For Her

Amelia Forbes

Mondays, for me, were like a restart of my routine, mind-numbing, perpetually dull life. It was an endless cycle of boredom, my life, beginning everyday with the rickety, old and faulty alarm, which sat atop the nightstand beside my bed, waking me up at 6:30, thirty minutes too early.

Then, it was in the bathroom till it clocked seven—not that I spent thirty minutes taking a shower, though. Sometimes, I fall asleep there.

Next, after that, was to pull on a somewhat presentable cloth and brush my blonde hair till it shone, before going down to meet Nana, my grandma, for breakfast, communicating through sign language, because, well, she was deaf, kissing her goodbye and then leaving for school.

School had its own individual cycle, just like waking up had it its. First off was to get off the bus, seeing as, at eighteen, I still trailed along with the freshmen in the school bus because the only car I had, grandma's old, vintage Chevy, decided to give up on me in my sophomore year.

Right after getting to school would be the quacking, shoving and pushing by other students oblivious to my presence, until I got to my locker.

Now, when I got to the said locker, two things could happen. One, I open my locker to a shower of glitter, or to a jack in the box straight to my face, planted by yours truly, Jason Shitface Asshat Davenport.

If that didn't happen, I'd most likely open my locker to just my stuff. The worst I could meet, buried under them, would be a note saying I should stick my head in the toilet, or I should just kill myself. This time planted by Kimberly Bitch Thot Slut Adams.

Luckily, today, I arrived at school to find my locker just the way I'd left it last Friday. Apparently, both Jason and Kimberly seemed to have forgotten about my existence.

Yeah, right. That could never happen. Not while we were still classmates.

So, after the locker episodes, up next were the classes. Of my nine classes every day, I had Jason in two, which was enough torment as it was, judging by the fact that he never failed to leave chewed gum both on and under my seat and desk, or shoot spitballs at me as lessons were going on—it was a wonder how the teachers never caught him. Probably, they did, but just didn't care.

Next in the cycle was lunch period, where I got served the regular blob of something that was supposed to be 'food', an apple, which was my only savior, preventing me from dying of starvation, and a milk carton.

The only different day was Tuesday, when the school decided to be so kind as to serve it's exhausted students a helping of pudding, since it couldn't afford tacos. They termed it 'Pudding Tuesday'. Shudders, that was what I felt saying it.

Right after lunch and the rest of the day's lessons would be meeting up with Jason at the sports field, as he instructed me to do everyday after school, to retrieve his homework from him, process, analyze, break it down, decipher, solve, just do whatever and return it to him the next day to be submitted. Note, I used the word 'retrieve' because, according to him, his homework was my possession.

After I'd stashed his homework in my bag, I was to sit and watch him practice football—he was the team's midfielder—until it was over. I was to guard his stuff, hold his water, hand it to him whenever he needed it, while my head remained bowed, by the way, and hold his face towel, even when it was sweaty and dripping.

Occasionally, and very intentionally, while I sat under the sun, watching something I had absolutely no interest in, the ball would fly out of nowhere straight for my face, most times my chest. Then Jason would run along to pick it up, while I remained on the bleachers, wincing at the pain from where the ball had hit me. As he jogged past me, the ball in his hands, he'd yell something like "Sorry, I didn't see no boobs there", or "My bad, didn't see you there".