S K Y L A R
I was looking for books on the shelves of the school library when someone called my name. I didn't feel like dealing with Luke's hyperactivity so early in the morning, but when I turned around it wasn't Luke standing there, but Mr. Wyatt instead, wearing a nice shirt, and smiling.
"What are you doing in the library so early?" he asked.
Except for Miss Peterson at the front desk, and Mr. Wyatt, I seemed to be the only one around. I scratched the back of my neck, "I was trying to find some of the secondary reading you recommended for this semester."
He looked at the books I had already managed to find and frowned, "You don't need to read all of that, Skylar. I mean, you can, if you want to, but I don't want you to feel like you have to."
"Oh."
"The ones you have there are more than enough, trust me. I only made that list because I know most students don't even read the book, but I thought if they could find some time to read an essay on it here and there, they might just understand the gist of it."
"Oh, but I read the book. I'm not trying to â"
"Yes, yes, I'm not saying you're one of those students. Although it would be fine if you were. I know how busy your lives can get," he explained, pointing at the books I was holding next, "Here, let me show you the most relevant pages there. I don't want you wasting time reading it all."
I didn't know what to do. Was this a test? Was he trying to see if I was one of those students who half-assed their ways through high school? Who fake-read their ways through English?
"This is not a test," he said, as if on cue, with a smile edging on laughter.
I handed him the books and he turned around and walked over to one of the tables in the main aisle. I watched him bend over and skim through the first book. He reached for something in his bag, which he had left on a chair, a post-it notes cube. Then he started marking the pages. When he was done with the first, he moved on to the second, then the third, and the fourth. If I really thought about it, I really had been completely out of my mind thinking I would manage to read all those books.
I smiled and said, "Thank you."
"Don't worry about it," he said. "It's my fault, really. I should have added a disclaimer to the list. Remind me to tell the rest of the class this."
"I don't think anyone else even looked at the secondary reading," I said and regretted it almost immediately. What was wrong with me? Why had I just said that?
"Yes, I guess not, but I'll let them know either way," he said, still smiling, and then standing up straight, the books a pile full of post-it notes sticking out, going from his hands to mine, as he said, "There you go."
I managed another smile at him and said thank you again, only to regret it immediately. He had just told me not to worry about it and here I was, worrying. He would think I wasn't paying attention, or that I was stubborn. Was I?
"See you in class?" he said.
I nodded and watched him disappear between the shelves of books, his bag in his hand, the soles of his shoes clean as he walked. He made being alive seem very easy, almost nice. I grabbed the books and walked to the front desk. I wondered what I made being alive look like. Probably nothing good.
The bell was about to ring, so I walked as fast as I could without running. Once I made it to the hallways, I did run. I didn't want to be late. Even though my next class was English with Mr. Wyatt, and he probably would understand if I didn't teleport from the library to his classroom at the sound of the bell.
In any case, somehow, I made it there before he did. I wasn't the only one. Sitting together like always, Daisy and Zoey seemed to have a lot to say to each other and not enough time to say it. Zoey kept rubbing her eyes, which looked oddly red, and Daisy kept holding her own wrist as if it might break if she didn't. Still, there were smiles on their faces, almost contagious, but not really enough to make me smile too, not even when they looked up me. What if I smiled back at them and they started talking to me? What would I do then? I had nothing to say. Nothing at all.
So, I kept on moving, focusing my eyes on something else instead. Someone else. In the desk behind them, Luke seemed to have died without anyone else noticing. I thought I could do that too but didn't. He was asleep, his head on top of his textbooks and his arms falling to his sides. As soon as Mr. Wyatt got here, the class would start, but Luke didn't seem to mind. He had managed to fall dead asleep all the same. I tried to be nearly as unbothered as he seemed to be, but I couldn't. I just couldn't.
So, I looked away from him. Kylie and Allora were sitting together, smiling at the front camera of their phones, their makeup perfectly blended, their hair perfectly brushed, their outfits perfectly picked. They sat there like it was very easy to be themselves, like there was nothing to apologize for. I tried to make it to my seat without apologizing at least once, but when I had to walk over someone's backpack the word left my mouth without me even realizing it. When I finally sat down and saw my reflection in the window, my hair barely holding itself up, the neck of my sweater frayed because I bit it too much when I thought no one was watching, I couldn't help but look away.
Behind me, Jacob was rolling his eyes at Edward, who was stretched over his desk to hear whatever Isaac was saying on his seat across from him. It was something about the secondary reading, the one I had assumed no one else had even looked at. So I opened my mouth. I thought that perhaps I could tell them it wasn't mandatory like Mr. Wyatt had told me, maybe even show them the pages that were worth reading, if any. But I couldn't. I just couldn't, so I looked away.
