The summer flew by fairly quickly. Days in the tree house, afternoons at the diner, nights alone in my backyard. It was monotonous. Yet I never stopped having fun. Fall was quickly approaching. The air was becoming cooler; the trees were dropping their leaves. School was starting in 3 days. 8th grade. Last year before high school. Jenny was frequently absent from the house, and her absences were becoming more noticeable by the week. Dad was not happy about it.

I was brushing my hair in my room when the door swung roughly open.

"Where's your sister?" Dad fumed.

"Uh… not in my room." I sassed back. Maybe I shouldn't have. But it was quickly becoming a habit. How could I know where she was since she's practically said 10 words to me all summer?

He slammed the door.

"And knock next time!" I shouted after him. My big mouth was gonna get me in trouble.

I sighed and began brushing my hair again.

"Liz, we have looked at the records from your old school. You seem to be a smart girl, therefore, we have you enrolled in the college courses." The guidance counselor rambled on and on about the college courses.

Just nod and smile, Liz. Nod and smile. Just listen to their bullshit and nod and smile. I was out of there soon enough anyway, to meet up with Teddy and Vern outside the school building.

"Hey Liz. How did it go?"

"They put me in those bullshit college courses," I griped. "Looks like I'm not gonna see you guys in school that often."

"Aw, that sucks."

"Yeah, I know." I sighed. "Wanna go to the diner? It's our last day before school starts. Whoopee." I said, rolling my eyes sarcastically.

"Well, we can always skip." I suggested.

"Betcha they enforce that in the college courses. They don't care about us."

"Really? Well that just makes my day." I couldn't even skip school with Teddy and Vern? Man, this sucked.

I sighed loudly and slurped my milkshake.

"What is it?"

"Just thinking of how shitty school is going to be," I said moodily. I didn't actually think it was going to be all that bad, well, no worse than last year, but still.

"I hear ya."

"Can we still eat lunch together?"

"Yeah, I think so.

I sighed with relief. Nice to know I wasn't completely isolated from my two best friends.

My alarm clock rang, signaling the first day of torture. Okay, not torture. But sincerely, what would the kids in the college courses be like? I groaned, rising out of bed, and pulled on a long skirt and blouse. Who knows how strict the dress code'll be? But of course I'll fit right in. The only new clothes I got were the ones Jenny lent me.

After eating a breakfast of very soggy oatmeal, (tradition for our family) which did absolutely nothing to lighten my mood, I climbed into the front seat of Jenny's car. She wasn't in any better of a mood than I was. Apparently she didn't like having to make an extra stop on the way to the high school.

She dropped me off with a barely audible 'enjoy your first day.' Better than nothing. Would I be that way when I was 16?

I walked into the doors of the school, officially entering my last year of Junior High. I glanced at my schedule. My first class was Science. Oh, how I hated science. It was so complicated.

I walked into the Science classroom and slid into a seat just as the bell rang. Last-minute students piled into the room and the door was shut behind the current. From the moment Mr. Carlson started talking, I knew this class would be okay. Easy. Not nearly as bad as I thought it would be.

Mr. Carlson was mean, strict, unsympathetic, anything but great. That was what all teachers were. At least he was used to slackers; I was going down to his standards. It was still easy, though; they were much less strict here than where I had come from. Probably because here they had more rowdy kids to teach. He assigned us a project due at the end of the week. It was of our own choice, but had to be approved by him. I was thinking and writing ideas down on a piece of paper. Then the bell rang. I got up from my seat slowly, letting other students out of the classroom before I went myself. I headed to my next class.

The first half of the day passed without anything spectacular happening. But all I could think of last period was lunch. Seeing Teddy and Vern. They were my best and only friends. The bell had rung, and I was now heading to the cafeteria. Excitement filled my head. I didn't feel nearly as dead as I did this morning. School would never cease to amaze me.

I walked into the cafeteria, grabbed a tray and some food, and looked for the table that Teddy and Vern would be sitting at, and soon found them. They weren't that hard to miss. I walked over to their table and sat down, laying my tray onto the table.

"Hey Liz, how's the first day?" Vern asked.

"Pretty good. Not as bad as I thought it would be. You?" I inquired, of course referring to both boys.

"Pretty boring. I still can't believe some of the bullshit classes they have here." Teddy, as always, didn't hesitate to give his opinion.

"Vern? What about you?"

"Not bad. I have Teddy in some of my classes."

And the conversation resumed as so. We talked about boring classes, mean teachers, decent classes, and nice teachers. Eventually lunchtime ended, as all good things have to do. I had barely eaten any lunch at all. Talking was more important. My next class was math- something called Algebra- and I headed off to the opposite side of the school.

We had Algebra problems, assigned out of our text book. On the very first day. I only had 2 homework assignments so far- Science and Math. With any luck, I wouldn't have anymore. Soon, I was sitting in English class, listening to my teacher, Mr. White, talk about writing. He wasn't as mean as Mr. Carlson, but he was strict and as stiff as a board. I hated English already. And to make matters worse, we were assigned some big fat juicy composition that was due at the end of next week.

The theme is summertime. The composition is due next week. The phrase echoed repeatedly in my mind as I walked to art class. The theme is summertime. The composition is due next week. Summertime… summertime… summertime… Well, at least it's something that is still fresh on our minds. Art turned out to be remotely interesting. We were learning still life. Drawing was the one thing that I liked that was under the category 'art.'

The end of the day finally came. Oddly, I remembered the details of the classes before lunch only very vaguely. I walked home, pondering the homework that I had to do. Algebra problems. Science project of choice. And the composition. I hated compositions. I hated English. Okay, putting it bluntly, I hated writing in general.

I sat in my room, thinking. It was 5 PM. I was working on homework, and had decided to start working on the most evil and most time-consuming of all- the composition. Summertime, summertime, summertime… what the hell was there about summertime that I could write about? Urgh, it's not that I can't think of any topic to write, but how do I write it? Where do I begin?

I tried to write about meeting Teddy and Vern. Quite frankly, that resulted in a 45 minute stare-down with a blank sheet of paper. I tried to write about waking up late every morning. I tried to write about days in the tree house and afternoons in the diner. Hell, I even tried writing about the breakfast or lack of breakfast I had had over the summer. Zero. Blank. Blank as that piece of damned paper. Damn that paper! It was starting to rub off on me.

I put my head in my hands and every curse word under the sun ran through my mind, though that was hardly helping me. I could not write a summer composition about swear words. Wait a minute, what about nighttime? