End-of-School-Year Fire Drills – Truth, Lies and the Wicked Witch 17

This is another installment of a rough draft of a memoir chapter that covers fourth grade. This is final episode, I mean installment for this chapter (which is way too long and needs some epic editing sessions). This story comes to a close.

To start this piece from the beginning, click here.

Late in the school year we took another musical instrument test. I didn’t even look at my grade, just filed the paper deep in one of my black folders with the neon pink and yellow squiggles. The folder was so full now that it was starting to tear at the crease. Mom would have to look through a lot of dittos to find it. I would find this folder years later in the basement of our new house in New Jersey. I’d gotten a D. Mom had never found it, or never said anything.

In the last week of class, we had a lot of fire drills, to meet some regulation. One time, Matt Peer was behind me in line as the class filed in and used the water fountain on our way back inside. Matt Peer, my 107 true love. I drank some water then swirled away in what I imagined was a supremely flirty move.

“Ewww!” Matt Peer screamed. Everyone turned to look at him. I froze. “I can’t use it after her! I’ll get her germs!” he said. After all this time. Of all people.

I trudged back to Mrs. Domaracki’s classroom.

Maybe New Jersey would be a good place to start over.

~~~

The End.

So this is an excerpt from a chapter from a project I’m working on called Eclipses of Jupiter. It’s in its infancy still, but it’s about growing up with albinism and being legally blind in my crazy family, and all the school and social implications. It’ll also focus on blind camp and related programs when I get into teenage years. This chapter, broken up into installments and posted over several weeks, is all about fourth grade, which was a bit of an epic school year. It’s still pretty rough, and way too long, so yeah, infancy stage still.

Check out the Samples Page, as well as Published and Early Work, to read more of my writing!

~Emilia J