Little Roof Jumpers

Chapter 22 High School Vanity Before Brains

By junior year I knew passing school with an honors diploma or any diploma wasn't going to happen. Mr. Soup was my counselor and he eliminated all my academic classes, which meant I could only get a general diploma. Going to school and being put in classes for reading and learning how to balance a checkbook just didn't interest me. As a papergirl at the age of ten I could balance and collect bills and I had been reading at a twelfth grade level since I was in the fourth grade. These classes seemed to be for kids other than myself. Feeling like an outcast when my more intelligent friends saw me walk into my new classrooms made it almost impossible to go to school. Or so I thought.

Eventually I quit going out with college bound guys and started skipping class. I know everyone wondered what was going on with me but I just couldn't tell them. Skipping class was becoming an everyday thing. It didn't matter whom I was with as long as I didn't have to go through those doors and face all my friends who were going to college. When I was in class I just opened my tablet and drew a big flower that I kept adding petals but didn't look at anyone who was in my class.

At some point I started smoking pot with my brother Mark, His buddy Bill and Catty and I felt like a loser. Mark had always received bad grades and when I say bad I mean F's so I felt like I was on the same level now. My choice of clothing changed. I went from wearing nice dressier type of clothes to jeans and hiking boots. I no longer curled my hair and I just let it dry wild. I tried to be as invisible as possible. We had a smoking section at school outside on the south canopy. When I was there during lunch I spent my time outside with the Hoods.

Once I remember being in the auditorium and one of my neighborhood friends who was a good student reached out to me to sit with her and the rest of the PHI THETA's and my other old friends, I pretended not to see them and sat by myself until it was time to leave. Catty and I were still hanging out on the weekends and I don't even know if I told her why I wasn't going to school much. Catty was smart and did skip school with me a few times. Mostly she attended her classes.

On the weekends we were drinking at a friend's house, the Marc boys. There were three of them. One was in college one was a year older than us and one was our age. They had a huge house in Greenland Park. Their father was a heart surgeon and their mother an alcoholic. We were free to go upstairs, drink beer and play the stereo. Smoke a few joints and never be bothered by their parents. This would be our hangout for most of the first semester of our junior year.

One night we had been drinking quite a bit with the Marc boys and I left in my Mustang to go home. Not paying attention I crashed into a parked car while changing the radio station. One of my friends drove me to the hospital where they checked me in and stitched my top lip and determined I had a broken nose. When they told me they were going to call my folks, I lost it and started crying and told them, "No my father will beat me to death".

When my father came to get me I had described him to a tee. A short brown haired man, pinked cheek and nostrils flaring, he would use a really stern deep short voice and then grab me and knock the crap out of me when he got me in the car. I begged them to not let me go with him.

When he got to the hospital, one of the nurses said, "You have described him well." We are going to talk to him and make sure he does not harm you. Believe it or not he did not hit me. The next morning they had arranged for me to see a therapist but my father wouldn't let me talk to her by myself. When she asked if I wanted to see her again my father said, "I don't think that will be necessary."

I wanted to talk to someone. I was tired of getting beat up and treated so badly. My hands were tied, but there was no way out. I didn't know what was going to happen with me but it wasn't' going to be pretty. My life didn't matter to anyone, I had nothing and what I did have my brother would take. The whole thing was just sick and I knew it.