After Anderson

Section 7-1

I

déjà vu

It had been almost two years since I’d last walked down those halls. They were all still the same, nothing had changed. The dark green floor was still the same, just like everything else. I imagined that it was only green instead of another generic colour to imitate green marble, since actual green marble was way too expensive for the school’s budget. Black and burgundy covered the walls, just like the last time I’d set foot in that hallway. I had even helped paint the far north hallway on the top floor after class during my freshman year. Nothing in that area had changed.

The east and central hallways on the top floor had been completely renovated though, and the bright white paint and grey tiles made for a stark contrast with the other half of the school. New lockers were neatly lined up along one wall and brand new windows on the other. The new lockers were blue and much wider than the old grey ones still left in other parts of the school. That building had barely been renovated since my mother had attended when she was my age.

Until Anderson.

The principal had a new office and the secretary’s office was merged with it in the same room since their old offices had been destroyed. Mr. Pasquale was still the principal but the school had a new secretary since the previous one hadn’t been able to return. I had liked Mrs. Elgin quite a lot and it was shame that she had to be replaced. The new secretary and I share the same name: Alyson.

She was a very short woman, not even five feet tall. She had more than a few extra pounds in her tight plaid dress that I thought was inappropriate for a woman her age but she wore a beautiful smile on her face and politely greeted me when I walked into her office. She wore her chocolate brown hair in a bob and had pale green eyes popping out of her head. She was in her early fifties but still dressed like a preppy teenager in expensive clothes that she probably couldn’t afford since she still drove a 1982 Ford truck that had seen better days.

Ms. Alyson handed me my class schedule along with some other paperwork and my locker combination on a little sticky note. I ended up with #347 which was one of those new lockers in the hallway with the new windows. It was a lot nicer than my old #501 that I’d had to put up with at the end of the south hallway for over two years, but I would have given anything just to have everything back the way it was before.

I exited her office and sat down on the side of the window and looked outside for a brief moment at the cars down in the parking lot below before taking out my notebook to write a little bit in an attempt to clear my head since I hadn’t expected to react so negatively to my first day back to school.

Dear Anderson,

I want things back to the way they were before. It’s so weird to be back here. You’d think that after almost two years things would be different, but they aren’t. Well, yeah, they are, in a way I guess. I feel like an alien inside my own body. Is that weird? You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you? You’re dead. None of his bothers you, does it? Do you have any regrets wherever the hell you are now? You probably don’t, because you’re dead. I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but you sure messed things up for me Anderson. I’m sorry I wasted your time.

Alyson

I let my head rest against the cold glass of the window as I thought back to a happier time. I remembered when I first arrived at the largest high school in town from my small elementary school and got lost a few times in the building. On one particular occasion I was walking down the hallway when the fire alarm rang as part of the drills we had to do at the beginning of each semester and I couldn’t find the door to the nearest stairwell to go outside so I stood in the window and waved at the students in the street down below.

On another occasion I got lost on my way to the bathroom and a teacher had to come looking for me. For a long time I didn’t venture out by myself until the administration finally decided to put up maps of the school at every hallway intersection. The only area of the school I had never been to was the basement. There was just something eerie about that basement.

I got off the side of the window and turned around to see who was behind me. It was Jennifer Lyell, a girl I used to tutor in Spanish class. She was just a year younger than me and was having a hard time and since Spanish was one of my best subjects, I was assigned to tutor her and as a reward, my time with her counted as community service hours that were required to be performed by each student in order to graduate. I had all forty of them, but hadn’t graduated. Growing up I’d had this grand vision of my future self but all of that had been taken away.

“I didn’t mean to startle you,” Jennifer apologized, “is everything alright?”

“Yeah,” I muttered in an absent-minded tone of voice, “I was just taking a free trip to the moon there.”

We both laughed at once. Jenny and I had become great friends after spending hours with each other, trying to get her to speak Spanish. She was this cute seventeen-year-old with bright red hair and bright green eyes. She somewhat looked like she could have been Ms. Alyson’s daughter, only that Jenny wore shape and age-appropriate clothing. I always liked her alternative lifestyle and free spirit. She wasn’t rebellious but she didn’t let others tell her how things should be.

I greatly admired her for that since I was a victim of cliques and stereotypes. I didn’t always have fancy or expensive clothes but I always made sure to dress as nicely as I could and to still by stylish. Jennifer had always thought that I was the pretty one between the two of us while I’d always believed it to be her! I was tall and slim with long caramel hair that went down to my shoulders. I had naturally curly hair but I preferred to wear it straight. I thought it complemented me more.

