“First I heard about it was homeroom. I heard a student brought a gun to school.” Dropping his voice down another octave, signaling importance, he says, “Crazy. What is this school, Columbine revisited?”
My spine tenses up. My stance of outrage had pushed the fear of the morning away, but now I instinctively look around for a shooter. I needn’t worry. It’s just the usual zipping of backpacks, carrying lunch trays to the window, and couples storing up hugs to get them through the afternoon. “Hope not,” I say with a little shudder.
After a pause, he says, “Sophomores didn’t seem to know much else, really. I have one junior class since I took sophomore science in California, but juniors don’t really talk to me. Just one guy does, another person on the outs from the crowd.”
“What’s his name?”
“Real name, I dunno. They call him Hiker.”
Searching the tables, I look for dark hair framing an Italian- featured face, including dark eyes. “Where is he? I don’t see him.”
The lunch table social categories have become ingrained habit after all these years. It’s like sitting at the same desk in class every day, or eating fast food—it’s easy, predictable, feels safe. Although lunch tables, unlike fast food, aren’t cheap. You pay through unchangeable identity sunk in concrete by the force of the judgments of others. I am what they think, “they” being a narrow range of friends.
“Hiker eats up in the main office for some reason. Anyway, he’s not here today. Probably off hiking. Wish I was.”
I perk up. “You a hiker?”
“Not really. I’m a biker.”
“Cool. Racing bike?”
“No, a hybrid. Better for exploring country roads.”
Another example of him doing things alone, being curious, an explorer. And now I have a new name for him: Biker.
“You’ll have to check out where I live,” I say. “Country Girl, y’know.” Can’t believe I actually invited him to my house. And yet I can believe it. He is so easy to talk to.
Brushing long hair out of his eyes, the tips of which are still sun-bleached, Biker says, “Last time I saw Hiker he said something strange to me—‘I feel empty inside.’ I didn’t know what to say. It didn’t matter, though, because he walked away before I could come up with something.”
Man, this guy really cares about other people.
“I think that is part of the name thing,” I say—“‘Take a hike.’ Now he beats everybody to the punch by leaving before being told to, walking away from what’s not good for him. At least that’s how it seems from a distance.”
“You ever talk with Hiker?” Biker asks.
I’ve never had a conversation with him in our three years together here. Weird, since there are only a hundred of us. “No, not really,” I admit, “but one time I saw him in town standing in front of Gelato Café and I thought, He looks like an ancient Roman statue. In ninth grade he won a big deal national Latin award that was on the announcements for days. That’s all I know about him.” It’s so pathetic how little I can offer I can’t even look Biker in the eye when I say it.
“I could count on one hand the number of Hilltop students who’ve actually reached out to have a real conversation with me,” he says. “They’re sitting at the skater table. Add to them a few girls teasing me about my supposed good looks.” He makes a silly face, sticks his tongue sideways out of his mouth.
“Why don’t you sit with the skaters anymore?”
“Got boring. Besides, got to keep up my tan.” He stretches out, hands behind his head, legs extended, and crosses his flip-flopped feet.
I laugh. “Fair enough. See ya around, Biker.”
“See ya, Listener.”
Interesting guy. Most people need a social group to hang on to. I’d rather stay and talk to him than go to my afternoon classes—math, science, and arts appreciation—a mish-mash of dull routine and no opportunity to pursue thinking through my English project. But I don’t have much of a choice, do I?
Leaving through the school’s massive, solid oak front door, the sharp, cold air injects my spirit with hope and energy.
It’s a quick walk to my car, down the steep hill from the top where my school sits, appropriately named Hilltop Academy. The “academy” part relates to the college prep focus and the school’s location in between our small town’s two colleges. This private high school, comprised mostly by kids from the faculty of the two colleges, is distinctly visible to all the other city and county dwellers below.
I wave to a couple of seniors headed to swim practice at the town’s indoor pool—we don’t have any of our own facilities, and our sports teams are run by a community-wide organization rather than the school.
A Hilltopper whose car is parked next to mine is throwing her backpack into her trunk and retrieving her dance gear for a class at a nearby studio.
“Don’t know where you get all your energy,” I say.
“Frankly, at the end of the school day, I’m exhausted,” she says. “But dance revives me.”
I know exactly what she means. My revival starts with driving home, a ten-mile becoming-me-again ritual. No stoplights, little traffic. Good thinking time.
It doesn’t really bother me that everyone calls me Country Girl. Living out there is a gift. For my parents, it was a financial thing; the price of city real estate had shot up, and they wanted to buy. For me, it’s a sense of freedom to be me, alive like everything else around me, without the evaluating eyes of others. I feel at home among the creeks and rivers and mountains that define our part of the county.
My driving home ritual includes peeling, while driving, my armor off; the leggings go last, and then I’m down to my cotton teddy, the wind from the car windows blowing life back into my body. Only my dogs see my revealed, free self.
