Insolence

Graduation

Years had gone by in agonizing, suspended oppression ever since that day in the garden. Five years had trudged by in mounds of mud, sludge and goop to keep them there forever in the hot, stuffy summers where nothing got done and no one ever cared about more than pampering Lola or telling me how to improve on my life. Or how I could help improve Lola's life by not being in the way so much or dedicating my life to helping her.

That didn't matter. She was fifteen now—a sophomore in high school. She wouldn't be a junior next year, either. She had flunked out this year and was chewing on the right way to say that to Mom and Dad. I hoped she would wait until much, much later. Somehow, I would get blamed for this.

You're too negative. You cost too much. We need more time and money to spend on Lola.

Those words would replace any positive remarks about how I had managed to survive that one thing that kills any light or innocence left in a child's soul: high school. I had no friends, no boyfriends, no nothing. I pattered about the halls alone and sketched tattoo designs in my little notebook, often to the taunting amusement of those who would peer past my wedged up pages to see what lay within them. I hated everyone in that tin-can hellhole. Who ever thought it was a good idea to let a prison architect design the high school? That guy designed every school in the county and every one of them had gates to trap us in the hallways and so few windows you were lucky to know what the sun looked like at all in the winter. It was maddening. Many of my fingernails probably littered the halls there in anxious dread for the lack of light and laughter within them.

Glancing down at the few white tips I did have left on my fingers, I sighed. I didn't bother curling or straightening my wild, blonde hair, though my mother insisted they were a rite of passage for graduation. I flat out refused and chose instead to just brush it out and go as I had been for the whole ride, anyway. Why break the mold for the sake of pomp and flare, when all I wanted to do was to recede within my sketchbooks and leave with the characters in the worlds that I had created. I breathed deeply, reaching up to scratch at the nose ring placed so delicately in my left nostril. My mother had fought me hard on this and it ultimately became another "you have what your sister doesn't" focal points in our arguments. But I didn't care. I needed that piercing. It was worth the ridicule; I would have been given grief for something else and I preferred to have what I wanted, in the very least.

The robes they gave me were far too large. Their black, billowing depths shone with illness and regret—regret at having lost so much youth to such a terrible place. In fact, I was willing to bet that the robes for graduation were traditionally black to mourn the losses of so many innocent lives to the even harsher adult worlds without at least giving the kids the right to be exactly what they were: kids. "Sit up straight, look straight ahead, fill out these forms and papers, do this homework, remember that assignment, and make sure you're dressed appropriately." What were we, robots? And the new curriculum was even worse. How was reading pamphlets supposed to ingratiate within our minds the importance of literature, writing or even basic grammar concepts? The answer was simple: they weren't. They were dull excuses to keep pumping funding into a decrepit system that needed to be yanked off the life support system years ago. It just wasn't working anymore.

My golden cord and tassel shone with pride at my accomplishments. I was headed to an ivy league college and my parents were brimming with disgust at the cost of such an establishment. They had no need to worry: I had secured a very fine scholarship and reduced the costs of attendance to that of a local school and I had already secured a job to start working at when I arrived... but this wasn't enough, apparently. I had to suffer at the behest of their ridiculous jealousness. A jealousness for something they wished to give their favorite daughter—the baby. I had no love for Lola anymore. We hardly spoke anymore and I couldn't stand being in the room with her for more than five minutes at a time. The "me me me" conversations just made my mind want to explode.