The Incident – Chapter 13

When I get back to the campfire, Mom’s just poured water on the coals and ash. Hot ash flying into dry needles can start a forest fires so last one up always douses it.

I stare at the steam rising, a rock in my stomach and the paper in my hand as Mom turns and sees me.

“I thought you’d turned in already,” she says. “We could have had a nice chat by the fire.”

She’s not demanding to know where I’ve been by myself so late; she’s trusting me.

My chest heaves as I suck in a big breath, then the tears start flowing and my body’s shaking and Mom’s there putting her arms around me, rubbing gently along my spine the way she always does when we’re hurt.

She kisses the top of my head and says “We love you.”

I hand her the note. She gives me the flashlight so she can read and still keep an arm around me. She holds me tighter the farther she gets. At the end, she’s crying and pulls me into a full hug and kisses my forehead and looks me in the eyes.

“We love you. Nothing will every change that. Next time you’ll make different choices. That’s all any of us can do, is try to do better next time.”

It’s going to be okay. I’m still going to go to boarding school, because it’s a better school and it’s in the mountains not far from where we used to live. I’ll be more careful making new friends there and I’ll go to Mary’s for long weekends, back with all my old friends.

I’m going to be okay.

www.sherimcguinn.com www.amazon.com/author/sherimcguinn

The Incident is contemporary YA (Young Adult). Following time-honored tradition, I’m publishing it here in installments. To be alerted when the next segment goes online, “follow” this blog. The entire story will be published here. You are welcome to share this link with others, but please respect copyright by contacting me for permission if you want to publish the story elsewhere. Thank you.

#teenmoving #teenintrouble #teenchangingschools #teenincrisis #bullying #teencontemplatingsuicide #YA #freefiction #YoungAdultFiction #fiction

THE INCIDENT – CHAPTER 12

It was a Friday afternoon, last class of the day, last full week of school. There was a substitute. She was new and would probably never come back to the court school, but she was really trying to be nice and trying to help everyone understand the work. It was math class, and she was actually a decent teacher. I could tell, since I understood the stuff already.

The problem was the class roster. There were only two or three of the minority gang in that class; the rest were the majority gang. On that day, only one of the minority kids showed up for school. When he saw that classroom, he should have left. He should have made some excuse to go up to the office and hang out there for the period. But he didn’t. I’d helped him with the math a couple times. He really wanted to learn. So he came into class and sat in his assigned seat near the teacher’s desk, quiet and ready to go to work.

It started while the sub was standing at the board pointing to examples of the day’s lesson, explaining what we were supposed to do. She probably didn’t hear the first slurs thrown at the kid. She may even have missed the spit wads that started flying at him. But she saw the pencil. She didn’t see who threw it, and I don’t think she realized yet that there had been a target, but she chewed out the entire class because throwing pencils is dangerous.

That got it started. They started making fun of her for calling a pencil dangerous, started telling her things they’d done that were really dangerous, things that really could cause damage. And while she was distracted by those people, others started throwing more things at the kid—papers, pencils, pens, small books, then the text book.

She saw the text book fly and tried to stop it, but people started throwing little stuff at her and making fun of her because she started to cry. Then they were out of their seats, squirting glue at the kid and at the teacher.

That’s when I realized I wasn’t blending into the furniture. I was being watched. I was going to be on a side, one way or the other.

I picked up my glue and squirted it on the kid and shot some that fell short of the sub. All I saw was her shoes; I couldn’t bring myself to face her. But I looked at the kid. He wasn’t crying. He was stoic. He gazed into my eyes with a look that said he was betrayed, but understood the betrayal. That’s the look that wakes me up at night.

I spent the weekend waiting for the police to come to the door and take me back to juvenile hall, anticipating the way my parents would look at me, knowing I’d be stuck at court school again the next year, that I’d probably graduate from there, which would pretty well wipe out any chance I had at a good college.

The police never came.

Monday I went to school expecting the principal to lecture us. That didn’t come, either. By the end of the day, when the math teacher didn’t say anything about a note from the sub, we realized she probably had been too embarrassed to say anything.

