Surviving Senior Year (A Work In Progress)

September

Friday

The stink of bottom-of-the-shelf whiskey and patchouli oil caresses my nose as my fifth period statistics teacher uses the back of his hand to wipe away the drips of saliva pooling at the corners of his mouth. At the age of 31, he is a good-looking teacher who talks too much about sticking it to “the man” and protesting standardized tests. He’s every girl’s dream and a key member on the school’s scholarship review board.

The three shots of peppermint schnapps and five sips of warm beer swigged in the back of my friend’s car on the back road before the dance are beginning to wear off.

I have to get out of here. As Mr. Protest swoops in for another round of his misplaced face-sucking antics, I duck out from under the arm he was propping himself up against the wall with and stumble into the darkness of the hallway.
How had it come to this? I shoot glances down the darkened locker room hallway as music vibrates from the inside of the gymnasium. Any minute now a crowd of four or five people will bust into the hallway and see me frantically trying to pin my hair back in place. At least this isn’t a formal. It also isn’t the way I planned on starting my senior year.

It’s a good thing that dances usually take place on Friday nights, because it gives me two nights to recover from my antics in the hallway and two days to figure out how I’m going to avoid Mr. Protest if he “wants to talk some more” without jeopardizing my chance at those scholarships and without the administration finding out.

I’m not counting on saving face at school. It’s guaranteed that I was the only thing people were talking about before the dance ended. Because the two girls who were busted for making out in their matching outfits in the front hall were old news by the time the student council ran out of Diet Coke, which was about twenty minutes after the concession stand opened.  Everyone knew.

I’m praying that the football team will throw another kegger this weekend and something more embarrassing will happen. I’m praying that I’ll be invisible again on Monday, able to slink around in the shadows and hide out in the newspaper office as usual.


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It's been a long time....

It's been a long time since I've blogged, here or anywhere. I'm a little conflicted, but I'm posting. I'm going to try something non-traditional for me - fiction. Go figure.

A Mad Tea Party