1I've walked the same way to the school district for as long as I could remember. I don't know any other way to go. I've also walked with the exact same people. Not all that walk with me are my age, most are younger though. For I am in my last year of public schooling.
On my next birthday, I will be subjected to hundreds of differents tests to see where my skills lie and where I could be most useful in my world. I may travel like Heldie's parents, or I may work as a teacher. I don't know what I want to do, I just know that I wish to never stop learing. I love learning, whether it be from a book or from a phrase a teacher is explaining to us.
My next birthday is the day I turn twenty and I am no longer a child in the eyes of the world. I will be come a lone student for I will not have Mother and Father there to protect me. I will no longer have to wear a black skirt and blouse. No longer will I have to walk to school, I will be able to ride my bicycle. And no longer will I have to freely carry books. I will be able to wear the traing uniform of my profession and I will have a side pack to hold my many texts that professors will require me to read for their classes. I will live in a dorm with others who I will study along side with. I am so very excited for my next birthday, I only have to wait three months.
This is the part in my walk to school that I have dreaded with the utmost of fear though. My companions and I must walk along side a long stretch of wired fencing, one that only the condemmed cross. I do not know what lays on the other side, but I do see what looks to be miles and miles of a forest of thorns. That is not all I see though.
I see dark eyes protruding from the thorns. Eyes that seem to carry with them the burden of the world. I fear these eyes for they only seem to be for me. I do not know why I can see them and I know that I am the only one that can see them. Those eyes follow me, move with me, watch my skirt sway and hair drift when breezes catch me. Those eyes that forever make me want to cry. Those eyes that forever make me want to hurt something, someone, and myself because I don't want to see them any more. I try to ignore those eyes that forever watch me, but forever I am destined to look into them and wish for pain again and again.
My companions happily chat away of what scholar points they gained on different tests given out by our teachers as if nothing else matters other than the points they earn and how teachers look at them. During this path in my walk, I hate them for they cannot see those eyes that curse me. I hate them that I want to hurl my school books at them and run. Run as fast as I can and as far as I can from those eyes.
But I just keep walking.
A.N. - I don't know exactly why I wrote this piece. I was reading a book for school, Night, and the cover made me want to write this. Not sure if I'll get another chapter going though. It might be one of the one shot wonders I love.
-LT