Once upon a time...

         The girl glanced up at the tall stone building as a look of cold disdain swept across her features. For a second she hesitated, as if deliberating whether or not she should make a run for it while she still had the chance or reluctantly go inside the building. Two seconds passed and she chose the latter as she made her way drudgingly up the cement steps and past the solid metal door.
         Once inside, she ascended another small set of stairs and shuffled into the main hallway. There she encountered a small horde of girls jabbering slightly above a whisper to the right, beside a vending machine. One of the girls looked up and noticed her immediately. She turned to the dark-haired girl beside her, whispered a few words and they both began to make their way toward her direction.
         “Merry! Where have you been? We’ve been really worried,” the first girl questioned.
         “Yes, we have. Plus, we heard from a few others that you’re planning to get away with wearing a jacket in Mrs. Hoffman’s class. Is it really true?” The dark-haired girl commented with anticipation.
         “No, you’re wrong. I’m not going to try. I’m going to succeed,” Merry responded smoothly, as if someone else was controlling her mouth. Someone even remotely interested in Mrs. Hoffman’s class or what was going to take place in there today. Once, Merry had been that person. Now, she was not. But still it was easier to keep up appearances, and so she continued to act. In fact, she often thought, ruefully to herself, that if nothing else worked out she might have a future as an actress. But she knew that was only a joke. She wasn’t interested in acting, just as she wasn’t interested in anything that might point her to her future career. It was really starting to bother her.
         “Oh man! I can’t wait to see Mrs. Hoffman’s face this afternoon. She is going to be so pissed. I can’t imagine how you’re going to pull this one off, but I’m sure you will. You always do. I wish I had your guts,” stated the first girl rather excitedly.
         “Well, we’ll just have to wait and see,” whispered Merry coyly and walked away as the two girls began to chatter about the upcoming event. Somehow this made her feel even worse, and she set off toward her homeroom at a slow trot.
         The next thing she knew she knew, she was sitting in the last seat of the 2nd row, her normal chair, and was being interrogated by the whole female party of her homeroom. Obviously, news travels fast, especially when it contains such importance as Merry’s did. She answered their questions coolly which did nothing to abated their eager anticipation, and steeled herself with a smirk on her lips for the upcoming day.
         Finally, the girls were forced to take their seats after their homeroom teacher, Miss Gates, yelled at the top of her lungs that if they didn’t sit down she was going to give them all detention. The girls slowly moseyed back to their seats, still murmuring among themselves as they did so.  After a few seconds of rushed words, the class settled in to silence and Miss Gates began to recite the morning announcements, thus beginning the morning ritual.
         During this period of about approximately five minutes, Merry usually amused herself by either drifting into a state of mediation, which comprised of planning new plots, or expertly whisking notes across the room informing others of their required roles in these schemes. Today, however, her mind drifted off into thoughts much deeper than school pranks. It once again alighted on the fact that she still had no idea what she wanted to do with the rest of her life. All the other prisoners in high school knew what they wanted to do or at least had some sort of an inkling of the area in which they were gifted and wanted to pursue a career in, no matter how outrageous. And then there was Merry. 
         She was suddenly jolted back into reality by the phrase “and that concludes today’s announcements”. She glanced up to see Miss Gates putting a stack of papers in order on her desk. It was time to go. She got up and made her way to the door as quickly as she could but not quick enough. She was once again hounded by the group that had interrogated her earlier.  She realized there was no hope in trying to come up with a plausible, or even implausible, excuse that they would accept and resigned herself to being escorted to first period by her posse.
         First period: Spanish III, one of the better periods in her day. Actually, Merry rather enjoyed this class if she came right down to it, not that it really mattered in the long run. Languages made sense to her for some reason, so there fore she was taking as many as she could: Spanish III, she skipped Spanish I, German II, French II, and of course English 10, which is a mandatory class. Today’s class went off pretty well, with Merry answering most of the questions posed by the teacher because everyone else was either too frightened to answer or too bored to care. The rest of the class then paired off into partners and were supposed to keep a running dialog between the two people on the subject of family, likes and dislikes and classes, all in Spanish of course, which some of the members of the class room seemed to have forgotten. Needless to say, it was mainly a one-sided conversation but Merry tried to tone it down a bit, until they were dismissed by a sharp shrill bell.