So you wonder why it was such a big deal?

The kid wasn’t in school that day. Or the next. Then we heard how he’d had a big argument with his father and then disappeared. Wherever he went, it was far away. I hope it’s somewhere he can go to school and learn, without having glue shot at him.

That was bad enough to have me worried about him, but the nightmares didn’t start until I overheard ladies in the office the last day of school, my last day there. They were talking about the young substitute, how sad it was she’d killed herself. I had to know. I looked up the obituaries online as soon as I got home. Of course they didn’t say it was suicide, but she was “called home” the night she subbed for us.

She would have made a good teacher.­

I’m sorry, forever.

So that’s why I’m sitting on the edge of this cliff by myself, hoping a mountain lion will come take me. But they might find this note. So I need to go back to camp and burn it.

Camping this week’s been nice, almost normal. My new boarding school’s in the mountains, a few hours away from where we used to live. If I find a way to have a fatal accident there, maybe my family will remember this week with me, instead of the rest.

www.sherimcguinn.com www.amazon.com/author/sherimcguinn

The Incident is contemporary YA (Young Adult). Following time-honored tradition, I’m publishing it here in installments. To be alerted when the next segment goes online, “follow” this blog. The entire story will be published here. You are welcome to share this link with others, but please respect copyright by contacting me for permission if you want to publish the story elsewhere. Thank you.

#teenmoving #teenintrouble #teenchangingschools #teenincrisis #bullying #teencontemplatingsuicide #YA #freefiction #YoungAdultFiction #fiction

THE INCIDENT – CHAPTER 11

I had to go back to court at the end of the school year. The teachers at the court school all gave me good letters and the judge asked if I’d learned my lesson and I told him “Yes, sir.” He let me off probation and said I could go back to regular school, but warned me that if he saw me in his courtroom again, I wouldn’t get off so easy.

Easy. He doesn’t know what happened at court school. No one does. I want to talk about it, but I can’t. Anyone I told would hate me as much as I hate myself.

I have two weeks at home before going to my new boarding school. It was decided I should attend their summer session to catch up on some of what I missed this year.

It’s worse being home all day every day than it was being at school, except for that one day, the one I can’t talk about. The one that makes me feel like I’m every bit as awful as my parents think. If they knew, they wouldn’t want anything to do with me.

I wanted to go visit Mary before I head off to school, but my parents are keeping a short leash on me. I don’t go anywhere here without my mother. I don’t want Mary to come visit me, because then I’d have to explain why my parents are acting like they are, or Rose would blurt out something about how bad I am. Someday I’ll go back to Colorado for a visit and be able to pretend all this stuff didn’t happen.

It’s not that I wanted to fit in with the majority gang. I just didn’t want to be noticed. And I was. I was stared at because I wasn’t doing anything when everyone else was. I tried to fade into the background, but it didn’t work. I had to challenge what I knew was wrong, or participate.

I wasn’t brave enough to challenge them all.

That’s not the whole truth. If it were, maybe I could have said something, at least after. Part of me was tired of being alone all the time. Part of me wanted to be one with the group. It’s good that I’m being sent away to school. I’ll be far from the group and they won’t expect me to be part of them. I’ll probably never see them again. Except in my nightmares.

I leave for school next week. I asked to go camping this weekend. I’ll stay up late and burn this in the campfire after everyone’s asleep, so they won’t ask questions.

So I have to say it now. What happened. I know I’ll live with it forever, but maybe this burning thing will help. I don’t know. I know I can’t tell anyone about it.

www.sherimcguinn.com www.amazon.com/author/sherimcguinn

The Incident is contemporary YA (Young Adult). Following time-honored tradition, I’m publishing it here in installments. To be alerted when the next segment goes online, “follow” this blog. The entire story will be published here. You are welcome to share this link with others, but please respect copyright by contacting me for permission if you want to publish the story elsewhere. Thank you.

#teenmoving #teenintrouble #teenchangingschools #teenincrisis #bullying #teencontemplatingsuicide #YA #freefiction #YoungAdultFiction #fiction