You walk in from the Allston entrance. Anything before this visual is pointless. No description of waking up or eating breakfast is necessary. It’s a new day but the same old routine resounds in your memory. Oppressive, black gates resting harmlessly against the old buildings - they stand out. Your body emits disdain and discomfort by slouching and slogging along. With your head cocked and downcast, your feet move in a dutifully rhythmic path. There is a slight wavering in your steps as you know that this isn’t necessary.
You could change the monotony instantaneously and no one would care. No one else would be affected by your apathy. Then the guilt kicks in, and you continue. Screaming visuals of crying parents and yelling matches, official papers reaffirming your failure, red-rimmed eyes and the heavy stone of disappointment and disapproval pressed against your chest. That’s what keeps the Kerouac and Frost in your mind at bay. Blind duty, guilt of broken obligations.
{And this is all in your head. All of this is without what’s happening in the world of cause and effect. To pan out, we rewind and begin again, distanced.}
You walk from the Allston entrance. You casually glance at the kids that have been there since their mothers’ dropped them off for a zero period they’ll never attend. Both of your thumbs are wrapped around your backpack straps, and your head snaps back to your immediate path. Looking forward, you tilt your eyes up and see something that makes you grin slightly. There is always someone in the sole clear window of the breezeway on the second floor, between the C building and the G/H building. That window is the closest thing to directly center in the block of windows. The grimy frame of the bridge and the irregular faces of glass panes make for a great sight. From where you stand, ten or so feet from the black gates of the Allston entrance, there is a small comfort in that peculiar constant. You are always too far away to see who this person is, and there is something mollifying that rests at the top of your stomach, right below your ribs, from that gentle knowledge.
Until it becomes uncomfortable for your neck, you keep your focus on that window. It never ceases to jar and placate at the same time. The benches are occupied by freshmen at which you can’t help but silently scowl. Eager to please and loud enough to be deliberate, they defy the assumption that one can’t have fun before nine in the morning. Their eyes anxiously dart to yours, hoping to gain a grin of acknowledgement. Somehow, at the end of the exchange, you are still alone, and regardless of how painted, their smiles are still there. Who’s the winner?
With feet that refuse to stop, your body is dragged up brick stairs and past the ugly portable “control center”. Strangers’ glares rip through you and you can’t help but wonder if paranoia is a prerequisite to high school. Judging and evaluating incessantly, these people pooled in groups and standing defiantly alone compress your existence into what you throw back to them. Attitude becomes everything, and it’s not even time for first period. You feel yourself callous over as you hike your backpack up on your back and let the oxygen become sparse in your calves. Climbing the stairs, you ignore the humid affect that too many students have on the walls, trash haphazardly clumped in corners.
Noticing the first few hall-dwellers, you avoid eye contact. You avoid any contact, because you’ve learned. Contact is a variable; contact is a gamble. Pretending to have your eyes fixed on a point somewhere in the distance, you plod onwards. The book you crammed into your bag at the last minute this morning is jabbing at your back, causing you to shift every couple of minutes. You are cruising the main floor of the C building, the second floor.
If you don’t know many teachers at Berkeley High, it can be a lonely place at eight in the morning. But if you do know a fair amount of teachers, as a result of kicking it in the teachers’ lounge when you had a proctoring period freshman year, then you are golden. You, happen to be golden. Appreciative of those hardworking teachers that come early to make sure they are prepared, you sit quietly and read. Call it getting it out of your system, call it meditation before the war - call it whatever you want, but you can’t function without downtime. Out of the corner of your eye, you watch whichever teacher you are insinuating yourself upon flitter around the room, looking simultaneously expert and virgin. Their moves are understandably uniform, but if you are in the presence of the right teacher, it all becomes apparent. Their passion, their nervousness, their confidence, their pride, their tired eyes. All of it bubbles to the surface when they aren’t looking.
The bell rings to rudely interrupt you and you adjust your bag so you wont feel the corner of your book burrowed into your shoulder blade when you put it on. Slung onto one shoulder, you thank the teacher and walk out. Avoidance becomes your priority and you dodge and duck your way to first period. Scornful of oblivious people, you wish that today could be the day you tell them off. Today could be the day you tell them that they can’t take up the entirety of the hallway with their selfish melodrama. Their attention-grabbing antics aren’t of any interest or concern to you. Instead, you compromise your pace by swerving and ducking and sliding and silently excusing yourself for being rude. You place your heavy bag down and adjust yourself for a class you used to look forward to.
Post.Script. i actually expect to be graded on this thing. i was supposed to catalogue one day in my life, with major emphasis on Berkeley High's impact. I was going to go through the whole day, but its pretty much this, times six. should i turn it in? it reads like one big emo song.
