Beheading Beatrice

Chapter seven

The gentle ticking of the clock was rhythmic music. Margot's heel began to tap against the desk she was seated at, following the sound of the clock. Tap Tap Tap Tap.  Her teeth gnawed on the pink eraser absentmindedly, shavings falling into her mouth and on her tongue. School was never any fun for Margot, she could never pay attention, and nothing made sense to her, especially the absurdity that this generation dubbed as math. Though Margot has been held back two times, she never cared. She stayed a freshman for two years.

 School was idiotic and unneeded, she could have dropped out in eighth grade and learned more in the wild than she did in the American school system! She liked it much better in Japan, where she was from. Everyone was smart, the food was delicious, and not this appalling slop they call sustenance. Everyone was so mature in Japan, they all wore appropriate clothing, they were all well spoken and educated, nothing like these bumbling American apes that aimlessly stumbled through the school. Most of them were either drowning in alcohol, or higher than the sky on any kind of cheap drug they could find. This school was a joke. A bootleg education system with the most insufferable middle-aged, fat, lonely people they called educators, who were most certainly almost as bad as the students, with messed up teeth, terribly unkempt hair, overweight body types, and overall low intelligence. How could an education system incorporate such terrible platforms of teaching, that the teachers could not even follow! Most of the time they just sat there, silently playing online games such as checkers with the computer as their opponent. Most of the time, these fumbling elephants didn't even teach, which made it even worse on Margot's grades when she had to take a test she knew nothing about! She hated this place, this school, these people! All of the children would pull at the corners of their eyes to imitate what they believed was a crude interpretation of her race. They would also run up to her and start horribly rambling in the worst accents imaginable, something about fried "wice" and eating cats. Did this school had no room for some good old-fashioned tolerance? Clearly not, even though the hypocrites that would tease her were also of different ethnicities other than Caucasian. What a comedic throng of children this education system created. It physically hurt her brain when she tried to think just like these kids, the kids that didn't try, the kids that were children of irresponsible teenage mothers, the kids that drank and smoked cannabis, the kids whose grades were somehow better than hers just because they were as idiotic as the teachers that graded their papers. 

Money was most certainly an issue in this school since they did not even have enough funding to even get books that were up to date on current history, nor did they have enough money to even have healthy alternatives for vegetarians such as herself. Another thing this school lacked, just another thing she needed to add to her list of complaints. 

She rarely ate at school, the only time she could was when it was sub day, which was every Friday. She still did not like it though since all she could have was a mountain of vegetables and thinly sliced, probably expired bread which was slightly hard to chew. God she hated Flint. Living her was worse than when she had to visit her cousins and grandma down on the poorest side of Korea. It was not necessarily ghetto, which was the American term for violent black neighborhoods, but Margot would certainly describe it as violent, poor and lacking in the basic things that a human needed to even survive properly. Of course, since she was pampered and spoiled since before she could remember, it was absolutely terrible to even breathe through her nose. She had to stay there for three days as well, Friday through Sunday until the blessed Monday came around, and she went to school, happy as a ray of sunshine in the summertime. Of course, she doused herself in hand sanitizers and took two showers just to clean the scent of Korea off her skin, as well as wash her uniform twice, just in case. She had to be presentable, especially for her private school in Japan. Also, she liked this boy. His name was Kim, Kim Choi, and he was the most handsome boy in school. She liked him because she knew she deserved the best, only the most handsome man could fit her standards or even measure up to her beauty. She was worshipped in Japan for having her mothers graceful beauty, and her father's height. She was delicate looking, with creamy long white legs, a thin body type, large, lidded black eyes, long wavy black hair that she always put up in a ponytail to keep it from tangling in the belt of her uniform. She knew she had to have Kim for herself, but unfortunately, she was too late. 

You see, her father was a business tycoon, she was rich, loaded as the Americans would say. She resided in a gigantic mansion, with three Great Danes, an indoor swimming pool, closets full of clothing she could easily choose from, boys falling at her heels, admirers. She had everything. Until her fathers business crashed, leaving the family poor, jobless, and losing every single thing in that house, as well as the house. The only thing they could keep was their clothing and car.

 So, they packed up, took the car, and drove all the way to Michigan, obviously, they could not afford a plane ticket. They had to move to retched Flint. The only things that were expensive that they had, were their clothes and the car. Until the car was repossessed a week after they moved in. Life sucked for the Jung family. Their house was a tiny apartment, equipped with only one bathroom, a kitchen the size of maybe a closet, two bedrooms, and spray painted walls. Both her mother and father had to take up jobs, two actually, and took as many shifts as possible to even survive. Her mother worked at a nearby movie theater, as well as a car dealership, and her father worked at a local Mcdonalds at night, and a lame office job by day. They went from almost as rich as the movie stars in America, to becoming a blue collar, borderline poverty family with expensive clothes. No longer could she aimlessly throw around money, she had to keep it, store it for the measly house payments. Once they had gotten jobs, they used all of their paycheck money and restored the house to something that was not presentable, but it was not as disgusting as it was before. The walls were painted over, the furniture was replaced, the bathroom cleaned up and gussied up. The house was nothing like she would ever imagine she could live in, though she knew she could never fathom such a shameful state for their family to be in. Scrapping together money, making ends meet, barely at most. Sometimes, her mother would bring other men home and be paid for sexual acts. Her father knew nothing of this, and Margot pretended to be unaware of their failing marriage. The stresses of toiling jobs, juggling debt and just having to become like the rest of the citizens in Flint, was pulling her parents apart day by day. At first, life gave her everything that she wanted. She was spoiled, loved, she had people eating out of the very palm of her outstretched hand. She was a celebrity in Japan for her wealth. But then, life yanked the carpet out from beneath her expensive shoes and dragged her down into a never-ending, nerve-racking spiral of disappointment after disappointment. Margot knew that life was pointless, so she gave up. She stopped trying to be what she used to be because she knew it would never happen to her again. No longer was her future secure and bright, it was dark, almost as though an omnipotent power had turned off the light. And now she sat, patiently waiting for life to grant her the things she used to have, even though in the back of her mind she knew. 

She knew it would never happen.             

~Attention! Margot is a new character that I had created! She has really nothing to do with the story as a whole until a few chapters in. Please don't be angry with me for creating one of my favorite OC's and incorporating her into the story. Dear readers, soon you shall see what she has to do with my story as a whole. She's a big character. Don't worry :)~