At the end of Blue Heron Creek—I saw three of its namesakes on today’s drive—I turn onto my gravel road. Machine Cemetery Farm—my joking name for the neighbor’s place—grows to my right. Jake lives there with his dad, who knows a gazillion stories of local people and history, telling them with his local accent and in great detail.
Every time I drive past Jake’s house, I feel a knot of sadness inside me. I miss him. For three years before I went to middle school, we were inseparable. Our favorite activity was exploring the miles and miles of open space—woods, creeks, caves, and fields of wildlife—and talking to each other non-stop. Jake set the standard for me of what it feels like to have someone truly listen to me and care what I’m talking about.
Before Jake, I played on my own, digging with my hands to build dirt villages and invent happily-ever-after stories of the ancient people I imagined lived on this land long ago. Then Jake came along, and I didn’t have to play alone anymore—but as we drew closer, my parents showed a growing feeling of unease. Not that we did anything wrong. We didn’t. But I got a strange sense that they thought we cared about each other too much. Like it wasn’t right for me to care about a boy who loved farming. Like they were ashamed of me, or for me. Like I should feel shame.
When I think about it now, I do feel shame—shame that I didn’t stand up to my parents killing our relationship. I often wonder if Jake thinks about those good times we had. He goes to Stone Creek, the public high school for county kids, so we never see each other anymore.
Now I go exploring with my dogs on no-destination hikes, wandering “expotitions,” Pooh Bear style. On cue, here they are at the end of my mile-long gravel road. The dogs are racing and bumping each other, tails set on extreme wag. Honestly, I feel closer to Ayla and Lily these days than I do to any human being.
Our house is a modern log cabin, up high on Hawk Ridge, with great views in all directions. The best thing this time of year is the huge windows all along the south side of the house. The sun they let in keeps the rooms warm and cozy.
I grab my tablet, snuggle into the down sofa with the dogs, and message my best friend, Cora. This is our daily ritual, sharing what happened at school. Compared
to her interesting stories from Stone Creek, mine usually suck. But not today! I tell her about the new backpack search policy and my project.
I can say anything to Cora. We only see each other, live, once a week at church. Actually, we sneak away from church to walk and walk around town, talking a mile a minute and returning just in time to appear as if we were there all along. We call ourselves the Free Will Baptists.
Cora opened up to me early on about her big struggle over being mixed race. Her mom, who is white, was treated meanly by women of the largest black church in the area when they first moved here, so Cora and her parents left and came to our church. Cora told me she adores her mom, and her dad too, but sometimes she feels awkward in public with her mom. Cora is somewhere between light skinned and dark skinned—black in the eyes of many.
“Okay,” Cora messages me back, “so I’m two years younger than you and my school is terrific, what am I missing? How could someone be so unhappy they would bring a gun to school and NOBODY would know that?”
I don’t know how to respond to Cora, and trying to think about it makes me feel all unsettled, so I turn to developing my project proposal. I propose to interview three seniors from Hilltop and three seniors from Stone Creek. Since the two schools are very different in size and student backgrounds, asking questions about a backpack search policy might show contrasting points of view. My write-up will describe what I learn from the interviews.
I hear my parents’ Prius crackling up the gravel road. I meet them in the kitchen, and my mood improves with the smell of barbecue take-out.
Dinner is usually a rehash of their workdays, like a ten-mile drive home together isn’t enough time to be done with that. As college professors, the academic world is all they care about. Even the parties they go to are for things like connecting with people on the tenure committee. I honestly have no idea why they had a child. Fun, excitement, and emotion are not visibly hard-wired into their makeup. I feel like an add-on to their life schedule. As an only child, I’ve always taken personally the not being seen or known.
But tonight is different. They want to know what I think of the new backpack search policy at school.
“Us kids have a million questions about why we have this new policy and what happened,” I say. “But nobody at school tells us anything. Some kids are saying they heard a student brought a gun to school. What have you heard?”
My mom nods. “Yes, we heard about the gun too. Apparently the student who brought the gun to school claims he has been bullied for years and is afraid.” She flips a hand to wipe away that last word, as in how ridiculous.
“So he was going to shoot other students?” I’m one-upping them with my distant disbelief.
“Who knows?” Mom says. “The point is a gun shouldn’t be in school under any circumstances.”
They have both perfected their lecture voices after all these years of college teaching.
“So all parents support this backpack search policy?” I demand.
“Probably not ‘all’ other parents support it, but we think it’s a good idea,” Mom says.
“That sucks. Why hasn’t anyone asked us kids what’s going on?”
“I see your vocabulary hasn’t improved much lately.”
Nice putdown, Dad.
Mom pushes on. “It is our job, and the school’s job, to protect you.”
“I can’t even … How can you protect me if you don’t understand what is behind all this, what’s really going on?”
“The backpack searches are for your protection. So you can focus on getting good grades and into a good college.”
