Natalia: Delaware's Eight

I was back at the physics class.

"So... was your first day alright?" Abbey asked.

"I'm starting to really hate this place." I answered in a cold and cynical tone.

"Yeah, I can understand that. Despite how glamorous it looks this is not a good school. Not by a long shot."

"Then why are you still here?"

"Because bad schools need good teachers, even more so than good schools. And I consider myself to be a pretty decent teacher."

"I guess that's fair."

"So tell me about your day."

I recounted my events in both physics with the book. I told her about meeting with Rachel at lunch, kissing Kate in P.E., and how Denise tackled Audrey at the lacrosse game. I could tell that Abbey was fuming with rage over how Denise had acted, and how the coach had just waved it off.

"So..." I asked: "what's up with Denise? Why is everyone walking on eggshells around her?"

"It's because of her father. Her father is a very wealthy man. He is sort of a genius business reclusive. He very rarely comes out of the woodwork to speak to the press... or anybody really. The thing is he is annually donating a huge amount of money to the school every year, and as such the school board h-"

I interrupted her. There was no need to go into detail. I got it.

"So, Denise can just do whatever she wants because if not her 'daddy' is going to pull the funds?"

"You got it."

Denise was a problem then. A big one. We couldn't blame her for anything, because she would always have the trump card, and she would continuously be a nuisance to anyone who wasn't licking her clit 24/7. This entire school situation was out of hand. We were tiny flies fighting a titan. This was way bigger than me, and I wasn't sure if this was a fight that we could even dream of winning.

"We're not here to fight the system." Abbey reassured me almost as if she had read my thoughts: "we're here to fight to make sure that you, and I, and those six girls all get an opportunity to comfortably leave this mess of a year behind with our sanity and job prospects intact."

I nodded in understanding. As much as I would love to see the likes of Denise getting her just desserts, this was not the main focus of sorting out this mess.

"Can you tell me a bit about the other girls? Why they are problem students, and what they do, and stuff like that?" I asked to change the subject.

"Certainly." Abbey responded.

"Firstly, we have Leslie. She is marked a problem student for many reasons, most of them obvious. She has fairly low grades, she is hostile, and she has had violent episodes against both students and teachers."

"Including me."

"Yes. Are you sure that I shouldn't report that incident?"

"Yes. Putting such a strain in the group won't solve anything. If anything, I provoked the attack, by trying to get involved in her life."

I wasn't sure to what degree I could actually help Leslie. Part of me felt that it would be better to throw her to the wolves and focus on the other five, as she would require so much extra work, and would make it difficult for me to help anybody, but the other part of me felt that I couldn't give up so easily.

"If you say so." she replied while looking down at her notes: "Next is Eileen. She is a bit like Leslie in that she has low grades, and is very hostile."

"Okay."

"She has no violent episodes, but she has been caught vandalizing the school building, tagging the outside walls, purposefully destroy school property, and, as Coach Baxtor so succinctly put it, throwing 'shitfits'."

I didn't know a whole lot about Eileen. She seemed hard to approach, and she seemed to be a punk. Maybe she was an activist of some kind. It was hard to tell.

"Aaand that about does it for the students I would personally agree are problem students. Now we get into the bullshit territory."

Oh really? Only two of them are actually reasonable?

"Audrey has very good grades, and she has never really been a problem in any way."

"Then why is she on the problem students list?"

"Because of Denise."

"Oh..."

She didn't even have to explain herself, it all made sense. It was weird that Audrey was so complacent in all of this. Like, sure, she seemed as vapid as the others, but that's just even more reason why the obedience makes no sense.

"Audrey blew her lid at Denise, after Denise went too far with something. Most of the records of Audrey's file are either erased or very vague."

This could be worth talking to Audrey about, once I'd gained her trust.

"It gets worse. Next is Delia. Delia has a habit of falling asleep in class."

"How often?"

"At least three times a month."

"Well... I could see why that would be a problem in the long run."

"Yeah, but when I say 'habit', what I mean is, she suffers from narcolepsy, and she can't control it."

"Oh. She gets on the shit list for having a condition like that?"

"Yep."

This made me a bit speechless. That was just completely awful. I hadn't spoken a whole lot with Denise, but it did explain how she could just fall asleep in the cafeteria like that.

"It gets even worse." Abbey just nonchalantly told me.

"Next you're gonna tell me that Rachel is a problem student because she has muscular dystrophy."

"How did you guess?"

No.

No way.

No fucking way.

"Well... she is technically not a problem student." Abbey responded: "But because of her condition she requires extra care to accommodate for that... and since that costs the board money they need to cut the cost somewhere else, so the result is almost the same. I could probably convince the board to help her if I just don't get paid for it. Her grades are solid, and she is not a problem in any area."

Rachel was a very kind and shy girl, and for the school board to just neglect her like that really boiled my blood.

"It gets worse still."

"How?"

"Katherine is marked as a problem students due to absence."

"Just because of absence?"

"Yes. She's top of her class, and her record is otherwise clean, but that's not the worst part."

"I'm almost afraid to ask what is."

"The worst part is her absence was due to her parents divorce. She needed some off time, and she had even presented a proof of her being to therapy. This was three years ago, and she's been diligent and hard-working ever since with fantastic result, but the board hasn't let that one time where a poor girl's parents got divorced, and she needed to take some time off due to therapy go. This was right around the time she came out as lesbian as well."

I had nothing to say. This was just not right. There was nothing about this that was right in any imaginable way. Everything was wrong. Everything was just drenched in pure unsaturated shit. Katherine, the cute flirty nerd, who were the only one to have cracked a smile at me in physics, and who could suffer a sudden kiss from a girl she's just met with a smile on her lips and a 'thank you', had been put through the divorce of her parents, coming out, and therapy, and the board had congratulated her bravery with a stamp that told her that she was a waste of time.

"..........fuck." was my only response.

A silence fell upon the room.

"You also need to join a club." Abbey noted. It was a bit out of the blue. I wasn't really sure what this had to do with anything.

"You can technically join up to five clubs, one for each weekday, as long as they don't overlap, but most people just choose one. You have to have one. It's part of school policy. Now the six others have all chosen different club activities, but they are all conveniently placed on different weekdays. This is not by coincidence."

How far were the school board willing to take this?

"But there are six student? How did they do that?"

"Well... there are five. Leslie... she's been kicked out of a club multiple times, and the school board just finally decided to ban her from club activities."

"Oh..."

"Rachel is in art on Mondays. Eileen has theater on Tuesdays. Delia has music on Wednesdays. Audrey has cheer-leading on Thursdays. And Katherine has technology and computers on Fridays."

Abbey handed me a form to fill out with all of the different activities to check.

"You can just hand me that at homeroom tomorrow, and I will put it in effect that day."

---

"How's your first day at school been?" my dad asked.

"Fine." I answered. I wasn't entirely sure he would believe me even if I wanted to tell him the truth.

"Made any friends?"

"Not really."

"Was your teacher nice?"

"I guess."

"Did you meet any cute boys?"

"Dad, I'm still gay."

"Oh, right. Any cute girls?"

"Nah..."

"How would you rate the school?"

"What's this? A survey?"

My dad just chuckled.

"Fine then. See if I care. Go have fun in your room then."

"Yeah... I will dad."

What a mess. I'd been the new kid plenty of times before, but this was on a whole new level. It was only six pm, but I was already prepared to just clock out for the day. This was completely stupid.
Who were I to mingle in the affairs of others like this? Why should I know these girl's secrets? Could I really befriend them? And would it feel genuine?
I looked at the club activity form. I knew there was only one correct way to fill it.