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

THE INCIDENT – CHAPTER 10

In the hall, we all had to wear one-piece jumpsuits. Most of us wore orange. Blue meant you had extra responsibilities and privileges. The first time I saw a red jumpsuit, I thought it was for Christmas. That was dumb. People wore red jumpsuits for a week after they’d done something so crazy that they had to be put in solitary to calm down.

I’d ruined the holiday for my whole family, getting locked up. Rose was worried that if they put up a stocking for me, Santa would skip our house. My parents put it up and found some coal to put in it, like the old stories about bad little children. They told me my lawyer’s fees were my Christmas present. At least Rose sent me a picture she’d drawn.

I didn’t want her to see me in the hall.

Aside from my being depressed, juvenile hall wasn’t all that bad. We had classes all but a few days around Christmas and New Year’s Day. It was like being back in grade school, but I didn’t say so because a lot of people were struggling with the work. Most of them were very angry people and I knew we’d be in classes together at court school when we got out.

There were gangs, but they had to put up with each other.

The really good thing about the hall was that the adults had almost total control, since we were there 24/7. Sometimes stuff happened behind their backs, and the wrong person would end up in trouble, but from what I heard people saying, the gangs ruled at court school. That made me wish they’d put me in the hall for six months with no court school. But at least I’d be living at home when I transferred.

They kept me in the hall exactly a month, even though that meant starting a week into the semester at court school. I guess the teachers were used to that, though, because most of them had handouts explaining all their rules and procedures. The classes were a little harder than they’d been in the hall, but a lot of my classmates could barely read. When I had to read aloud, I was careful not to let it seem too easy. Still, people started looking to me for help, at least the ones who cared about doing the work.

There were two rival gangs on the campus, with one of them definitely having the majority of the student body. From what I could see, they had a lot more in common with each other than different, but they chose to focus on the differences.

What they had in common: They didn’t have much positive going on with their parents or at school, and they didn’t see much positive in the future. Most of them had never considered as possible things I took for granted, like graduating from high school, getting a good job someday, having a nice home. They saw the people in their gangs as the ones to whom they owed loyalty, and everyone else was “them.”

I found most of them more likeable than Angelica or Natalie.

When I explained how all that went down, there were offers to “take care of them” for me. Fortunately, I’d never mentioned their names, so I didn’t have to worry about anyone doing me a favor I didn’t want.

I tried to keep clear of both groups, but they heard I was good at schoolwork. It got so I automatically printed out two extra copies of my work, so I could deliver a copy to each gang. At last being a nerd had a benefit. I gave help freely to all and wasn’t expected to pick sides.

All I asked was that they not let teachers know who was helping. Some of the teachers were too burned out to care that averages suddenly went up. Only one cornered me to ask about it. I shrugged as if I didn’t know anything and said I was keeping to myself, just trying not to get hurt before the semester ended and I could get out of there. I didn’t say anyone had threatened me, but I think that’s how the guy took it, because he didn’t hassle me about it anymore.

Meanwhile, I was living at home, looking at that mural of our backyard back in Colorado every day, wishing we’d never moved. The coal in my stocking, which I hadn’t been there to see, pretty much summed up how my parents were feeling about me. They didn’t trust me at all anymore. Mom drove me to school and picked me up after. Some of the kids got picked up by older gang members in cars with music on to make everything around them vibrate. Mom would give me this sad, disappointed look every time. She wouldn’t bring Rose with her.

They called the school and talked to my teachers when I told them I didn’t have any homework. That’s what it took to make them believe that the few assignments that were given were easy to finish before the end of class. They decided to try and get me into a private school for the next year, but my “legal issues” were an automatic no thank you at all the ones nearby. So they started looking at boarding schools. That would eat up the pay raise my dad had gotten and then some, but at least they wouldn’t have to see their disappointing child all the time. I’d probably have to repeat this year in any decent school, but I’d have a shot at a good college again if I was eighteen before I graduated and could get my records sealed.

Yeah, I picked up that bit of advice from my probation officer. I had to report to one of those every week, but he came to the school, so it was no hassle for my parents. He always said the same thing, that I was doing good so far, just stay out of trouble.

I never said much of anything.

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