Rain was pounding against the side of the school. It sounded like a pretty nasty storm, and here I was, stuck inside Algebra while it raged on without me. I tried to look out the window, but my glasses had been broken last week during a scuffle with some bimbo, so all I could see was a gray blur where I should have been able to see the miniature rivers streaming down the glass.

I looked back to the quiz I was supposed to be taking. I added more to the little man that I had drawn. His nose touched the ground right beside his shoes. I could barely sit still anymore. I raised my hand. “Mrs. Donna!” I looked around the room, pretending like I didn’t know she was sitting at her desk behind me. “Mrs. Donna!” I heard her chair scrape back.

“Shhh!” She stomped around to the front of my desk. “What do you need, Ms. Piper?”

“I have to go to the bathroom.”

“Go sign out. Do not ever holler out during a test again or you will not like the results.”

I signed out and as I was leaving, I looked back at her. “Thanks! I’ll be right back!”

And I was running down the hall. Opposite the closest bathroom. Instead, I found the door that went down to the basement and I tore down the stairs. When I was safely in the very back, I patted my pockets until I found the one with my lighter and my carefully wrapped cigarette. I lit the end and inhaled, watching the red come closer to my face. I knew I had to hurry before Mrs. Donna realized that I wasn’t in the bathroom.

I slid down the wall and crossed my legs. I could have almost fallen asleep. I slowly breathed in the smoke, counting the seconds between each roll of thunder. “Maybe the world will end this time.” I whispered into the darkness. I smiled at the thought of it. Everyone would die doing some useless task or another. My class upstairs would while trying to remember the Pythagorean Theorem. And here I would be, hiding from my angry dinosaur of a math teacher while smoking a cigarette that I lifted from my step dad when he came home drunk last night. “What a life we’d be leaving behind.” I mumbled.
And then the sound of the basement door opening made my breath catch in my throat just as I was going to breath out a lungful of smoke. There were unsure footsteps coming down the stairs. I noticed beam of light, swinging back in forth, as if a search party were looking for me. Then all the sudden, the light whipped around and pointed into my face. I jumped up in shock, my cigarette still firmly in my grip.
“I knew you weren’t in the restroom!” The person at the end of the light hissed.
“Mrs. Donna? H-how, why are you down here?”
“Do you realize that you’re breaking at least two laws right now, Ms. Piper?”
My shock had worn away and my fake valour was back. “Do you realize that I never cared, Mrs.Donna?” What are you going to do? Have me sent to juvie? Believe me, that won’t be a punishment.”
“Oh no, no juvie for you. We’re not even going to report the cigarette, as long as I take care of it. All I’m going to report you for is skipping class, and you’ll be back in my class Monday afternoon.
I forced a loud laugh out. “You think so? I’ve been playing with the idea of dropping out. Any insight?”
“If you drop out, you’ll be just like your mother was when I had her. In fact, you’re just like she was then.”

“I am nothing like my mother!” I spat.

“Oh, but you are. Even the way you inhale on the filthy little cancer stick in your fingers is like her. I watch you everyday, and everyday you are more and more like her.”

She took that opportunity to snatch ahold of my wrist. “Let’s go.”

“I didn’t realize you were allowed to touch students.” I tried to pull her fingers off, but it was difficult while I was trying to keep the still burning cigarette butt in between my knuckles.

She swatted the little burning stub out of my fingers. I gasped, dropping to the floor, my one arm raised above my head as if I was a champion. I tried to pick it up, but her large canoe of a loafer crashed down on it, putting the bright red light out.

“Why would you do that!” I tried to use my weight to break her grip, but the woman wasn’t human, and her fingers only tightened on my skin. I could feel the bruises forming. I yanked on my arm so hard that I thought my shoulder was going to pop. “Let go of me!”

The storm outside had grown heavier. The wind was shaking the windows, it sounded like an angry beast trying to get into the school. I wanted to yell at it to run while it still could, for there was nothing good in this school. Nothing to eat, or read, or even good conversation waited inside these walls.

“Let’s go, Ms. Piper!”

“Okay, Laura, my name is Amelia. Stop calling me Ms.freaking Piper.”

She tightened her vise like grip on my wrist, I could practically feel my bones snapping like the little twigs on the sidewalk I walked over this morning.

“You should have more respect for your elders Amelia.” She said my name slowly, and as if it tasted bad on her tongue.

“I would if they deserved my respect.” I still couldn’t work her fingers off of my skin. “You should really let go of me before I let loose on you. Normally, I wouldn’t hit a senior citizen, but today there may be an exception.”

“Will there, Ms. Piper?” She said my last name crisply. “Will you be the badass your mother had tried so hard to be?” She leaned close to me, so close that I could smell rank coffee she must have downed before she came to find me. “Hit me. Teach me a lesson.”
She was mocking me. I wanted to hit her, I really did. But I had been raised to never hit someone unless I absolutely needed to. And I had also been raised that I was to never hit an elder, I didn’t have to respect them, I could be angry at them, but I could not hit them. “Let. Go. Of. Me.”
“You’re not as tough as you seem to be.” She hissed.
I wrenched back so hard my elbow made a popping noise, but there still was no hope in getting free. Thunder rolled loudly around the school, like the beast was still looking for a way inside. “We should probably be going upstairs now, Mrs. D” I started to walk towards the stairs, her hand still clamped tightly around my scrawny arm,.

“You in a hurry to go speak to Mr. Todd?”

“Well, I mean, if it means I don’t have to spend alone time with you in a musty, dark basement...yes. I am in a huge hurry.”

She yanked back on me so hard that I fell to the ground, which was cold beneath my jeans. “Now you listen to me, you good for nothing punk! If I had the choice, I would have ran your mother out of this town before you were even born! You’re whole family just brings this valley down, and I could never tolerate that.”

A loud clap of thunder shocked my heart into an intense beating. The blood in my ears sounded like an ocean, and I was shaking so hard that I could barely stand.

“You don’t know me.” I murmured.

“Oh, but I do.” She looked down on me. “You’re mother became pregnant with you when she was sixteen, and she never left the town even though she always bragged about how she had an immediate ticket out as soon as she was finished high school. And she never did finish, but I bet you know that. And I know that she gave you all of the stories of her “Glory Days” when she was running the school. You thought that was the way you wanted to live your life too, so you started replaying everything your mother did. You even smoke in the exact same place that she used to. The apple never rots far from the tree you know.”

Suddenly there was screaming upstairs. And water running down into the basement. My pants began soaking up the cold water, “Mrs. Donna, as much as I would love to tell you what a worthless person you are, the school is flooding.” I scrambled up to my feet, her fingers still wrapped tightly on my arm, still not letting go. “Let go! We need to leave!”

As I wrestled over my wrist with my teacher, the world drowned in a flood around us. My mother at home, packing for the move we’d been planning for two years. The kids who had finally remembered how to write the Pythagorean Theorem. My last minutes were spent with the last person on the face of the earth that I would want to spend them with.