leaves

I

I love walking to school. It's a twenty-minute walk and it calms me down from whatever chaos happened in the house before I leave and manages to keep me sane through the day with immatures surrounding me. My sanity is like a dried leaf, it can break so easily, and my mind will whirl with chaos, taking days for the leaf-dust to settle and build into a delicate leaf again. Walking to school and eating lunch outside seems to keep me in check most of the time, and having Abel by my side helps too, so I don't explode from frustration when I can't communicate with people. I can manage without communication, but life is just so much easier with it, you know?

Walking home is alright, but I personally don't enjoy it as much. The walk is anxious, and I expend my energy stomping on leaves, eliminating my worries and concerns of entering the house. It is also louder in the afternoons, and if I'm not careful, I am sprayed by a passing car.

This walk to school wasn't particularly exciting, but I like that. Sometimes excitement isn't exciting, because it is unpredictable, and I don't like unpredictable. Unpredictable is inconsistent and full of surprises. I like routine and consistency. This walk is calm, and there is a gentle breeze weaving through the near to bare branches of the maples. I sigh with frustration when my school comes into view. My school is a one-story building that is a weathered dark beige, with forest green doors. Quite a bland site, but it's been my school for two years, and I am a couple of weeks into my third year. I can't wait to graduate and pursue a career of studying nature.

The area surrounding the building isn't that bad, we have a baseball diamond where the baseball team plays, and a soccer field, where the Ultimate Frisbee team plays. Both next to each other.

I love the trees around my school, there's a wide a variety of maples behind the building, and some evergreen woods off to the left. Right now, there were a lot of people. Too many. People sitting on the picnic tables, people standing in groups, people throwing a Frisbee on the field, and more people inside, just so many people. I didn't like it. I needed to find Abel.

I take the earbuds that are hooked over my ears and insert both in. I turn on some music, blocking out the noise of people talking, yelling and screeching. I put one foot in front of the other, leaving my safe space of under a maple tree behind me, and weave my way through immature, boisterous high schoolers.

Today is Thursday, the day I come to school earlier than usual. Kind of. School starts late on Thursdays, so I come at the same time as the other days, but school doesn't start for a bit. Unfortunately, so do others. On these days I go to the library and read, write, draw, or work on homework, whatever I'm in the mood for, so I don't have to spend more time at home with my parents.

The library is my second favorite place after outside. It's quiet and cozy and never that full cause not many people at this school are into reading. They either play Ultimate, Baseball, or are artistic, there aren't many that exceed in language or science aside from me. I really like to write and study the science of nature.

I like the library because I like darkness, and in the library, there are only ceiling lights by the book selection and check out, but the rest of the area was only lit by book lamps and fairy lights. There was a nook with lots of bean bags, and that was my favorite spot.

I headed to the corner of the nook, settled into a beanbag and pulled out my book. The book that I'm reading was called The Dangerous Art of Blending In, and it's really good. Time goes by quickly when I read, so in no time the bell was ringing. If I had to pick my least favorite sound it would be the bell. It's so loud and shrill and makes my ears want to concave in on themselves and close up, it makes my vision go splotchy, and it's a sound much too loud to handle.

After the deafening noise stopped, I gathered my things and headed to my first class, Environmental Science. The class would be fun at a college level, but here in high school people are immature, and the teachers don't really want to be there.

I sat down in my usual seat towards the back. I liked sitting in the front more because it was easier to see the board and not get distracted, but the farther back I sat, the less I'd be noticed or called on and this teacher liked to get the spotlight on students any chance he could get and sitting in the front would just be asking for it.

Environmental Science is a great subject, but the teacher isn't great, he doesn't really teach, he just tells irrelative stories and gives us textbook work and PowerPoints to figure out at home. I hate reading educational content, I just can't focus. I skip lines and I can get by with reading two pages, only to realize I was thinking about something entirely different, and I have to read them over and over again until I switch into focus but only for a short amount of time. So homework from this class takes the longest, it's one of my only subjects with homework, and I hate how it eats away my time outside of school, when I'd rather do other things like destress from the school day, or go outside, or read, or write, or draw, but no, I'm stuck in my room reading about a lesson that I'd instantly pick up if somebody would just teach it to me. I did not sign up for this class for independent study time or teach-myself-a-subject time.

The only things I can really do in this class is listen to music with one earbud hidden under the hood of my everyday zip up sweatshirt, and write in my Environmental Science notebook, which is filled with anything but science. It has journal entries, story ideas, to-do lists, and other things that may be personal. It's basically my journal, with the code title, Environmental Science Notes. It also has questions answered from the science textbook, but I never have to turn those in.

I didn't feel like doing anything, so I just listened to my music and tried to keep my head from falling over. I haven't been sleeping well recently, and last night was no excuse. I didn't fall asleep until one in the morning, and I have good reasons. I can't stand falling asleep before my parents because I don't feel safe, so I stay awake until they're asleep, then I lock my door and sleep as long as I can. In the morning I wake up before them and try to get the heckity-shmeck out of the house, but recently I've been having trouble getting out of bed, so mornings have been more stressful with my parents yelling at me and each other, blaming me for whatever problem they've been having in their life.

The bell eventually rang, and I took my time getting up. I just took a photo of the homework assignments written on the board, because he didn't have any helpful handouts as per usual. It just consisted of textbook pages and a PowerPoint file name that's on his website. I headed towards my next class. This rhythm continued throughout the day with little variation in each class. Some classes I had with Abel, so I had somebody to talk to. Other times I had good teacher, and other classes, like health, I had to deal with a bunch of immature freshmen. I chose to take it later, but I'm regretting that decision. At least it's only one semester.