Sara

When you write a story, it is supposed to be believable, verisimilar. But true life does not make any sense and cannot be held to that standard.

For the third day in a row a new student, Sara, is in my class with her head buried in her arms on her desk and her white hoodie wrapped around everything but the spiked hair on the top of her head. In a regular high school, she would be getting dirty disgusted looks, but this was an alternative high school and the students were tolerant and gave her space. I finally asked her if she did this all the time or if she was having a bad day or a bad week or a bad year or a bad life or what was going on. She stood up, strode out of the room and slammed the door behind her. The remaining students just shrugged their shoulders and smirked when I told item I was going to find her and talk with her.

I found her outside sitting on a bench and I sat down beside her. She looked at me and glared.

“Why are you sitting there looking at me like that? Why don’t you leave me alone?”

“Because I think what every pretty young lesbian girl needs is a sixty five-year-old man to listen to her.”

This confused her for a while, but since I just sat there and didn’t leave she decided to talk.

“At my other school, this boy looked at me funny so I just walked up to him, punched him in the face and knocked him to the ground. Now I’m on thirteen pills a day to control my ADD and bipolar and whatever other shit they think I have. My mother is a mean bitch and sometimes I’m fucking afraid of what she is going to do, especially when she’s drinking. She says I should try dressing and acting like a girl and not like an ugly dyke. I had a girl friend but she was an even crazier bitch than me, so here I am. Now you know everything about me and you can go back and teach your boring ass class and breathe on everyone with your nasty coffee breath and pretend you like everyone just like you’re pretending now.”

“Please don’t punch me. I’ve been punched before and it hurts,” I answered. I think I saw the faintest beginnings of a smile on the corners of her mouth.

We both sat there a while and neither one of us moved.

“My life is nonsense. I hate my life,” she said softly.

So I decided to try giving her a pep talk. I told her I had absolute faith in her ability to start doing well in class, to get enough credits and graduate. I asked her to think about obstacles she had faced in the past

I told her that if you think your nonsense story is unique, just search on the internet and another one just like it will pop up. There are thousands of girls taking meds for ADD who have mean mothers and lost their girlfriends. And there are thousands out there like me who give stupid speeches or do the same stupid thing over and over or experience the same odd set of circumstances or feel attracted then rejected then uncomfortable then embarrassed. There are thousands of people experiencing the same feelings, surviving the same odd circumstances, feeling alone and neglected. I told her what she was going through was about the whole human experience. You might think you’re one human all alone in the world, but you’re really not alone at all. If you’re young and lonely, old and confused, ugly, skinny, fat, gay, straight, loved, rejected, hey! don’t worry there are thousands more just like you. Just be strong, have faith in yourself and things will get better.

It was such an inspiring speech that Sara got up and walked away.

She walked away and never came back to our school. Instead, she found a bad self-medication habit and a way to support it. Over a period of two years she lost twenty pounds. Sores broke out on her face.

I saw her at Walmart one day. Her hair was stringy. She smelled bad. The clothes she used to fill out hung on her like a clown suit. She asked me if I could spare five dollars. I gave her ten. I don’t even think she knew who I was. She gave me a weak smile and headed out the door.

Sara just sold meth to support her habit. She was small time. So small time, she might have gone unnoticed. But her ex girlfriend wasn’t so small time. When she got caught, she offered to narc a bunch of others out in exchange for staying out of prison.

So Sara got a knock on her door one night and spent a month in the county jail. Her so-called public defender recommended a plea deal. This got her two and a half years in prison.

I love that feisty spiked haired girl.

Author’s note: Sara is not a real person. She is a composite character, similar to several girls I knew. All of the things in the story really happened, but not all of them happened to the same person.