9/14/19

When I was younger, the halls of my school were like a sanctuary- they were a place to preserve life.  They were a place where I would hide from people I didn’t know and flourish with those that I did.  Sometimes that character in my mind would turn a corner after class, and magic would happen- she would see someone else turn it, and then when she would get to that point they would disappear- kind of like how a leprechaun finds its place next to that hidden pot of gold.  I know it sounds crazy that such magic would appear in the halls, but I imagine it did- only in the minds of children who were at the breach of mental development- where magic would be allowed because adolescence hadn’t found its way home yet. 

I imagine, for the character, sometimes other people would be walking down the halls, and she would know they were there without looking.  She would look down, after a big thing happened, like a fight over the phone with her Dad, and she would feel their eyes on her, but she wasn’t allowed to see that element of action, because the two worlds hadn’t meshed yet.  She was fresh out of a school were people wore ghetto clothing, as compared to Abercrombie and Fitch ladled wardrobes.  As a fourteen year old, a whole new world meant lots that I didn’t know, and when I learned that all I was appreciated for was beyond my control, my heart broke in a million pieces on the bus stop corner that I missed one fateful day.

I was, however, able to break away from even this new world, after lunch when my best friend and I sat in the halls on the stairs with Karl.  He was a big guy, Karl.  He was named Karl, after his Dad, who was named after his Dad.  He wore baggy khakis and gym shoes that I imagine were almost too dirty, and of which the shoelaces were almost always untied.  Maggie and he would flirt endlessly in front of me, and I was too young to flirt with him.  I was about to reach adolescence, but fourteen years wasn’t quite it.  I would say I started to do some serious flirting when I was fifteen, in the mental hospital with Jason, the eighth grader whose skin I remember being was greyish-dark, and who had dark, manifested eyes.  My everything dropped in front of him while we were in a circle during break, and instead of it going down, it went up, and I was happy.  Karl never let my flirting go down, he always let it go up, even if it was more of a yelling than a concerning flirting.  The problem was, he got lost of himself in Maggie.  He showed me everything he had through her.  And Maggie was always at the step of the game, in front of me.  I look back and remember his red eyes, whether or not they were really red.  Maybe I imagine them as red because he is now in hell for not saving me through further attempts of flirting.

Another guy of whom I was the center of the world to was Pete.  I have one memory of sitting on the bus with Maggie, saying something stupid in which I was redeemed by stating Pete’s name: “…. (blah blah blah) …. Pete ----!  He was one of the people in school who would watch as I got sprung at the magic that showed itself when people would listen in on what was going on in the God of the situation’s head.  The best memory I have of him is during lunch time when he and his taller friend, of whom used to say repeatedly, “Hey now!”  (the friend), were standing up in almost the center of the cafeteria, looking at me while eating at the same time.  Maybe Pete was trying to show that everyone was watching me, even though I didn’t know it.  Was he trying to paint the picture of what used to happen during a time when I was the bouncer of the Jesuit club?  Did he know I was one day going to look back and remember how people used to act around me?

The halls of a high school are where students sit after school and write anonymous love letters and stick them in their crush’s lockers, only to run away before (or after) realizing that no one would know the true writer’s (writers’?) identity (identities?).  They are a place where best friends would lean against each other on the floor, back to back, just to fall asleep and wake up to the realization that they had missed the activities bus.  They are a place to flourish, to grow, and to climb on top of toilets, so that to see that fifteen-year-old self in the bathroom mirror, distinguished yet blurry, in an image.