By Emily - High School 2002

And in the morning she was different, but the world was not. She opened her eyes to see the room her parents let her sleep in. It belonged to her parents. So did the bed sheets, the dresser, the hairbrush, and the curtains. Between those curtains a glimmer of daylight broke the dull gray of that room that morning. As she could not see, the girl reached for her parents’ light switch. It then occurred to her that the soft yellow hum of charity was not necessary, so she opened the curtains.

This was unusual. She was surprised how bright and clear the sun made the room. It was nice and the girl decided to open the curtains again tomorrow and maybe the next day. In fact, she could raise the glass to let some fresh air in.

That done, she fell into her morning routine. Brushed, scrubbed, dried and dressed, the girl was pouring cereal into a bowl. It was white, like the seven others in the cupboard. Her parents had eight white bowls and eight white plates and eight white mugs and eight white saucers. She used their white bowl everyday to eat cereal. Sunlight sparkled on the sugar crystals. It was sugary cereal. She had not remembered that. She supposed that when one ate the same cereal each day as she did, one did not notice the taste much. Suddenly leftover lasagna seemed much more appetizing and so she ate that instead, out of Tupperware.

In her parents’ sunlit kitchen, she felt strange, eating the lasagna. She liked it very much. She liked it very much more than cereal. What had stopped her from eating lasagna for breakfast yesterday? She supposed nothing had stopped her, she simply had not thought to do it.

She enjoyed breakfast today much more than she had before, but it was soon over. Then she set out to put on her favorite black boots. The boots were shiny and high. They clopped when she walked. There were also green sneakers with dirty soles in her parents’ closet. She saw them there as she put on her favorite shiny black boots. She did not like the boots as much as before, now that she saw the green sneakers. She did not feel shiny today.

The girl decided to put on the green sneakers instead of the black boots. My! They were soft and bouncy.

There was time enough and so she decided to walk to school. She had a newfound appreciation for the sun and the air since waking.

Leaving, the girl locked the door. Her parents’ things would be safe.

Everyday she walked down those steps to the new white car that her parents let her drive. Today the steps felt nice, under dirty soles, but more than that, they were quiet. She had never noticed how loudly the boots clopped, until they did not. That was a strange revelation for the girl, but stranger still was walking down her driveway. She could not remember when she had last walked past the car.

She liked it. It gave her time to think. All sorts of thoughts came and they led to other thoughts until the last did not relate to the first in the slightest, except to the girl. She thought about an old man that she saw watering his lawn. He was wrinkly and she guessed that he had been living a long time. His yard was green and neat. Her parents’ yard was green and neat too; the gardeners saw to that. They came each week to clip and trim and especially to cart away brown, ugly things. Old brown things did not last long where the girl lived. Everything was white and new and plastic. Plastic kept the good new things in and the bad old things out. Her parents liked plastic. The girl was glad that she had stopped her parents from throwing out the green sneakers, despite their dirty soles.

School appeared suddenly. How quickly time had passed. The walk made the girl’s cheeks pink and her legs tingle as she waited to cross towards school. There were no other children crossing the street with her. They were driving into the parking lot of the school in the new white cars that their parents had bought for them. Many children that she knew drove past the girl to the parking lot, but not one waved. She knew that they did not notice her there because they did not know anyone at all that would walk to school.

The sky was very blue and the cars were very white. The girl was thinking and thinking. The school looked big across the street, but the hill behind it looked bigger. The girl looked down the street and could not see very far. She had not been down that street very much farther than the school. She wondered what might be down there.

The light changed but the girl did not notice. She was walking away. She was walking away from the school, and from the white cars and the white house that she lived in. The girl walked away in green sneakers with dirty soles and she lived happily ever after because she never came back.