The Fire Escape

Chapter One (Annabella Claire)

 I finally understood.

 You may be asking what it was

 that I understood but that's the thing,

 I don't know...

I put down my pen and closed my notebook. The only reason I am in this stupid poetry club was because I needed extra credit in English, I hate English. Writing just wasn't my thing. I looked up and saw Mrs. Winde reading a poetry magazine. I read the cover

 Annabella Claire Does It Again!

 Read "Up and Up"

 Page 14.

Of course.

"Trinity," I heard. I was scared at the sound of my own name. "Will you please recite what you've written?" I looked up and saw Mrs. Winde. I never noticed how tall she was. I was always distracted by her spaghetti like black hair and her unusually large feet. Today, like most days, she was wearing a dress. It was shorter than usual (you could actually see her ankles!) and had blue flowers on its white background. It was ugly. Mrs. Winde was probably beautiful and very high fashion as a young woman, but she had not carried that into her adulthood. With an outfit change, a good hair combing, and an eyeliner tutorial she could be a real knock out. Definitely to Mr. Wade in the history department.

I opened my notebook and started my poem when, THANK GOD, the bell rang.

"Trinity-August," Mrs. Winde started.

"What?" I asked somewhat rudely.

"Would you please stay and help me clean up today?" she asked this too nicely. Shoot. Every time she wanted something sorted or cleaned, that really meant that she wanted to talk to you about something. I've "cleaned up" a couple times this year and it never really ended well. I knew that if I stayed after poetry club people would think that I lived at school, seeing as poetry was already an after school club.

"Sure," I sighed. I started straightening the desks. When everyone had left, I stopped working and walked up to the front of her desk so we could just get it over with.

"Give this to your mother," she handed me an envelope and then picked up a pen off the floor. "You are dismissed."

I wasn't worried about it being a detention slip or something like that because I knew it wasn't one.

My mother, Annabella Marie Claire, was probably just invited to yet another poetry reading or being asked to judge another contest. Typical. No one even noticed me. Mrs. Winde didn't care about my poem. She knew the bell was going to ring, it was all just an act. A clever ruse to give me the letter after class. She used me. Mrs. Winde was one of the few people who knew I was the daughter of an esteemed poet. I kept my dad's last name after the divorce. Trinity-August Tate. It just sounded better. But still, who in their right mind gives their daughter a name like Trinity-August. The hyphen suggests it's one name, yet I have no other middle name. If someone was to ask me my name and I just said Trinity, technically I'd be lying. In my opinion neither Trinity, nor August are suitable first names at all. It is however fitting that I don't have a real name considering, to most, I'm not a real person. I just float through life doing what adults tell me and hiding from my problems as most teenagers do. But it's okay! There is always someone who has it worse than me in the world and I hope they at least have a better name!

On the way home I saw some girls from school. They stopped talking when they saw me. That wasn't unusual. The wind was acting up so I was very cold and I sped up to get home quicker. I stopped only to look both ways. When I walked into our small two room apartment I went to the bathroom. I looked in the mirror and saw that half of my long brown hair has fallen out of my pony tail, I had a stain on my white button down shirt that continued onto my black velvet-like vest, and my black converse high tops (size 9 and a half) were untied. I was a mess.

Upon leaving the bathroom I saw Mom sitting at the kitchen table. The apartment consisted of a bathroom, a really REALLY small kitchen, a living area (with a TV that still used rabbit ears, one chair, and a small table), we also have two bedrooms. Mine was the smaller of the two and definitely the messier one! I haven't seen moms room since she wrote her first poetry book. That's her only place to write so all you can see are piles and piles of papers through the cracked door. We lived in this meager apartment. We probably couldn't afford something too much nicer, but I know we could at least afford a new TV! But my mother liked it. She says the city inspired her and we didn't need anything else. We didn't even have a computer. Mom used a typewriter.

Running through the motions, Mom asked me the usual questions. "How was school?" "How was poetry club?" "Was your walk home okay?" I shoved the letter in her face and went to my room. Half an hour later my mom knocked on the door and asked if we could talk. I climbed out the window.