The Silence Between Us

The Light at the End of the Tunnel

Chapter Two:

I had only told a ground breaking one person at 7:30 am that today would be my last day at school. I didn't know what was more impressive; how fast the news spread to the entirety of the school or how fast Cora and her lackeys formulated a plan to make it the worst day ever.

By 7:45 the entire school found out, the news spreading like wildfire. When I went back to my locker at 7:50 to grab my books, I found out that Cora was already at it making my life a miserable hell. She trashed my locker, covering the outside with a sticky substance that I later found out was maple syrup. It seeped through the holes at the top and now coated my books and school materials. But not all of them, the books that I needed for my first period class were missing.

Leaving the locker and the mess that accompanied it, I went to my first period class. The teacher scolded me for not bringing my textbooks, since she didn't have an extra copy of the brail edition and no one else could share with me. I sat there, having a hard time understanding the lesson. Because of this, the teacher thought that I wasn't paying enough attention, so she tried to ask me questions that I didn't know the answers to, which made it worse.

We were supposed to read a document about the Meiji Restoration that took place in nineteenth century Japan. Before class, I didn't even know what the Meiji Restoration was.

"Louisa, can you please explain to me how the restoration of imperial rule in Japan had a positive effect on the country?" Ms. Burke asked me, waiting expectantly for me to answer.

I waited for a couple of seconds, trying to see if anything would come to me before I gave up and shook my head, "I'm not sure."

I could feel the heavy stare of Ms. Burke making the hairs on my neck stand up as the classroom filled with silence. If Ms. Burke thought I wasn't paying attention, now she thought for sure that I was. We were talking about the pros and cons of this for over thirty minutes, but I couldn't even list one. I was too busy trying to figure out what the event was first.

"See me after class, Louisa." Ms. Burke said with a sigh, continuing with her lesson as if nothing had ever happened.

After the longest four-minute talk of my life with Ms. Burke trying to explain why I couldn't understand the lesson, she finally released me so I could rush to my second period at the complete opposite end of the school. Before I even got there, I knew it would be hell.

Second period was the class that I shared with Cora, making it always the worst part of my day. Cora would always find some new way to torture me or pick on me in front of the entire class. I thought at one time that the class was always sick of her ways when one of the students told her to knock it off, but she kept pushing and he just left the matter alone. Today was no exception.

She called me a slut. In front of the entire class. First of all, I was not that type of person. Second of all, who just says something like that during class? And it wasn't until later that someone finally took pity on me and told me the rest. Cora took some sort of red ink and wrote the word slut all over my books. That explains all the snickers from the rest of the class when I tried to read for class without noticing the bright red letters staring right back at my face. Never in my life had I felt more humiliated.

I practically tore out of second without even hesitating to make sure I knew where I was going. If I was going to bump into something, so be it. At least it would mean that I would be away from Cora and all of the people laughing at me.