Commons

            They’re out there. 

The students wait in Commons for some sort of direction. Some pace around, anxiety struck; while others sit down with nothing but a blank face. Looking straight at us is an Exit sign, big letters lit up in bright red. But there’s no exit here. 

            I sneak across the room sly as the rabbits hopping around in my mind; small, quiet, and perceptive. Soon the glass of the teacher’s office is right in front of me. Teachers are constantly supervising us, claiming they are actually helping us. If I’m lucky I can even here them talking, because they don’t mind spilling secrets in front of me. They think I’m deaf and dumb. And everybody thinks so too.

            The head teacher will spend her precious time watching us from the glass office. She’s holding her textbooks and lessons plans and a pencil case. But I know its really medication hiding in her pencil case. Instead of make up or whatever women carry in their purses, she has the tools for today.

            The machinery at this school can make people change. One day a boy sat in the red chair of this room. He left for “tutoring” and came back emotionless. He was no not flawed for society anymore, and maybe he could even go home now. See, that’s what they do here at school, they fix the misfits of society with machinery and make us better. Well some of us for that matter. Because people like me, we are permanently flawed. So I guess we are just stuck here forever.

            The room feels so large, and even larger when the head teacher comes in. Her presence is a big force suddenly hitting us all. A new student enters the room with the teacher. He is big too. Everything in the room is getting bigger. Except for me.

            A few hours later I return to my daily chores. I grab the broom and dustpan like a squirrel stuffing acorns in its mouth. The exciting part about this time is that I am cleaning the teacher’s office. It is nice to be on the other sides of things. Now I am looking out the glass window from the office. Finally teachers enter the office for there meeting. Each one coming in bigger than the next, my joy of being on the outside slowly fading away as I ebb into a small, helpless creature.