“I haven’t seen you in a long time,” Jennifer whispered to me in a concerned tone of voice.

“I know,” I softly replied as I hugged her, “I’ve missed you a lot. How have you been holding up?”

“I still can’t speak Spanish, they still call me fat and Josh and I are still together!”

“That’s wonderful! I know how much you two love each other and I can tutor you girl, you know that, always.”

“Thanks Aly, but I decided to switch to French this semester. I’ve completely given up on Spanish, but they say that the two languages are similar so we’ll see how I like that.”

“Oh! I’ve signed up for French too! We can sit next to each other in class if you want! I’ve also given up on Spanish because after everything it sort’ve leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.”

“I completely understand Aly, and I would love to sit next to you!”

“Then that’s a deal!”

It was going to be awkward for me being an almost nineteen-year-old young woman in class with students that were only sixteen and seventeen. I felt as though they still had their youth and their innocence while I’d matured too much. Sure, there were students even older than me, but that didn’t change that inexplicable corruption I felt inside. I felt as though my youth and my carefree spirit were gone forever.

I knew that most of the students I’d be with in class wouldn’t be immature, in fact, most of them were probably very mature but that gap between our lives would certainly make things awkward at times. It would be especially awkward for me since I barely knew any of the people at school anymore. All of the people I’d been friends with had either long since graduated, or passed away, to the exception of Jen. I had a few other friends outside of school, but that was the problem, they were outside of school. They were far away, out of my reach.

“In French class we can still sit in trios like we did before,” Jen told me, “you know on those really long tables with the wheels. They also have new smaller tables where we can sit two by two. It’s your call if you want to have someone else sitting with us but if not I’d like to sit next to the Petrov sisters.”

I’d never heard of the Petrov sisters but I agreed to Jennifer’s proposal. There wasn’t much I could do about it in the first place. I didn’t know anybody! It would just have to do as the first step to making friends. As the two of us were walking quietly down the renovated hallway, the bell rang and we arrived in class only to hear an announcement from the principal telling everyone to meet up in the auditorium.

I walked in silence down the hallways and made a left turn at the end just before the stairwell. Everything in was still the same in that area of the school. In the auditorium things were a little different though. The carpet had been ripped out from the staircase and replaced with dark red linoleum, ironically the same colour that the carpet had turned right before its removal. There were new windows and new shades covering them as well as new seats from top to bottom.

The place didn’t look like it used to at all. My feelings of going back there were mixed but I prayed for a new start, a new beginning. I sat in the very first row and Jenny sat next to me. Two girls then got out of their seats and came to sit next to Jennifer. I figured that they were the Petrov sisters that Jennifer was friends with because the two of them looked exactly alike, twins alike. They spoke amongst themselves in a language I did not understand as we all waited for the presentation to begin.

The girl sitting next to Jennifer wore a long gold shirt underneath a jean jacket and black palazzo pants. The gold buckles on her sandals matched the full set of gold teeth in her mouth that almost sparkled underneath the artificial lights as she spoke to her sister. Her hair was covered in a black headscarf that contrasted with her very pale skin. Her twin sister, on the other hand, was far more outrageous.

She wore faded blue years and a baggy dark hoodie that might’ve been black once upon a time and had carrot orange hair that landed here and there over her head. As she spoke I couldn’t help but notice the contrast with her sister in the fact that all of her bottom teeth were missing and the top ones had nearly completely fallen out. They looked like they’d been crushed by something as pieces of them were missing. To some degree it awfully reminded me of a creepy presentation in the seventh grade where the teacher had showed us pictures of what happened to sailors who had scurvy.

“ Zdravo , I’m Svetlana Petrov,” the one in the headscarf exclaimed as she stretched out her hand to shake mine once she noticed I was looking in her direction.

“Alyson Feldman,” I replied as I shook her hand, and then her sister’s hand.

“I’m Sveta’s twin sister Vera,” the one with no teeth added.

“It’s nice to meet the both of you,” I responded, trying to be as friendly as possible.

As the other students filled up the auditorium, I took a good look at the twins underneath the lights that had shifted to shine down directly on them. Vera was very thin, a real walking skeleton in fact, and her sister didn’t seem to be a whole lot bigger underneath her baggy clothes that covered everything except her face, hands and feet. Svetlana appeared to be wearing designer clothes while Vera’s clothes looked like old rags that had been in the family for centuries.

Neither one of them seemed to be interested in school as they looked around the room for distractions. The two sisters had bright green eyes that seemed to burn with both annoyance and anger as Mr. Pasquale stepped up on stage. He’d never been a very popular principal but since the m******e his approval rating within the student body and the community at large had dropped dramatically.