The sound of laughter echoes off the school halls. I can hear it, even in here, the weird little airlock chamber between the doors that open out and those that open in.
Everyone else is outside, they always are, it’s recess after all. That’s where kids should be, outside. Having fun. Playing with each other.
Yet here I am, sitting in the antechamber. It reminds me of the airlock between space stations, or the tube that connects two submarines. Anyway, I’m alone. Just me and my Gameboy.
Pokémon is my companion today, it’s the only game I play on the Gameboy. I’ve got the new color version, mine’s purple, one of my favorite colors. It’s my grandma’s favorite color too, I get to see her most weekends. We always do something fun. Go to the park, play in her backyard, see a new museum.
But weekdays I’m here, forcing my way through the sixth grade. During recess I’m either sitting by myself or wandering through the school’s small, but nice, library. The librarian knows my name, she’s nice, I think. I don’t know, maybe she’s only nice because she has to be. Her son died last year, skiing accident. My Dad said he shouldn’t have been skiing in the backcountry, too much avalanche danger, his own fault. My Mom cried. She cries easily like that.
The bell rings, I save and get up quickly. But I don’t go directly back to class, I can’t be the first one in there. No, I head to the bathroom, I stand there hoping that no one will come in. I hear the sound of the incoming horde of children, my peers, my fellow students. I wait until the sound dies down some, and then I make my exit. It’s just as I hoped, I join the back of the crowd, unnoticed.
While the rest of my class took the full month to read The Transall Saga, I read it in a day or two and moved on. I’m always reading at least a few books at a time, today I’m absorbed with Bram Stoker’s Dracula, which I read back in the third grade, but I’m reading it again. I’m not really sure why, it’s not that good.
I got in trouble today for not knowing where we were in Hatchet, which the class just started. We all get a copy and go around the room reading a paragraph a person. I can’t possibly read that slowly, so by the time the rest of the class had finished the first few pages, I was already far ahead. The teacher thinks I’m not paying attention. I don’t talk to the other students, so sometimes they send me to the counselor that they send the learning challenged kids to. Only the weird kids see her, but it makes me feel special at first to get a privilege and miss an hour of class. But every time I go she wants me to talk to the other kids and do activities with them. I don’t want to. I want to leave, or go back to reading.
When I get home my Mom asks me how school was, I tell her it was fine. We didn’t have to do any group work, so really it was OK. I can’t stand group work, I always ask if I can just do the project alone, because it would be faster and I could do it better than my group could. I go outside and read, I might ride my bike to the track later and meet my friends, we like to hang out there. Sometimes the sprinklers go off and we run through them, and sometimes we just ride around the track. Tonight, I will read, or play my Gameboy, under the blankets until I fall asleep. I always have to hide the light when my Mom walks by though, she’s always telling me to go to bed, and then I say OK and keep reading.
