Inside Out

I hate waking up in the morning. I just don’t want to get out of bed. As if life wasn’t bad enough, I wake up with a headache every single morning, all because of her.
It’s always the same. I’m having a good dream, and then she bangs her bony knuckles twice on my door and screams at me to get up. Why couldn’t it be birds chirping or music playing, instead? That might give me a reason to drag myself out of bed.
Sometimes, like today, I pretend I’m still asleep, that I’m so tired I slept through all the noise. I don’t know, maybe someday she’ll get it. Instead, she usually gets worse. She bangs three times.
“Mi’ja! You need to get ready for school!!”
“Yeah, yeah. I’m up,” I grumble, just loud enough so my mother can hear me on the other side of the door. I don’t want to go to school. Nobody ever talks to me. They always get into their usual groups and babble. Like cackling chickens. That headache my Mom gave me—they make it worse.
I toss on some clothes, and open my door just a crack to check if she’s out there. She’s not. From the smell hanging in the air, I can guess she’s probably in the kitchen making breakfast.
I try to hurry down the long hall and escape, but she cuts me off before I can get to the front door.
“You’re going to school without eating?”
“Mom, I told you I don’t like eating in the mornings.”
She gives me that look that says I’m doing something wrong.
“I got to get to the high school,” I tell her, reaching for the knob.
“Okay. Be careful.” She manages to kiss me on the cheek just as I’m ducking out the door.
I told my mother I’m in a big hurry, bur that’s just so I can get out of the house. The high school’s only a few blocks away, so I can walk as slow as I want. It’s nice, and it beats getting to school early and having to deal with everybody at school. The way people are, you have to ignore them or they might drive you crazy.
***
When I finally get to the school, I have to fight through the huge—and LOUD—crowd in the junior locker court so I can get my stuff out of my locker. Then I have to push through the huge—loud—crowd so I can get into class. By the time I get into my seat, I’m exhausted!
Then the bell rings and all the noise makes its way into the classroom with me. Ugh. I try ignoring it, focusing instead on double-checking my homework. I’ve been practicing this for almost three years now. I’m getting so good that the noise just becomes a buzz in the background, and only the teacher’s voice calling attendance can get through.
But today, a different voice catches my attention. “Students? Attention?” It’s Miss Greene, high school counselor. I’ve never gone in to see her or anything, but she’s come into to class now and then to lecture about this or that. Why her sugar-sweet voice is now crackling on the PA, I don’t know.
“Attention, students!” It’s funny, almost nobody stops talking to listen. “Good morning! Uhm…well, you may have heard…one of your classmates, Leonel Valdez, has committed suicide. We haven’t heard any information about the services, but we’ll let you know. Teachers, if any of your students is upset, and thinks he needs to talk to somebody, have them come in and speak to me. For now, try to get back to business.”
And just as suddenly, Miss Greene’s voice cuts out. Sure enough, the teacher begins to call out names. The sudden silence in the room becomes apparent—and creepy—as each student answers quietly. They must have been shocked. I’m pretty sure only really big things can manage to make my classmates shut up. If it wasn’t so creepy, it’d be nice.
“Here.”
Leonel. Leonel committed suicide. Rolling the thought around my aching head seems so wrong. He was a senior, so we didn’t really have class together, but I’d seen him in the halls. It doesn’t make sense. He seemed happy. He sure looked happy. If he wasn’t, he only had two months until graduation, and he could have gotten himself out of here. I know I’m counting down the days until I can wake myself up.
What could have been so bad about Leo’s life that he had to kill himself? I wonder if anybody really close to him had any idea what he was going to do, or just that he was sad at all. I don’t know which is worse: not knowing at all, or knowing and obviously not doing anything about it.
Poor Leo.
***
The silence continues throughout the day. Like robots, everybody leaves one class, gets their books, then goes straight to the next. Glad that I’ve finally been given the chance to walk slowly between classes, I feel like a rebel. By the time I get to each class, the tardy bell has rung. None of the teachers has gotten after me, though. They’ve all been acting like one of us is going to follow Leo’s footsteps if they do something wrong.
Who knows; maybe they’re right.
On my way to my last class, a locker in the senior court catches my eye. A huge black cross was drawn on it in marker. I stop and approach it, just to see why it’s been marked. Signatures had been added around the cross. It seemed like at least a hundred of them. I recognized a few of the names, people I’ve had classes with for years. I scan down the locker and realize whose it is. “We’ll miss you, Leo.” If he had so many friends, how could they let him die?
I begin to count the names on the locker, hardly hearing the tardy bell ring.
“What are you doing?” a rough voice breaks my concentration. He doesn’t even allow me to reply before he shoves me to the side. “Get to class!” the janitor demands before he takes some steel wool to it. He doesn’t do this before I see one last name, written in white-out, with a fancy heart drawn carefully around it. Monica. “Go!”
I get to class within a couple of minutes, but nobody even looks my way. They are all staring down at their desks. That’s really odd, even for today. I look around. I’m not surprised at who I see sobbing in the corner. Leo’s girlfriend. Monica. Our teacher tries to get Monica up so he can send her to the counselor, but she refuses to move. With a glance at the rest of us, he gets the office on the PA and almost begs them to send the counselor over.
“She’s getting the others upset,” he says, right in front of Monica. Her friends are holding her and shhh-ing, but she just keeps sobbing.
Miss Greene arrives quickly, in all her glory. I would describe Miss Greene, but there’s no need to. Miss Greene is perfect. She has no physical flaws whatsoever. Just the way she walks lets you know she truly has all the answers. She walks straight to Monica, whose friends zoom out of the way. Such power! Miss Greene leans over Monica, and coos in her sugary-sweet voice, “Let’s talk, Monica.”
