Cats and Bags

Not even a death in the family can keep you from public school for as long as you'd like.

A week after my net worth increased by something like thirty zillion percent I was back in school. To be honest, I was starting to look forward to going back. Somehow, sinking into familiar routines seemed like the most amazing thing I could have done. Sitting around the house or walking around the neighborhood was doing me no good, not with the compounding mysteries flooding into my life from all angles.

Monday morning, I walked those halls again and let myself slip into the empty anonymity provided by a crowd of peers. Freshmen with their stupid-huge backpacks, Sophomores telling inside jokes so satisfied that they're cooler than at least one group of people, Juniors walking with their noses in books and looking distraught over all the stress they're under, and Seniors leaning against locker doors, their backpacks long since abandoned and only carrying few things absolutely necessary to get through the day. Life seems so much easier when peer groups are categorized so rigidly.

Anonymity went out the window when I entered my first class and sat down. From the second I walked in the door, hushed conversations were severed; I felt forty eyes digging into me and trailing me as I slunked into the first empty desk I saw. I darted my eyes around, everybody avoided eye-contact. I sighed and lined my pencils up on my desktop while the room sat in a still, thick silence.

They had to have heard about my dad's death, but I hoped the word hadn't gotten about regarding my ill-gotten gains. It shouldn't have; I didn't tell anybody. Still, if everybody knows I'd need to hire a bodyguard or twelve. I tried to imagine how much bodyguards cost, I remembered reading somewhere that a legitimate executive security firm charges about a thousand dollars per day. I could get a bodyguard for five hundred days, and then I wouldn't need them anymore. Spending all your money to keep people from getting your money, that should have been a Twilight Zone episode. Hell, it probably was. By the hundredth episode they had to have been repeating their hubris-related ironies.

I decided it'd be cheaper to fly to New Zealand and start my life over and surround myself with people who don't know or care about whether I have a father or what insane amount of money he may or may not have left me. Actually, it'd probably be cheaper to have anybody who knows about the money assassinated. I pondered the options for a moment, I could spend a lot of time trying to track down an actual hit squad, or I could just float the notion around the gang neighborhoods and wait until something catches. Hey, maybe Yakuza…

The teacher walked in the classroom with his coffee cup freshly warmed up, this finally drew some of the attention off of me and it cut me from my daydreaming. He started to begin the typical class-opening procedures when he noticed everybody's silence, and followed the sight-lines and finally saw me. He, too, stared at me in silence for a moment.

Maybe I could just start passing out hundred dollar bills for people to pretend they aren't so freaking uncomfortable around me. I drew a breath and prepared to say something when the door opened again, a girl took a step in and read my name from a piece of paper. She was an office aide, and had a summons for me to come to the counseling office at my earliest convenience.

Oh God.

I'd been to the counseling office twice before, a customary meeting in Freshman year so I'd know who my counselor was and for her to find out if I had any brain problems I'd like to talk about, then again in Junior year to talk about colleges and application deadlines. I still couldn't figure out if the counselors are supposed to be academic or social counselors or both. I can't imagine there's a path of psychology education that includes recommending colleges.

Her chair was uncomfortable, and there was a bowl of mixed hard candies positioned on the desk square between me and her.

"I heard about your father, of course," she started, "First, I'd like to offer my sincere condolences."
I grinned weakly. I'd already had a week and a half of sincere condolences.
"I've notified all your teachers," she continued, "so they'll be understanding and will be able to work with you regarding assignments and such."
"I'm sure gossip got did the job before you got there," I said, looking out the window at the parking lot. She smiled.
"Yes, people talk." She dropped quickly to a too-sincere look of empathy, quite a talent; "Is anybody making you uncomfortable or hurting your feelings regarding it?"
I looked back and forth between her and the candy. "Not yet."
"Oh. Ok, good. Well just understand that people, teenagers and children specifically, tend to focus their attention through inappropriate avenues when they're actually just uncomfortable or intimidated. If someone gives you trouble or makes you feel bad.. or worse, you can let me or an administrator know. Or a teacher."
I really wanted to leave. "Ok," I said simply.

There was a slight pause.
"So, were you and your father close?" she asked finally.
Oh, God.
After I was through with that mess, I slipped out of the counseling office and debated going back to class or going home, when my own name pulled me from my thoughts.

"Chris?" a girl's voice said from behind me. Someone my age was talking to me? I turned around, it was Amy Westborne -- a girl I'd known slightly for a few years, we'd had a few classes together and talked occasionally. She was about fifty feet away, walking toward me.

"Yeah?" I said loud enough to cover the distance.
"You're back," she said, now a bit closer. She was speaking like I'd just gotten back from Disney World.

Amy was my age, thin, and borderline punky. She had neck-length dark blonde hair with streaks or lines, whatever you call them of redish and.. darkish. I never understand girls and their hair, but whatever it was, she looked good. When I first met her she dressed rather clean-cut, but over the years she transitioned to worn punk-style thrift store-style shirts that probably cost $28, jeans, and those cloth wrist things that punky girls always wear. Looking at her, you'd know she'd never done a rebellious thing in her life, but she carried herself well enough that you'd never consider her a poser.

Not that I ever paid a lot of attention to her or anything…

"Yeah, I'm back," I said, now standing in the middle of the hallway.
"That's good," she said, stopping just a few feet from me. "Coming from C.O.?" she asked, looking at the door to the counseling office.
I looked down at the floor, not wanting to direct the conversation to its inevitable climax of awkward condolences and uncomfortable silence. "Yeah," I finally said, letting my voice trail off.
She nodded, interested. "Oh, because of your dad and everything?" she asked, also interested.
She wasn't patronizing me. That was new. "Yeah," I said, a bit taken aback.
She made a crooked grin and said, "Yeah, they did the same thing when my grandpa died last year. A lot of attention you really don't want."
"Yeah," I said. I looked around for a moment, and back at the hallway leading to my classroom. "Everybody seems like they're afraid of me. I've been through half a minute of one class and I'm already sick of it here."

She smiled. "People are just nervous. They think you're going to be scratching at your wrists and writing bad poems, and if they talk to you you'll just explode a bunch of gross emotions all over them."
I smiled. "Seems like it."
There was a pause, though not altogether uncomfortable. "Ok," she said starting to step in the other direction, "well don't feel bad. I'll see you in fourth."

I watched her back up and I nodded, distant. She turned around and walked toward the classrooms. The conversation was over. The first decent conversation I'd had since forever was over, and I felt myself sinking back into depression. I had to get the pretty girl to say more things to me.

"Uhh.." I said, trying to think of something. She was still walking.

"He left me half a million dollars," I said, uncomfortably. I bit my tongue.

She stopped and turned back toward me. "Huh?" she asked.

Crap.