My English teacher scares me a lot. It seems like when ever I'm around him he wants to strangle me. He will smile and be friendly to the rest of the class then he will turn to me and give a comment like, "You don't try hard enough Jess." Or, "I would like to know what you do with your spare time Jess. Do you sit and try to find ways to fail my class?" I actually do try to do well in his class, but he still hates me. I think he might be mad at me because of my parents. They are writers, and they are very successful. They both write for the New York Times. Maybe he wishes that he could be a writer and not an English teacher.
Anyway, my name is Jess. Jess is not my nickname; it's my real name. I have no siblings. I don't really know if that's a good or a bad thing. I have straight dirty-blonde hair and blue-green eyes. I am seventeen, and I'm obsessed with my car. It may be maroon, older than me, and beat up like it's been in fifty accidents, but it is still my car.
BEEP Finally, the school day was over. As hard as I try, I will never escape school. There is always homework or studying for quizzes or a school event. After high school my parents expect me to go to college. When I have kids, my kids will have to go to school. Then when they have kids, well you get the point. I walked slowly from English to my locker, put away all of my work and grabbed my homework and headed to the library.
The library is the calmest place in school, mostly because nobody ever goes there. So of course, the day I went to the library, it was filled with people and was louder than the lunchroom. I sat down at a table and grabbed a binder. It was math. I always have loved math; it has rules and a solid answer. Now writing, that's another story. There are so many ways to make a mistake: spelling, grammar mistakes, run on sentences, fragments, verb tenses, punctuation and capitalization. I can never do anything correctly when I am writing. Anyway, I started on my math homework. I had about twenty minutes of math, Spanish and social studies quizzes to study for, and a detailed observational drawing to do before I needed to work on the story.
My story was about a kid who almost ruined her English teacher's criminal life. This English teacher is a killer who never gets caught because he kills whoever suspects him of illegal actions. The story ends when the English teacher strangles her. It's a new type of story for me to write, because I normally don't like to write about killing. I guess the D I got in English kind of motivated this story.
After I finished most of my story, I walked with my friend Meghan to grab a bite to eat. Meghan is a tall redheaded girl who has the happiest attitude in the world. She gets straight A's and is on every sports team imaginable. I think the only thing that I have that she doesn't have is a car. As Meghan and I walked back to the school Meghan looked at me worriedly and asked, "Jess, have you been ok lately? You have seemed pretty upset."
"I've been thinking about my story." I said, "My English teacher has been giving me bad grades lately, and I've started to not like English. Also, if I flunk I'll lose my car." Just then Meghan's cell phone rang. Meghan said she needed to go to her tennis practice, so I walked around the school's campus. I didn't want to do any homework so I hung out at the school fields and watched a couple of Jr. High soccer games.
As it became dark I headed to the parking lot with my backpack. As and fumbled around for my keys I saw a figure from afar; it looked familiar, but I couldn't make out who it was. I tried to start my car, but it wouldn't start. Slowly the person came closer. I looked under the hood of my car and found an out of place wire. As I fixed the wire, all of a sudden the air became cold and sharp. I closed the hood and walked over to throw my backpack into the trunk. It was cluttered with soccer balls and tools to fix my car. I bent down to make room for my bag. Suddenly a hand reached down. It was old and wrinkled; as it brushed my arm I could feel the icy skin. I was afraid to look up. A hand covered my mouth and nose. I couldn't breathe.
"The end." Those two words can make all the difference. They can be so close, but other times they can be so far away. Take my situation for instance: I had no oxygen and about thirty seconds to live. I guess the "the end" was closer than I thought it would ever be.