Listening to: The Verve Pipe - Freshmen (and Switchfoot)
Feeling: Like a pin could drop and the whole world could explode and everything would still be quiet, so quiet.

The world is quietest before a storm. That's what my mother always said, but then again, she usually was the storm, with a bucket in one hand and a cleaning cloth in another. It was a storm of chaos but also of creation. The house would be spotless when she was done, and smelling of lemon and soap suds.

I wondered if I would emerge from this event one day and think back on it as being a 'molding moment' in my teenage years. If I could have screamed, I think it would have echoed into the future and reminded my 30-something self that this was something that could have been stopped, ceased, ended; so that we would still have that year as Freshmen, even if we lived it in arrogant whistlessness.

I crouched down and tried to catch my breath. If I lived, it was going to be a long 80-something years. I traced the scars in my heart that pumped the blood that ran through the veins that created fusion in my fingertips and I realized that I was cold. So cold. I read once that blood is blue and just turns red when it's exposed to air. I shivered. I didn't want to be so cold. And I didn't want to be in that room, with the high ceilings and the blue tinted lights and tiled floors.

I unlocked the door and gasped as I let myself out, acknowledging the change in atmosphere. Repetition is sanity, so I applied another coat of lip gloss to my trembling lips and then walked with the click click of heels out of the girl's bathroom (unfortunately without a sign and just a Rm. 145 on it. We had been briefed about in on the first day; the boy's room was 146. I couldn't see why they didn't just stick little stick figures up so that people wouldn't go in there confusing the girls room with the math class.) I ran my finger along the wall as I walked.

I saw Suzy Peters sitting against one of the lockers and letting her legs drape into the hallway. I had gone to school with Suzy since the fourth grade. We were on the bus together. Her mom was an old friend of my mom. Needless to say, we never talked to each other. I kept walking, avoiding her lumbering feet. I had heard a couple of weeks ago that Suzy almost overdosed on the long weekend. I had heard that she almost got caught with it on school grounds a week before. I shut my eyes. The world was worse when you heard the secrets in whispers of lips and catches of tongues rather than from the person themselves. I glanced over my shoulder at that girl once more, and I saw her pink scraggly hair, her laced up army boots and her kind, soft smile.

I gasped and lurched forward clutching my stomach, my foot catching on someone's stranded binder. I cut my forehead, at my temple, and I let the warm, sticky blood drip onto my fingers. Red is such a vibrant colour. Black seems so deathly and dark and hatred, while red is the colour of poppies and love and plump apples in the summertime. I wobbled as I stood up. No one would be there to catch me. No one would care. I looked at my fingers, now dyed a dripping red, and I had the wildest temptation to write a crude message in blood on the hallways walls. I smiled a little at that.

My class was on the right. I ducked in. Science. Teacher was talking some shit about molecules. I wondered if we were that vain. I wondered if we were that small. I sat down silently, glad my seat was next to the door, where no one would notice my quiet appearance through disappearance. I felt a slight pain on my shoulder. I wondered if I had cut it there too.

"Psst! Mandy!" I turned my head with the least amount of energy I could muster. I didn't want the attention. Not now.

It was Sawyer Allen. Sawyer was a baseball star. They called him Sawing Sawyer because he needed a nickname. Every famous sports star has a nick name. I didn't think that was true , but let boys be boys, I guess. He said my name by moonlight and gave me melted chocolates and drooping flowers. His hand was caught in a frozen throwing position. I looked down. A pencil. It was a pencil that hit me. I looked back up. "Mandy," he whispered, "you're bleeding!" He pointed to his forehead and gave me a 'what-kind-of-freak-are-you?' look.

So I swore. Louder than Sawyer's whispering. Quite loud in fact. Loud enough to disturb the teacher from his lecturing about the importance of goggles. He was demonstrating, and when he turned around he was wearing a pair of the too-big glasses on his face and looked like a gaping sea-monster, staring at me. The whole class was staring at me. I nearly puked right then and there. The embarrassment was a boiling hot bullet train on its way up my esophagus and I choked it down.

"Uh, Ms. Jacobs, you have permission to go to the bathroom and get that cleaned up," he cleared his throat and fixed the goggles on his face. "Now, Ms. Jacobs. "

I slid out of my chair. Sawyer threw his eraser at me. His hand frozen again in that throwing position. I wondered if I loved this boy. I stooped to pick up the pencil and eraser and threw them back at him. He caught them with ease and winked at me with gusto. I exited. I heard the irate science teacher yell, "Be back in 3 minutes. No less." Anal bastard.

I saw Suzy still sitting there. Her eyes were closed and her knees were pulled up to her chest. I could scream. I could scream and she wouldn't even hear me.

I went into room 145 and clutched the edges of the sink. The water was running. Someone had left it on. I dared a glance forward into the mirror. I didn't understand how I couldn't notice it. The blood had made a thick red clot on the left side of my forehead and was dripping down my face casually. There were smears of it on my cheeks, on my neck, on my clothes. Had I assumed it would just stop? That the cut would just dissappear? The blood. Oh, hell, the blood. I threw my face into the cold, running water just as two girls from my basketball team came in, throwing their bouncy curls over their shoulders and clicking on the tiles. It reminded me of Poodles. One of them had a boyfriend who was in jail because he was fighting with some kid in the parking lot one day and killed him. Killed him. The kid was lying on the cement, kissing devils, and flying with angels. Holy Fucking Shit and he was gone.

A screech came from the stall that one of the girls was in. I didn't turn my head. I didn't look. I let the water clean the red away, swirling it down with the grime.

"Oh my god! Oh my god. That is SO gross." I could hear the girls jabbering in the one stall. The other girl had found the need to run over to assist the screaming girl in her screaming. Bloody hell, what was it this time? Someone forget to flush?

"Get some toilet paper!"

"Oh god."

"Eww! Someone peed on that, you know!"

I lifted my head from the drowning water and grabbed more paper towels than I needed to wipe off my face. I more than literally buried myself in the scrubbing dry of my face.

"Shit, wait, Stace. It says Pregnant. Do we know anyone who is pregnant?"

The girl's voices got hushed into that secret whispering of tongues and lips.

I turned and exited the bathroom, my hand pushing that heavy door open and my heart falling behind.

I went down the hall, faster this time. Suzy was gone. I continued through the red doors to the outside. Red. Funny, I thought. My lips curled into a smile. I could paint the doors red. What an awfully funny colour.

The wind was moving at an accelerated rate, like a storm was brewing. I laughed. I suppose it was. The quiet was gone. It was time. I wondered briefly if there would be quiet after the storm as well.

The bridge by our school was made in commemoration of a railway. I liked that. A bridge being made to honour a railway. I held tight to the handrails and looked down. I wasn't quite at the middle yet, but I would get there. The wind assured that. The cars were going so fast. A ridiculous pace compared to the wind. I wished that the bridge had been over water. Water is like when you get sick and you eat chicken noodle soup and you fall into a sleep that nearly attacks you because it is so forceful in its ways. Like sinking sand. No matter how hard you try, you can't help that heavy feeling of sinking and knowing that getting out is inevitable. I wished it was a lake. But, hell, I didn't need to be picky.

I stepped up on the rail and closed my eyes. Words zipped along by the wind flew through my head. It says Pregnant... He killed him... 3 minutes. No less... you're bleeding... she almost overdosed... it's always quietest before the storm.

I laughed. A high, funny laugh that sounded so out of place in this world. My lips hooked into a grin. I could paint the doors red.