere…”  I sit and feel dazed completely perplexed at the same time.  “I’m going to try to get into college, somewhere away from here.  I need to see what else is out there, outside of Parkwood.  I’ve lived here all my life; I don’t know what else is out there, what I could be.”

Brendan squeezed my hand and looked up to the moon with me.  “Well, no matter what happens, don’t forget me.”

I have chosen to emulate the chapter titled “The Thinker” from Winesburg, Ohio.  The way in which I chose to emulate this chapter is through the plot development, so I took some aspects of the plot and developed my own story.  As does Anderson in the chapter in Winesburg, Ohio, I started out by describing the setting, and stating that the main character, Annabelle, lives with an older relative.  In the chapter this relative is Virginia Richmond, and she is stated as being a stenographer, and in my story the main character lives with her mother who is a teacher.  As does Seth Richmond runaway with his friends, the main character ditches school with her friends.  As does Virginia Richmond not become upset with Seth, Annabelle’s mother doesn’t become upset in my story.  Seth’s friend, George Willard, is a writer, and in my story, Annabelle has a friend that is the editor of the school paper, Beth.  I tried to describe the life economically and socially in my story as it is in the chapter of Winesburg, Ohio.  Finally, in the end of my story, the main character tells her boyfriend that she wants to leave the town, as does Seth Richmond to his love interest, Helen White.  I think that my emulation worked out well, because I have chosen to take specific details to emulate, along with more general aspects of the chapter.  I think I did a good job of contrasting two different times and settings, although I think that the style of Anderson is very difficult to imitate, so I chose not to imitate that aspect.