At the back of the class, Caitlyn was sitting next to Tristan, her t-shirt telling anyone who read it to fuck the patriarchy. They were leaning over the window next to their desk to blow out the smoke from their cigarettes. The smell would linger inside the room for the rest of the class, maybe longer, still but most teachers preferred to ignore it instead of getting into a fight with them.
"What are you doing in here?" Mr. Wyatt asked suddenly, appearing under the door frame, his eyes wide open and a smile on his lips, the same Zoey and Daisy shared.
Before anyone could think of an answer, Kylie was already speaking, "I ask myself the same thing every morning."
"So do a lot of philosophers actually," Mr. Wyatt said. "Now, get up and follow me."
Kylie must have thought he meant only her because her blue eyes grew bigger, and her face turned into a pretty piece on confusion.
"Why? Because I said â"
Mr. Wyatt stopped her, "Not just you, everyone."
He said this with such enthusiasm that Luke woke up. He had somehow slipped to the very edge of his chair, which meant that when he suddenly sat upright, the chair moved from underneath him and had him fall on his ass.
Laughter filled the room. I looked at Mr. Wyatt. Most teachers had a problem with Luke falling asleep in their classes. They would either tell him to go take a walk outside or force him to sit at the front, so they could keep an eye on him, or they would just tell him off. Not Mr. Wyatt.
He just walked up to him and stretched out a helping hand, "Good morning, Luke."
Luke got back on his feet with his help and smiled, "Morning."
"Are you okay?"
"Yes."
"Don't sit down," Mr. Wyatt said. Then he looked around at the rest of us. "Didn't I tell you all that if the weather was good, we could have class outside one day?"
"Oh, I personally thought you were lying," someone said by the door. Jason. He had just made it to class. He was in his crutches, his leg in a cast. He also seemed absolutely unbothered by the fact that he had just called Mr. Wyatt a liar.
"Well, I wasn't, and good to see you too, Jason," Mr. Wyatt said, showing him a smile. "Now let's go, we don't have all day."
Everyone started moving, following Mr. Wyatt out of the classroom without a second thought. I had a lot of thoughts. I didn't know what was actually happening. How could we have class outside? Sure, the sun was bright, and the sky was clear and blue, but we could enjoy that some other time, could we not?
Apparently, no one thought the same. In a matter of seconds, I was alone in the classroom. I got up slowly and moved for the door, then Luke came rushing in, looking for something. I looked around. Nothing had been left behind. The tables were all empty.
"Skylar," he said, holding out his hand. "Come."
I didn't take it. But I did follow him through the hallways and down the stairs, all the way to the main doors. We walked outside together. Outside, where everyone was sitting on the front steps, looking at Mr. Wyatt standing tall at the bottom.
Well, all except Kylie.
"I'm not sitting here," she said, looking disgusted at the dirty steps. She was wearing straight white jeans and a knit sweater vest with a pretty pattern on it over a buttoned-up shirt. I thought it made sense.
"You can sit on my lap if you want," someone said, but Kylie only rolled her eyes, crossing her arms over her chest.
Then Jacob got up then, took off his jersey jacket, and put it on the floor in front of Kylie.
"Thanks." She smiled, and then finally sat down. Allora sent her a look, but she just shrugged and made space for her.
I sat down on the top step, and Luke followed. He had dark circles under his eyes and an inside-out t-shirt. I said nothing. Mr. Wyatt opened his mouth to speak again but before he could get a word out, a strident sound of rubber scratching the asphalt of the parking lot stole all the attention, making him close his mouth altogether.
I turned away from him to look at what everyone else was looking at. On the parking lot, a car had come a full stop in front of none other than Ethan and his bicycle, a piece of rusty metal I didn't think anyone should be allowed on. The person behind the wheel honked, once, then twice, then three time, and everyone around me laughed. Ethan hadn't actually been run over, but he had fallen off the bike with the scare.
I looked at Mr. Wyatt. With one hand rubbing his chin and the other on his waist, he looked more concerned than anything else. My head turned again. Ethan was back on his feet, apologizing to the woman behind the wheel over and over again. She didn't seem to care much for it, because within seconds she was hitting the gas again and driving away. Ethan scratched the back of his head, grabbed his bike, and turned around.
"Ethan!" Mr. Wyatt called over.
He looked confused at first, but eventually wheeled his bike over to us all the same.
"Is there a field trip today?" he asked, right before apologizing to Mr. Wyatt for being late for it. Once, then twice, and then again, a third time.
