The words on the blackboard are fuzzy. Why am I even coming to school if it means dealing with all this crap? I keep asking myself that, but I can’t find an answer. I cannot hear the teachers or the boys around me. I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be in a boarding school.
All I want to do is disappear. I hate going to school and can’t even pay attention in class. Everything is a blur. If I want to stop, I need a good reason.
I’ve thought about telling my father but can’t bring myself to do it. How nice it would be if I could tell him everything about the boarding school and its wicked brothers. Or say nothing.
I don’t want him or my mother to know what’s happening to me — especially my father. I don’t even want to think about what would happen if he found out. All I want to do is go home and stay there, doing nothing. Stay home forever.
But dropping out isn’t an option. Everyone must finish middle school, and even if I get my father’s permission to leave, what am I supposed to do next? Go to another school? Come back to this one? I have no idea what to do with my life.
I can’t keep going back to the boarding school. I want to leave now. But if I don’t finish the GCE exam, I won’t be able to go to high school or trade school.
I don’t know how I will make it through the rest of the year. All I want to do is drop out and never come back. Nobody will know er college.
I wish I could talk to my friends about what’s going on, but I don’t even know if I can trust them. I am confused. My ears are hot. My cheeks are red and hot. I sweat everywhere. I feel that the earth would swallow me whole.
And what happens after school? Will I be safe? What if they, the ones in robes, come after me?
The school day finally ends, and I can’t sit still. As soon as my classmates get up to leave, I grab my bag and head out with them. I’m not going back there.
I walk fast to the bus stop, leaving my friends behind. My stomach is in knots, and I don’t even know if I ate lunch. All I can think about is getting home and away from all this. I don’t know what will happen next, but I can’t worry about that right now.
Reconstructed from a fifteen-year-old boy’s journal entry from 1970.
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