Monica doesn’t answer, but there’s a pause in her sobs, so Miss Greene continues, “I know it’s sad, but Leo had problems that he just couldn’t deal with. Don’t let his death be your problem. Let’s just think about something happy, hmm?”
And just like that, Miss Greene fails me. I’m more shocked than I was when I heard Leo killed himself. I think back to 9th grade, when she told my class not to join a gang, because gangs are bad. I listened. Then in 10th grade, she told my class not to take drugs, because drugs are bad. Again, I listened. Earlier this year, she told my class to start applying for scholarships, because not going to college is bad. I listened. I always listened to Miss Greene. Everything she said, the way she said it, made you want to listen. And now she’s telling Monica that all her troubles will go away as long as thinks about something happy?
I’m almost too busy trying to come to grips with what just happened to notice that everybody around me isn’t happy. Extremely not happy. In fact, we’re all angry.
“You don’t get it, do you?” somebody behind me says darkly. “That won’t work. It never works.”
Almost unconsciously, I nod my head along with everybody else.
“You invited Monica to talk. So let her talk!” a second voice taunts.
Miss Greene’s cheeks flush, her eyes growing large as she faces us. Twenty-some students glaring at her must be scary. We’re on the edge of our seats, ready to attack if we need to—however we need to.
Monica is looking up at Miss Greene, and her small voice is somehow able to get through all the noise. “Where were you when Leo needed to talk?”
That’s it. The dam is broken. Our voices come flooding out, drowning precious Miss Greene. The next few minutes are total chaos, with random students calling out their current or past problems.
“I needed somebody to talk to when my brother died.”
“…when my Mom married some other guy.”
“…when my boyfriend dumped me!”
I twist and turn in my seat, trying to pick up as many as I can.
“And I couldn’t just ‘think about something happy’ when my best friend moved away…”
“…or when my grandfather went into a coma…”
“…or when my Dad lost his job!”
Sometimes I match voices to faces. I’m surprised by some of the people’s problems. Just like Leo, they had looked happy. I guess we all have something in our lives that can bring us down.
“Why did I just have to deal when I was scared I might be pregnant?”
“Yeah, when I was scared she might be pregnant!”
We laugh. Even Monica, smiling through her tears. Miss Greene only giggles nervously, like she doesn’t know whether she’s allowed to laugh at our joke. Eventually, it occurs to me that I too have my own problems. Wouldn’t I just love to scream them out?
I wait for a pause, for my turn to speak.
But the bell rings before I get my chance. And things are chaotic again as everybody else grabs their books and jets out of the room. Even the teacher, who actually manages to leave before some of the students. I guess I can understand. Most of the day centered around Leo’s suicide—maybe they just needed to get away. There are only two people left: Miss Greene, and me.
I guess I don’t really need to tell everybody all the problems I have in my life. I just need at least one person—somebody besides me—to listen. Maybe Miss Greene made a mistake, but she was trained in listening. “Miss Greene?”
Without answering, Miss Greene walks straight out the door. I’m surprised she doesn’t lock it behind her. Just like that, I’m left alone in a classroom that looks a lot bigger than usual. So I slowly grab my things and walk out the door, the last to leave. I don’t even go to my locker. I just want to go home and get into bed. I can’t believe she left.
As I walk home, both my steps and my thoughts move progressively faster. That just shows how different people are when you really get to know them. Miss Greene was—is—anything but perfect. I can’t believe it. I had my chance, and I lost it. Not that I had much of a chance, anyways. Everybody else thinks their problems are so horrible. “My best friend moved away.” What is that? I could top her, for sure.
I manage to get home faster than I ever have before. I don’t even listen to find out whether my mother’s by the door. I just walk in, slam the front door, and start heading down the hall towards my room.
She’s sitting on the living room couch with a laundry basket filled to the brim, where she was carefully folding my father’s handkerchiefs. She’s frozen in her movements, staring at me.
“Don’t start,” I growl.
She doesn’t say anything at first, instead giving me that same look that says I’ve done something wrong. When I don’t give her the satisfaction of saying anything, she suddenly exclaims, “Oh! Did you hear about that little boy who killed himself?? I heard it on the TV this morning and they showed it on TV this morning and they showed his Mom and she was just crying! She kept saying how she had no idea and she can’t believe she never noticed he was depressed and if she did she could’ve saved his life!!” I’m so sick of hearing about the same guy all day. I still don’t reply. “So? Did they say anything about it at school?”
“I don’t know,” I grumble, continuing on my way back to my room. When I feel her glaring behind me, I call back matter-of-factly, “His girlfriend was crying.”
“Girlfriend? You have her for class?” She trails after me, lecturing away. “I don’t like girls dating older boys. You can’t trust boys at all, mi’ja, especially older ones.”
Thankfully, I finally get to my room, and wave her away before I slam the door on her. I can finally be alone, in peace. I throw myself onto my bed and close my eyes. Outside my window is a single mockingbird, taunting everybody with its shrieking call. I listened to it for awhile, just trying to clear my head.
When I open my eyes, Mom is standing above me. I don’t know how she came in without my realizing it. I’m kind of glad she did.
“Nobody knows I exist, Mom.”
“I know, mi’ja. I know.”


----NOTE: I'm sorry the above isn't "spiced up" with tags, but it is often edited to be shown to peers in the real world, and replaced on here, and adding the tags each time isn't quite an option. When I approach the final edit, I'll fix things up. :)