         Merry had at first considered becoming a translator or something similar, but it had become quite apparent to her that she wasn’t cut out for the job. She knew she had a knack for languages but the very idea of becoming a translator and having to translate other peoples conversations about politics all day long made her want to barf her breakfast from the boredom. She would die, or at least crack and mess up a very important translation, just so that she could have a laugh before going to the unemployment office. Not a good career path.  That is why she moved past that idea and onto second period chemistry.
         This was actually the first class that day to which she wasn’t escorted. Her posse had to split up because unfortunately they did not share second period together. So as they bided her adieu, Merry walked down the long hallway by herself, sadly the happiest she had been in a long time. That lasted about 1.2 minutes, until she reached chemistry and one of her worst nightmares.
         If Merry had to describe chemistry to someone in one word, she would choose the word ‘hell’, and that was an understatement. Chemistry was in its own way a little torture session that she had to go through each and every day until her sentence was up. Why was it so bad you ask? Well for starters, Merry didn’t understand the subject at all. While she already knew that she hated science, she didn’t know that when she entered chemistry, she would learn to loathe it in the most literal meaning of the word. It might as well have been a completely different language from her own, for all the sense she could make of it. The second problem was no one else detested it as much as her. Now sure there were people that had low sixties in it and claimed they hated it, but compared to Merry they were on the honor roll for chemistry. Lastly, the teacher despised her guts almost as much as she loathed him for torturing her. Now, she may have waxed his floor really well, the one time, so that when he came in, he slipped and broke his tailbone in the process, and then sent him fifteen dozens of daisies, of which he is highly allergic to, to him in the hospital. But is that really a reason to hate a person. Come on! Well, fortunately, for her sake, Merry made it out of chemistry alive. Of course she did have to do a 500-word essay, read two chapters in their text book and take notes on them, when everyone else had no homework, but compared to the homework he had given her, that was pretty light. Once she had managed to gather up the necessary materials for her assignments, glare at Mr. Groff with a searing look and get out of there in order to get a good place in the line, she was on her way to lunch.
         She was once again joined by her posse, comprised of about seven loyal girls, and they made their way to the pizza line, all the while discussing how they thought “the show down” would “go down” this afternoon in english class.
         “I bet she’ll get really ticked and start sputtering words like she did the one time,” the dark-haired girl, whose name was Miranda, from earlier suggested with giggles.
         “No! She will definitely stop and just glare at you the whole class like she did the other time, when you were so right and she so knew it. That was hilarious!” another girl with blonde hair exclaimed with burst of laughter in between her words.
         “Maybe she’ll come up with something original this time and actually catch you,” Chelsea, the first girl from earlier, commented with notes of sarcasm playing a melody with her words. “Yeah right! Like that could ever happen,” she added with a snort. 
         “Personally, I’m betting on “the bewildered look of amazement” followed by her loud shrill shouting the rest of the class,” Merry offered. “But it’ll be worth it to see that look,” she included with amusement, after seeing her friends shiver out of disgust for a moment.” It’ll all be worth it,” she whispered with a smirk and with that statement they all sat down to a lunch of disgusting pizza and animated conversation about the upcoming event.
         Third period rolled around and it wasn’t any better then second. These two periods were in constant battle over “the worst class” contest. Chemistry versus Geometry, she couldn’t decide which one she loathed the most; it really depended on what class she was in at the time. On this particular day, Geometry decided to go especially bad. In the beginning, they started off with a lecture about how horrible the entire class had done on their most recent test, which Merry had failed with flying colors, and a reminder that she had to have her dad sign her test. Then, they moved on to one of the most confusing lessons about proving complicated diagrams of polygons in certain and rare situations. Which of course brought Merry to ask the question why they needed to know this stuff, thus inadvertently giving her another 500-word paper, this time about the meaning of math? Finally, it ended with the entire class being assigned sixty homework problems because Mr. Garfield was so ticked off because they didn’t understand the lesson, and this was coming from the guy who teaches logic. Merry got past it and steeled herself for what she hoped would be an eventful, but rewarding, period.
