She put her headphones in her ears and turned it up. She needed to drown it all out.
But nothing came. She looked down and saw the battery was dead. Perfect.
She checked her phone, hoping for some distraction, anything. No new messages.
She looked up. Looking out at the sea of new faces, she felt alone. Not because she was the only white girl – she actually preferred that. Some of her closest friends at other schools had been black, Spanish, Asian, Indian – and some of her meanest frenemies had been white. No, that wasn’t it. She felt alone because it was urban. She stood on concrete. A loud buzzer had rang to admit her into this “recreational area,” and she had had to pass through large, metal gates. Now she was boxed in – caged in by massive metal gates, topped by barbed-wire. She felt like she’d gone to prison.
Looking up at the massive school, bars and cages on all the windows, didn’t make her feel any better. She always adapted to new schools easily, large and small – but they had all been in suburbia. They had all had grass, trees, sky. Here, there was nothing but city. She felt like she couldn’t breathe. It terrified her.
Another loud buzzer sounded and she shuffled her way, with hundreds of kids, towards the entrance. She was jostled roughly by a large girl, and dropped her journal. She picked it up (messing up her hair), and then looked up to see if the girl would apologize. But she was nowhere to be seen, having already moved on in the swarm. She did hear laughter, but couldn’t tell if it was directed at her.
She clutched her journal, the one thing that grounded her. It had been with her everywhere. She kept notes and drawings in every place she went. It was a roadmap of her childhood.
She finally reached the entrance, and had to squeeze in just to walk through. It was like entering a train at rush hour. She had hoped it would be warm once she got inside, but the open doors behind her kept a stiff breeze blowing down her back, making the cold even worse.
Two large security guards stood at the entrance, flanked by two New York City policemen, in full uniform, guns conspicuously at their side.
“KEEP MOVING!” commanded one of them.
She couldn’t fathom why two armed policemen would have to guard a high school entrance. Her feeling of dread grew. It got much worse when she looked up and saw that she’d have to pass through a metal detector with airport-style security.
Four more armed policemen stood on either side of the detector, along with two more security guards.
“EMPTY YOUR POCKETS!” snapped a guard.
Caitlin noticed the other kids filling small plastic containers with items from their pockets. She quickly did the same, inserting her ipod, wallet, keys.
She shuffled through the detector, and the alarm shrieked.
“YOU!” snapped a guard. “Off to the side!”
Of course.
All the kids stared as she was made to raise her arms, and the guard ran the handheld scanner up and down her body.
“Are you wearing any jewelry?”
She felt her wrists, then her neckline, and suddenly remembered. Her cross.
“Take it off,” snapped the guard.
It was the necklace her grandmother gave her before she passed, a small, silver cross, engraved with a description in Latin which she never had translated. Her grandmother told her it was passed down by her grandmother. Caitlin wasn’t religious, and didn’t really understand what it all meant, but she knew it was hundreds of years old, and it was by far the most valuable thing she owned.
Caitlin lifted it from her shirt, holding it up, but not taking it off.
“I’d rather not,” she answered.
The guard stared at her, cold as ice.
Suddenly, a commotion broke out. There was shouting as a cop grabbed a tall, thin kid and shoved him against a wall, removing a small knife from his pocket.
The guard went to assist, and Caitlin took the opportunity to slip into the crowd moving its way down the hall.
Welcome to New York public school, Caitlin thought. Great.
She was already counting the days to graduation.
The hallways were the widest she’d ever seen. She couldn’t imagine that they could ever be filled, yet somehow they were completely packed, with all the kids crammed in shoulder to shoulder. There must have been thousands of kids in these halls, the sea of faces stretching endlessly. The noise in here was even worse, bouncing off the walls, condensed. She wanted to cover her ears. But she didn’t even have elbow space to raise her arms. She felt claustrophobic.
The bell rang, and the energy increased.
Already late.
She scanned her room card again and finally spotted the room in the distance. She tried to cut across the sea of bodies, but wasn’t getting anywhere. Finally, after several attempts, she realized she just had to get aggressive. She started elbowing and jostling back. One body at a time, she cut through all the kids, across the wide hall, and pushed the heavy door open to her classroom.
She braced herself for all the looks as she, the new girl, walked in late. She imagined the teacher scolding her for interrupting a silent room. But she was shocked to discover that was not the case at all. This room, designed for 30 kids but holding 50, was packed. Some kids sat in their seats, and others walked the aisles, shouting and yelling at each other. It was mayhem.
The bell had rang five full minutes ago, yet the teacher, disheveled, wearing a rumpled suit, hadn’t even started the class. He actually sat with his feet up on the desk, reading the paper, ignoring everyone.
Caitlin walked over to him and placed her new I.D. card on the desk. She stood there and waited for him to look up, but he never did.
She finally cleared her throat.
“Excuse me.”
He reluctantly lowered his newspaper.
“I’m Caitlin Paine. I’m new. I think I’m supposed to give you this.”
“I’m just a sub,” he replied, and raised his paper, blocking her.
She stood there, confused.
“So,” she asked, “….you don’t take attendance?”
“Your teacher’s back on Monday,” he snapped. “He’ll deal with it.”
Realizing the conversation was over, Caitlin took back her I.D. card.
She turned and faced the room. The mayhem hadn’t stopped. If there was any saving grace, at least she wasn’t conspicuous. No one here seemed to care about her, or to even notice her at all.
On the other hand, scanning the packed room was nerve-wracking: there didn’t seem like any place left to sit.
She steeled herself and, clutching her journal, walked tentatively down one of the aisles, flinching a few times as she walked between unruly kids screaming at each other. As she reached the back, she could finally see the entire room.
Not one empty seat.
She stood there, feeling like an idiot, and felt other kids starting to notice her. She didn’t know what to do. She certainly wasn’t going to stand there the entire period, and the substitute teacher didn’t seem to care either way. She turned and looked again, scanning helplessly.
She heard laughter from a few aisles away, and felt sure it was directed at her. She didn’t dress like these kids did, and she didn’t look like them. Her cheeks flushed as she started to feel really conspicuous.
Just as she was getting ready to walk out of the class, and maybe even out of this school, she heard a voice.
“Here.”
She turned.
In the last row, beside the window, a tall boy stood from his desk.
“Sit,”