It seemed to be one of those days. The kind that made you question your existence and why you suffered though each day. Nothing was going my way and lately it seemed as though nothing would. The newly fallen snow covered the ground, a necessity in the Northern part of Michigan. All of my friends were especially excited about the cold clumps falling outside the window, I on the other hand
wasn’t so excited. The streets would be icy, the plow trucks would be on the streets, and most annoyingly the excitement that coated each voice as talk of snowmobiling, skiing, and snow boarding colored each conversation.
"Robyn, are you coming Saturday?" my best friend Ali looked at me questioningly.
"Coming where?" I asked her snapping back into reality. She rolled her eyes and grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me gently.
"Have you been paying attention at all?" her face colored with disappointment.
"No," I admitted "I was, um, thinking about the snow to intensely I guess." I chuckled to myself.
"Oh," her face was stretched into a wide grin, "I suppose that’s alright then. I was saying that we should head up to Ski
Brule this Saturday for a snow celebration."
I had no intention of "playing" in this horrible weather. The thought just disgusted me but I had to be as social as possible so I guess I would have to simply suffer through the trip.
"That sounds fun," I choked out the last word
"Great! I’ll go ask if Stephanie and Justin want to come. We should rent a condo too!," she blabbed. I listened to the plans she was making as we walked up the icy steps to city high school.
The announcements were as cheery as every morning which literally made me sick. Home room flew by and so did the rest of my morning classes and lunch. I soon found myself in the art room painting a picture of a sunset.
"Sit down," Ms.
Kittle yelled at some students who were crumpling pieces of paper and throwing them into the garbage like they were basketball players. The whole group laughed and whispered something about a bet to see how long it took her to respond to the uncalled for behavior. I just shook my head and bent over my paper. Ms.
Kittle was a rough teacher. The thing was that she never taught the class anything. It was very frustrating at how she simply punished everyone for either standing or even just asking a simple question.
The bell rang and the students hurried to get out of the horrible class, which was the first one all day that dragged by at an agonizingly slow speed.
"Taylor," Ms.
Kittle screeched
"Yes ma’am?" I replied, nervous that I had broken some type of rule because that was the only reason she talked to a student.
"Good job today," she smiled coldly
"Thanks," I said slowly, trying to find some type of trick behind her smooth compliment. Not to help my humility, the huge table of jocks behind me laughed curtly and then left the large art room.
I walked down the hall barley paying attention to what Ali was telling me about her very hard Trig. Test. Why had Ms.
Kittle chosen me to compliment? I was painting a sunset, unlike the real artists in the class who were making statues out of tissue paper or creating works of art with pine needles and sticks. I sighed now pulling my books up to lean on my hip and then laying them on the table.
The teacher, Mr. Eddy, entered the room at that moment.
"Hello class...." he launched into a lecture about World War II and the attack at Pearl Harbor. I suffered through it while taking sketchy notes.
Like every other, the class slipped by at record speed and soon the day had ended. I walked down the icy sidewalk with Ali and Justin on one side and Stephanie on the other side all gushing about their day and how excited they were about Saturday. All I did was nod and agree with all they said.
The plans had been set. We would leave Friday after school, and arrive that night at Ski
Brule. We would have to split the cost of the condo which would be no problem if we where going somewhere that actually interested me. Ski
Brule was the best place to ski and snow board but the thing was, I hated both.
I started my little red
Altima and cranked the heat. I got home and finished my Trig homework and chores in a rush. Margaret always came home on Mondays in a cranky mood. I sifted through the papers on our counter reading every date on every letter to make sure it was old and that it
wasn’t taxes.