         She entered the front of the class room, with her jacket flaring, surrounded by her friends as she confidently strode to her assigned seat. She plopped down and waited for the entertainment to begin. She didn’t have to wait long. Mrs. Hoffman glanced up from her desk at her now full class and began to speak on last nights homework assignment, until she reached the middle of the room, where she stopped and stared wordlessly at the seat in the middle of the isle, the one Merry was sitting in.
         “Miss Andrews, you will kindly take that jacket off in my class, please,” she stated, after regaining her composure, with a note of forced politeness. That wouldn’t last long.
         “No. I will not,” Merry answered simplistically with a smirk on her face.
         “Excuse me?!” Mrs. Hoffman asked with a raised voice incredulously, already having lost her composure once more,.
         “I said ‘No. I will not’,” Merry replied, very amused by this point.
         “And just what makes you think you don’t have to obey the rules like everyone else, young lady!” She said, shouting by this point and getting quite frustrated.
         “I am not disobeying any rules at this point, and I don’t intend to,” Merry answered but, noticing that Mrs. Hoffman was about to speak, continued. “But seeing as you don’t seem to understand what I am talking about I will explain. You see, if you take the time to look at the Dress Code Policy this school has established, specifically part ten sub-heading two, about outer garment ware, you will notice that although it mentions sweaters, sweatshirts and coats can not be worn in the school, it lacks to mention ‘jackets’, and so there for I am not breaking any school rules,” Merry finished in a victorious voice.
         “Well, we’ll just see what the principle has to say about this! Class review your homework with your partners until I return,” Mrs. Hoffman commanded fiercely as she pointed to the door.
         “Let’s get this show on the road!” Merry replied with equal passion and with that she marched to the door, opened it and promptly closed it in her teacher’s face, much to the amusement of the class who thought the whole situation was rather hilarious.
***
It took a few minutes, more like fifteen, for Mrs. Hoffman to stop ranting and raving wildly about the lack of respect demonstrated by Merry, enough to tell the principle what had occurred. Mean while, Merry sat there clearly bored by the way she amused herself by blowing big bubbles with her bubblegum and staring off into space. She had done this enough that it no longer interested her enough to pay attention. Eventually, Mrs. Hoffman stopped rambling on about “the attitude behind Merry’s actions” and Merry got to tell her side of the story. She did this wonderfully slow, just to waste more time, but finally, the principal thought he had a pretty good grasp on the situation and was ready to make a verdict.
         “I have to admit that I have never dealt with this particular case, but Miss Andrews was right when she stated that the Dress Code Policy does not mention that students can’t wear jackets and that her apparel is most certainly a jacket. So, I suppose that from on now you will have to allow jackets to be worn Mrs. Hoffman and can try to revise that rule if you wish. That is all I can tell you,” he finally decided partly amused and partly reluctant. “I see that school is going to be dismissed in one minuet, so I suppose you can go to your locker now, Merry. Unless you have any thing else that you want to say to her Mrs. Hoffman,” he announced this time with a little more amusement in his worn voice.
         “No. That is-.” Merry didn’t stick around to hear the rest. She raced back to the english room, where she met her very excited comrades and together they walked down to the busses, while busily chattering the whole way there. They each said good-bye to one another and boarded their separate vehicles.  Merry sat down in hers and thought wearily of the day’s events and of her future.
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She stepped off the yellow bus, her red spiked hair shimmering in the sun and slowly scooted up the drive way, kicking a stone as she went. She opened the screen door into her laundry room and was about to shout hello, when she heard a voice.
         “Merry,” her dad shouted, “come on in here. I want you to meet some people.”