"You need to be more careful on that thing," Mr. Wyatt said, pointing at his bike.
Ethan said sorry a fourth time, his hand going to scratch the back of his head and showing a rip on his sweatshirt, his elbow bleeding under it. He was sweating and struggling to breathe. I wanted to look away but found out I couldn't.
"Stop saying sorry. You're the one who almost got run over by Mrs. Abebe."
"Aida's not a very safe driver to be fair," Luke said next to me, mostly to himself. When I looked at him, he added, "She's given me a ride home a few times in the past years."
I didn't know who Mrs. Abebe was apart from the woman who had almost ran over Ethan, but I didn't feel like starting a conversation with Luke. My eyes went back to Mr. Wyatt and Ethan.
"Dude." This was Jacob, sitting close to where Ethan was standing, his eyes going from him to the bike laying at his feet, eyebrows high on his forehead. "Can you get this thing away from me? I don't wanna touch it by accident and have to get a tetanus shot."
Everyone laughed again, or at least it seemed like they did.
"It's a pretty shit bike," someone else said.
Ethan scratched the back of his head again.
"Just shut up!" Isaac said then, raising his voice loud enough for everyone to hear it. I had wanted to say the same thing, but of course I hadn't. I had just sat there, bottling it all in, my eyes going from person to person, my hands not knowing what to do, but tempted to reach for my mouth so I could bite my nails one by one until they were so short, it hurt.
"Isaac's right. That's enough," Mr. Wyatt said, raising his hand for everyone to stop, his voice a warning. Everyone went quiet. Except Jacob. Jacob was still laughing. "What's so funny?"
Jacob shrugged, "His bike, obviously."
"What the fuck is wrong with you?" This was Tristan, sitting far away from everyone else, on the grass that grew near the steps, a look of disgust on his face.
"Jacob," Mr. Wyatt said, ignoring Tristan altogether. "Apologize so I can resume class, please."
"Oh, come on â"
"Just apologize, asshole!" This was Caitlyn. She had been laying on the grass next to Tristan, smoking yet another cigarette, but she had propped herself up on her elbows to look at Jacob with the same look of disgust Tristan had on his face.
"Caitlyn," Mr. Wyatt warned her. "Put the cigarette out â"
"On his face? Sure." She moved for Jacob.
"Caitlyn," Mr. Wyatt said again, harsher this time.
Caitlyn stopped and took the cigarette up to her lips again, inhaling and then exhaling the smoke along with the words, "You're no fun."
Jacob threw his arms out, "You're not gonna make her apologize too?"
I thought this was getting out of hand but didn't say it.
"No, just you," Mr. Wyatt said, crossing his arms over his chest.
"Well, that's not really fair, is it?"
"It's okay, Mr. Wyatt. He doesn't need to apologize. He was just trying to be funny." Ethan said, pushing his bike away from where it had been lying next to Jacob and wheeling it next to the pole that held the school's flag.
"No, he'll apologize, Ethan," Mr. Wyatt insisted, turning his eyes to Jacob, who rolled his before turning to him.
"I'm sorry," he said. I didn't think he meant it, but it didn't matter. It never did for people like Jacob.
Class resumed. Ethan locked his bike up and came back to sit next to Isaac, and Caitlyn put out her cigarette on the grass, which made Mr. Wyatt press his fingers against the center of his forehead as if he had a bad headache, and then force her to go throw it into a trash can.
After, we got our copies of Slaughterhouse V out, and Mr. Wyatt asked Jacob to read out a passage about the poor, how America urged them to hate themselves, as if poverty was a personal failing, and not a social condition, a structural inequality, as if wealth meant intelligence, when more often than not, it didn't. Not at all.
Jacob struggled reading the passage, failing to pause when a comma presented itself, or even a full stop, mispronouncing certain words, like Napoleonic, and skipping an entire line by mistake. I didn't think Mr. Wyatt had done it on purpose, so as to make a point, but in any case, a point had been made. I allowed myself a smile.
At the end of the class, he handed our essays back to us, the one we wrote about what we would ask for if the answer was yes. He had graded them in record time, perhaps because they hadn't been graded at all. Mine, in fact, had no annotations except for a few lines written in a green ball-point pen at the end:
This is a VERY WELL WRITTEN essay, but it lacks voice. Mostly it reads like a very articulate To Do List for the next ten years of your life, in fact a Must Do List, which I believe undermines the whole of your answer to my question, making it seem like this isn't what you would ask at all, but what you feel you must ask. At the end, I was still left wondering, who is Skylar Clark, and what does she want?
I read it over and over again, and then hid it in between the pages of one of my notebooks. Later, alone in my bedroom, I read it again.