Outside the Gates, Chapters 2 & 3

         Finally the day passed on to lunch. The food was angel hair pasta today. I took a large serving of it, a Sprite, and a bag of Cheetos. I sat down at the same table as Sherry and Jetta. “Where’s Keitha?” I asked Jetta.
         “She’s getting her food. Oh, and I heard about your fun little history class.” She smiled at me.
         “He only calls on me because he hates me.”
         “No, he calls on you because he knows you don’t know the answer.”
         “Yeah, he hates me.”
         “Maybe you should actually read your history book for once, T.”
         I rolled my eyes and took a bite of my warm pasta.
         “Hey guys!” Keitha set her tray down next to mine.
         I waved at her, my mouth still full of pasta.
         “Oh my gosh! Mr. Watson hates me!” Keitha said.
         I quickly swallowed my pasta, eager to tell her. “Me too!” I said.
         “He always calls on me when I don’t know the answer, and then when I do know the answer and raise my hand, then he never calls on me! Can you believe it!” she was saying exactly what I was thinking.
         “Don’t worry,” I told her. “He does the exact same thing to me. He called on me when I didn’t know anything about this Columbus guy, even when there were like two people who had their hand raised and actually knew the answer. He asked me, and then just ended up calling on them anyways. It’s so ridiculous.”
         She nodded and began, “I think we should confront him and tell him about it.”
         I nodded in agreement. I almost started to say something to her, but realized she had already started talking to Jetta. I looked at Sherry.
         “Hey, Sherry.”
         “Hey T,” she said. “You have Greucher, right?”
         “Sadly, yes.”
         “She’s extra psycho today.”
         That should be fun…, I thought to myself. “Like how?”
         “She yelled at this girl for like no reason, like that her uniform was all messed up and that she was an ugly stupid little girl.”
         “Oh my gosh! Who did she say that to?”
         “Karen.”
         “Oh, she must’ve cried; she did, didn’t she?”
         Sherry nodded. I began looking around the cafeteria for Karen, and spotted her weeping at a table, with three other girls comforting her. She was probably the most emotional person I had ever known.
         “It was awful. She had to run outside to the hallway, and then, when she tried to come back in, Ms. Greucher snapped at her and told her to sit in the hallway until lunch. I feel so bad for her.”
         I began to softly laugh at the sight of Karen crying.
         Sherry slapped my hand. “You are so rude!”
         “I know, but out of all people to snap at, it had to be poor little Karen. But anyways, what did you guys do in English?”
         “Well….” She thought. “We went over the test, and then we started talking about To Kill a Mockingbird. It wasn’t too bad, just watch out, she’s probably pretty mad ever since she yelled at Karen.”
         I opened my Cheetos and shoved three in my mouth.
         Keitha looked at them. “Can I have one?” I moved my bag over to her. “Thanks!” She grabbed a Cheeto eagerly.
         I sat there, sipping my Sprite, and my eating my Cheetos. I didn’t feel like talking to anyone today, just listening. It was suddenly 1:25, and I bid my friends goodbye, all except Jetta, who I had English with, then picked up my bag in the hallway and made my way off to English with Ms. Psycho Greucher. Fun.
         I was the fifth one in there, and I sat in my usual spot in the back. We didn’t have assigned seats, which was good for me, because I had this class with Jetta, and we always sat together in our back row.
         Old, skinny, and with fading red hair, Ms. Greucher looked like one of those teachers who could just write you up for anything, especially your uniform. She was worse than Mr. Watson, and whenever she walked into the room, you had better be sitting up straight, everything ready to go on your desk, and your uniform in perfect order, or it was severe consequences for you.
         The rest of the class hurried in in a mad dash, and people came in the classroom saying, “She’s coming! She’s coming!” I grabbed everything out of my bag for English and laid it on the table. I fixed my uniform, pulled my skirt down, and arranged everything on my desk, then folded my hands and placed them on my desk. I looked beside me to see that Jetta had done the same.
         Ms. Greucher walked into the room with her head angled looking at us; she was checking our uniforms and empty seats. She spotted an empty seat near the middle and raised her eyebrows at it. She set down her books and stood by her desk. Elliot came running in. “I’m sorry I’m so late I—,” she stopped when she saw Ms. Greucher.
         “You were saying,” Ms. Greucher said.
         “It’ll never happen again, Ms. Greucher, I’m sorry.” Elliot took her seat and got out her books.
         Ms. Greucher shot us an evil-psycho look. I had to look down at my hands to keep from laughing. I looked over at Jetta, and she had a wide smile spread across her face. I looked back up at Ms. Greucher who was sorting through her things, possible for our tests. “I have your tests here,” she said. She began walking around handing out the tests we had taken last week. She finally made it to our back row, and handed me my test. I dared to look at my score. I passed with a 95.
         “What’d you get?” I whispered to Jetta, as Ms. Greucher made her way back to her desk. She held up her test. 98. I narrowed my eyes at her.
         “Is there anything we have to go over?” Ms. Greucher asked. She didn’t wait for anyone to answer. “Good. Pull out To Kill a Mockingbird. Now.”
         She held the dry-erase marker up to the board, and waited until everyone had their book out. She wrote the name Harper Lee on the board.
         “Harper Lee,” she began, “was the author of To Kill a Mockingbird. Meaning, she wrote this book.”
         Well duh, I thought.
         She held the book up in her hand. “This book,” she said, shaking the book violently. I thought she was having an attack. “This book has been around for centuries.”
         She really liked putting the emphasis on centuries. Hasn’t every book written back then been around for centuries?
         “This is one of the most highly praised books of its time, and you are not going to ruin it.”
         My jaw literally dropped and I made a confused look at her.
         She quickly turned to me and gave me a glare. “Anything wrong, Tarika?”
         I quickly came back to my senses and fixed my face. “Umm, no Ms. Greucher. I, I had a sneeze.”
         I looked at my hands out of embarrassment. Jetta shoved me with her elbow as if to say, What?
         Class was over before I had even noticed it. Jetta and I grabbed our book bags and headed for our dorms. Jetta came up beside me and started laughing. “I had a sneeze!”
         “Shut up!” I told her. “It’s not that funny you know.”
         “Keitha and Sherry might think it is.”