It always comes back to the college script. “I already make good grades,” I say. “But am I supposed to have blinders on about real life stuff, like someone bringing a gun to school?”
“It’s not your job to worry about that. It’s being handled by the principal.”
“I have approval from my English teacher to do a survey of what students think about the backpack search policy.”
Mom frowns. “You stirring things up won’t help resolve the problem and could very well get you in trouble. High school recommendations are critical to colleges.”
“Did y’all think this way when you were bored out of your minds in high school?” I don’t wait for an answer; I storm out of the room before they explicitly forbid me from doing the project.
I’ve gotten pretty good at avoiding direct power plays from my parents, since I know I will always lose. The current big standoff is all about college. I have two applications in to colleges. My parents feel confident in winning the battle because my grades from “prestigious” Hilltop Academy are good enough to get in to their choice, the “prestigious” state university, UVA. But I want to go to a small, liberal arts college: Oberlin. It’s in Ohio, far enough away to put some distance between us. And it is close to my grandparents, who have a large college fund for me—large enough to pay for the more expensive Oberlin. They say my parents should help me decide what is best for me and not use cost as a factor.
My parents have been planning all this out for years. Hilltop Academy, as college prep, fits their requirements. Besides the fact that all college faculty kids get free tuition there, they love the full schedule of required courses every student has to take, the teachers with advanced degrees, and the outrageously strict dress code (coats and ties for guys and similar professional dress for girls) that makes all us students of similar backgrounds look even more alike.
The only thing parents have to pay for at Hilltop is the after-school tutoring in preparation for SATs. We are already familiar with the content of the questions because we get it all the time, repeated ad nauseam, from our teachers’ tests, which are supposedly aligned with the SATs. But the review through SAT practice tests helps us re-memorize information. One time I asked a girl in my SAT class why her answer was right and she said, “I don’t know, it just is.”
My parents also like it that our principal seems to run a tight ship—or at least that they don’t usually hear of any problems. Parents don’t hear from teachers much either, because the teachers are only there part time—there aren’t enough classes in their subject areas for full-time work. Come to think of it, how did my parents even hear about a gun at school? I bet through gossip, and not any official notification. I’ve never seen any college administrators at Hilltop, even though they fund the high school and the principal supposedly reports to them.
The way I see things, college is my ticket out from under, a ray of hope to control my own life. I don’t trust my parents to decide on a college for me, based on what I’m about, instead of their script for my future. The decision where I go should be mine but my parents have the power to enforce, “for your own good.” I just need to be smart about the conflict so I don’t lose the power struggle. I’m a deer, keeping still, listening intently, gauging my actions for escape, preservation.
I drift off to sleep nestled between the dogs and thinking about my visit to Oberlin. The peaceful atmosphere … students from many different backgrounds who seem to be tight with each other … freedom to select classes and craft a unique major …
My survey proposal is—shock—approved by my English teacher and the principal. I think she was covering herself, running my project by him. I’m amazed he approved it with only the condition that he wants to see my report before anyone else does.
Our principal was once quoted in the local paper as saying his major goal for the school is to stay off the front page of newspapers. Maybe he is worried about what could be brewing and needs inside information. Neither students nor teachers talk with him. Is there real reason to worry about something like a school shooting?
My back is all tensed up again.
I begin by interviewing Hilltop students, choosing to talk to the people I least know in the senior class, people I hardly ever talk with. I want to be as objective as possible, not making any assumptions like I know what they mean. And I’m keeping it to only three people
so we have plenty of time to dig deeper than a typical conversation. To keep each discussion concrete and individual, I plan to ask the person to reveal what they carry in their backpack. Those items will be the jumping-off point for my questions, but they can say whatever they want. I’ll tell students that what they show me, or say, will be anonymous. Each conversation is recorded so I can go back and pull out direct quotes. In the notes I take, I use their school nicknames.
Hilltop Academy Interview Notes
North Face Dude—confident—outgoing—“perfect” dress
“The new backpack search policy is no big deal to me. I’ll do whatever they ask because I don’t want to jeopardize getting into a good college. That’s the main thing to me and my parents right now. Success at Hilltop means keeping your head down and mouth shut.”
Backpack—the usual textbooks, notebooks, pencils/pens, calculator, and phone. Selected backpack items:
Copy of college application essay:
• “When I get bored in class, I pull this out and read it. I’ve read it a thousand times, practically have it memorized. It keeps me going, thinking about getting out of here.”
• “It will be better in college because of the freedom. Freedom from parents, rules, more time for me to decide what to do.”
• “Yeah, freedom to be me. Dress the way I want. Join a fraternity. And, of course, constant parties!”
• “I don’t have any particular major in mind. But at the schools I’ve applied to, I know I’ll make good connections with people that can help me in my future. That’s the way it works.”
Can of Monster Energy
• “This is my lifeline. I couldn’t keep going without it.”
School Tales Page 2