Crisis Moment:
The last day of school worked its way slowly by. As three o’clock approached, I felt a deep feeling of nerves bubble up in my stomach. It felt like a loss of comfort. There was no place for me to be once summer began. I would become my grandmother after today: an aimless spirit floating through my days. How terrible.
I promised my mother I would leave for her trip tomorrow morning. I had my bag packed: clothes I didn’t care for in expectation that they would get dirty, socks, hiking boots, bug spray. My mother was beyond excited. I was not. As hard as it was to get yanked away from routine, it was even harder to think about being yanked into the middle of nowhere for a couple days with my mother who resented me.
For days I had tried to convince myself that this was a good idea. It would help our relationship, be good time out in the sun, be relaxing, and convince my mother to help me clean my grandmother’s house. All positive things, but my mind was stuck. How deeply I wished for another week of school. And then another, and another…
My classroom started to feel very hot. My algebra quiz was staring at me, eyes wide. I glanced once more up at the clock. It was screaming at me. I don’t want to go on this trip. It’s too much to handle after everything that has already happened. My mother is unstable, I’m unstable…nothing good could come of that. How easy it would be to start the summer off simple, and maybe I could begin cleaning Grandmother’s house on my own. I would start with watering the flowers, then work my way to the spider’s, then the big stuff once my mother came around to the idea. It would be okay, a trip wasn’t necessary to help things along.
Once again the clock ticked. Only a second had gone by since I last looked up at it. I could feel my classmates breath on my back. I could hear their graphite scrape against the fibers of the paper in front of them. My hair started to feel heavy on my head. I closed my eyes in hopes to find peace in the darkness. And then, it was 3 o’clock, and the bell pounded against my skull.