Learning Self Interest

CHAPTER 3

Parking my navy blue SUV at school is always a hassle. I have to swerve around the burnouts, verbally assault the cheerleaders and speed past the athletic center entrance every time just to find a spot. I go into the cafeteria for a $2 coffee and wait for first period to start. I take the familiar seat in the second row halfway to the right. Close, but not too close to the front. I stare at the walls peeling with ugly yellow paint and wonder for the umpteenth time why school classrooms always choose such sad colors. The coffee tastes weaker than usual today so I sip slowly as I daydream about driving really fast down Highway 2 back in Cincinnati in my dad's old Cruiser. It's 2 minutes before first bell, students are filing into the seats next to me but I keep clicking my boots on the wooden floor. To the beat of the drive.

We're reading a poem called Porphyria's Lover in English right now. It's atrotrious. Basically this man is so in love with this lady of a higher class, Porphyria, that he kills her by strangling her with her own hair. Of course this is not actual love, more of a sick obsession. He's jealous and insecure. He even projects the heavy turmoil he feels in his heart onto how he describes the weather. Once she returns from her night of festivities in social circles he is not allowed in, she momentarily quells his jealousy by showing him affection. Wanting her to stay faithful forever, frozen to look at him with innocent eyes, he kills her. By wrapping her long blonde hair around her porcelain colored throat. It got me thinking about how caring about people can really screw with your psyche. Perhaps not to the point of murderous insanity like Porphyria's lover but still, mentally scarred.

Around 9:30 is when my brain finally wakes up to notice the body that's been moving languidly through the halls on autopilot. The caffeine floods my veins, my ponytail bounces just a little higher and my eyes stretch wide to actually notice the surrounding faces shuffling past. I notice Abby whose had braces for five years, Claire who was unnoticed until she grew boobs and Damian who used to steal my pencils every day, until Claire grew boobs.