CHAPTER 3

         We made it to the dorms and crossed over the grass to the two-story building. Ours was on the top floor, Dorm 217. We opened the steel doors to the building and made our way down the first hallway to the stairs. We opened the door leading to the stairs and made our way up to the second floor. Dorm 217 was the third room on the right, which was great, because it was right next to one of the bathrooms. I opened the door, to find the room a mess. We never picked up any of our things. I stepped over three books and a pair of shorts to get to my desk. The nice thing about our dorm rooms was that they were roomy. We had bunk beds, well, kind of; there was a bed on top, and a desk on the bottom. Last year I had a room where it was the normal kind of bunk beds, one bed on the top and one on the bottom. The walls were wood, and the sofa was pure white, except for the occasional food or drink stain. I was lucky to get this room this year. We had a light brown colored sofa and a bookshelf next to it.
         I set my bag down next to my desk and climbed the ladder up to my bed, and lie down, exhausted. I was exhausted every day. Jetta, on the other hand, was never exhausted. I don’t know how she did it. She sat down at her desk and started working on her homework, already. Again, I have no idea how she did it. Our door opened. Lisa, our dorm-moderator poked her head in. She was about 20 some years old, and had straight black hair.
         “Hey guys,” she said. “What do you want for pizza night?”
         Friday was always pizza night, and every dorm room got to choose two pizzas. We usually had one sausage for me and Jetta, and then one cheese for Stacey and Fina, who were our dorm-mates last year. Jetta and I, however, had no idea what kind of pizza Keitha and Sherry wanted. I pulled myself up to a sitting position on my bed.
         “Umm...” I said. “I’m not really sure what kind of pizza Sherry and Keitha will want.”
         “You guys want sausage though right?” Lisa asked.
         “Yep,” Jetta responded.
         “Never changes,” Lisa said, marking down sausage under our names on her notepad.
         At just that moment, Keitha and Sherry shoved their way past Lisa into our dorm room, laughing.
         “Hey Sherry,” Lisa said. “What do you and Keitha want for pizza night?”
         “Pineapple,” they said together. Ew.
         Lisa raised her eyebrows at the two and wrote down ‘pineapple’.
         “Drinks?” Lisa asked.
         “Sprite,” I said.
         “Diet Coke,” Jetta said.
         “Coke,” was both Sherry and Keitha’s reply.
         “Alright guys, it’ll be up here at 6:30.” Lisa left and closed the door.
         “Bye Lisa!” Jetta said.
         Lisa waved as she slid out of the doorway.
         “Pineapple?” I asked, making a face.
         The two looked at me and nodded. Whatever, I thought.
         I lay back down on my bed.
         “You guys wanna go to The Green?” I heard Keitha ask.
         “No,” Jetta said. “I have homework. I don’t go to the green ‘til 4.”
         “She has a schedule to keep to,” I added in.
         “Then do you want to go to The Green Tarika?” Keitha asked me.
         “No,” I said, “I’ll just go with Jetta, oh ya, and you can just call me T. It’s easier.”
         “Oh okay. I guess me and Sherry will go to The Green without you guys.”
         I heard them get up and go out the door.
         “So, Jetta. What do you want to do?”
         “Homework.”
         “Figures.”