Munmun(42)
Stage Three though, attend Wet Almanac Middlerich High, sorry poorkids, this is the impossible part.
? ? ?
First day at school was endless, a nonstop parade of hopeless tasks and humiliations. Sprint across the giant campus at topspeed, leap up bigsteps, arrive toolate at a shut door where you can’t reach the doorknob. Scrabble wildly, a sternfaced professor cracks the door open, nexttime please just knock, noneed to claw the door like a dog who needs to pee. Swim and drown in discussions you can’t understand, symbolic math, chemical processes, litratures of the world. Ask the teacher basic questions, repeat in a scream because your middlepoor voice is too small for the room, Sorry Who Was Toneymoorisson Again, all around you the doublescale kids nosebreathe with impatience, a muttery forest. Spend all of lunchtime not finding the foodcourt, ohwell, no lunch for Warner, stare longingly at garbagecans all afternoon and dream about the pizzarinds inside.
At familydinner Hue asked us how was our first day.
We paused like deerintheheadlights, is there any single part we can even describe.
“It is a very new and stimulating environment!” exclaimed Prayer. “That is for sure!”
Hue turned his sympathetic eyes to nodding silent me and said, “I know it’s difficult, it’s quite an adjustment atfirst, but please trust me and just stay with it, this is going to take you places you never thought you’d go.”
The second day was ofcourse the same but worse, all the frantic scurrying and leaping and inability to understand, but with the professors now also asking, Warner have you completed yesterday’s assignment, Warner I suggest you take notes, Warner we do take attendance promptly at the beginning of class and it is your responsibility to get here however you can, maybe you can buy a gocart.
Second night, more confident babbling from Prayer about all these new exciting ideaviruses she is being exposed to, more shaky silence from me.
“Warner, you’re a hero just for trying your hardest, I know you will succeed,” cheered Kitty, Daisy tried to roll her eyeballs all the way into the back of her face.
But it didn’t get better, Warner this essay is unreadable, Warner that presentation was incohearant, Warner these testresults are actually worse than random guessing and it’s hurting our classaverage, until you learn the material may I recommend just punching random letters.
A few more impossible days ground us down and look, in the end I couldn’t pretend it made sense for us to stay, you couldn’t either.
What did it was, in the planetarium I overheard mocking kids talk about us.
But they weren’t mocking me, not Prayer either, instead it was Kitty.
Idiot yellowtard girl bringing two ratty hardluck poors to our school who probably can’t even read, just so she can feel better about herself, ugh what a dumb selfish slut, youwish she was a slut you horny bonehead, that’s true she needs to be less of a prude I would smash that, you know who’s a slut though Fern is a huge slut, et set set setera.
Prettysoon these boys weren’t talking about Kitty or me but I walked off campus that afternoon knowing we couldn’t stay at this school for educated riches. It was law school alloveragain. We just didn’t belong.
I tried to tell this to Prayer before dinner but she freaked out.
“Warner you idiot, we’re going to lose everything if you say that, do you think Hue wants us to transfer from nice hard school to sad easy school, nope, wrong, the opposite,” she hissed.
“Neither of us has learned anything and instead everyone hates us,” I pointed out.
“We just have to try harder, ofcourse the first days are going to be hard but we belong if we decide to belong, so just decide it, dummy,” Prayer argued.
“We literally don’t belong,” I yelled. “Look around nexttime at school, tell me if you see one person our scale, nope, zero. I mean Prayer you belong even less than I do, you read slower than me, your legs don’t sprint fast as mine, they’ve got you taking junioryear classes and that’s way too advanced.”
“Good,” shrieked Prayer. “Put me in the most advanced. I will outsprint everyone and get all ays, I have a raging bottomless hunger for success, Prayer stops at nothing.”
But still I piped up at dinner, “Hue Family, I am super appreciative of everything, gottasay though I just really don’t think middlerich school is working for me, I think maybe middlepoor school is a better fit.”
Surenough, there were grim reactions allaround, Hue was the grimmest. Meanwhile, under the table Prayer was forkstabbing me.
“Warner, I’m going to be frank,” Hue rumbled. “At your age, ofcourse through no fault of your own, you just have a lot of ketchup to do and not a lot of time to do it, and I’m doubtfull that a middlepoor school will challenge you in the way that you need.”
“Everyone thinks you’re a dummy, don’t you want to prove them wrong,” helped Tony.
“Hue, Tony, everyone, let me explain with a mentalpicture,” I pleaded. “Envision school as a stairway to knowledge. Now picture that each step of this stairway is too big for your legs. Infact the first step is way above your head. You just can’t use this stairway, you’ll never get up to knowledgeworld no matter how hard you try.”
Prayer was muttering nopenopenopewrongs but I continued, “I truly believe what will get me up to all that great knowledge is some smaller stairs that fit my halfscale legs, and you betterbelieve I’ll race up those stairs as fast as I can, if those dinky schools don’t challenge me enough, dontworry, I’ll challenge myself, I know you will too, just give me the right stairs, Prayer you need to stop freaking stabbing me.”