Drown in You

2. Why'd you pick drama?

At 3 AM that night, I silently opened the door to my room and crept through the hallway, down the staircase, and into the kitchen. I took small quantities of nearly every non-perishable food that they had, and brought them back up to my room, hiding the lot underneath the bed.

Bill and Carol didn't seem like the type to starve me out, but one could never be too cautious. It was better to have a reserve supply than to go hungry, a lesson I'd learned at the age of five when the old man I was living with didn't feed me because I'd hit another foster kid. I was starving by the end of it, and since then, I always made sure to keep spare food available. The next time I was denied meals, I was prepared. Sometimes though, in the more crowded places, I couldn't simply shove it under the bed. Some of the time there wasn't even a bed to shove it under. The most creative place I'd ever hidden food was under a loose floorboard on a staircase. It worked pretty well until the rats found out about it. After that it was double bagged inside the engine of a broken down pickup truck parked down the street.

Satisfied, I went back to bed, but didn't fall asleep. I lay there, staring up at the ceiling in the dark for three hours until the sun rose. I remembered that I had a new school to start at, and decided it probably was better not to ditch. I threw on my only pants (a pair of worn, black jeans), a hoodie, and some beat-up vans before heading downstairs.

I stood by the front door, about to head out before remembering I had no idea where my school was. I reached into my pocket and fished out the little note that Jan gave me the night before. Apparently, I was starting as a sophomore at Babylon high school. Unfortunately, I had no idea where this school was or how to get to it. Reluctantly, I came into the kitchen where Carol was, unsurprisingly, already awake and cooking food.

Shit. She was probably still mad at me for the cigarette.
"Um, do you know where Babylon high school is?"

She looked up from her food and said cheerily, "Oh, you're awake. Come eat breakfast with us!"

All traces of the anger I'd seen last night were gone.
Cautiously, I said, "I think I have to leave now. I don't know how far away it is, it could take a while to get there." The longest I'd walked to a school was 15 blocks.

"Don't worry about it," she said, "Eliot goes there too, as a seventh grader. Of course we'll drive you."

"Oh, ok. Thanks." I looked over at Eliot, immersed in his cereal. We still hadn't spoken at all. It was pretty nice of Carol to offer to drive me, but also pretty weird. I had never before been driven to school. It was always take the bus or walk. Usually it was walking, because most didn't want to pay the bus fee.

I awkwardly took a seat at the table and watched Carol flip eggs in a pan while Bill read a newspaper. They were all very relaxed and slow paced. Watching them was almost agonizing, definitely not relaxing. It felt like watching a donkey plod along aimlessly in a field of grass.

Finally, after an hour of waiting, they were ready to leave at 7:30. Carol drove a nice Mercedes. I had lots of leg room from the backseat, unlike in Jan's tiny Sedan. It was a cloudy Monday morning in mid October, and the changing autumn leaves were like bright patches of color against the grey sky. I'd been to numerous different schools, and at this point, being the new kid was no longer unusual. I'd gotten used to the stares and stale introductions. I wasn't really expecting much else out of this school. It just felt like any other first day.

After nearly 10 minutes in the car, we pulled into the parking lot of Babylon High. It looked like a fairly average school to me.

"Bye, Eliot," Carol said to her son as he got out of the car.

"Bye, mom."

She turned around as I was opening the door. "Bye, Will. Have a good first day."

"...bye." I shut the door behind me and headed into the school.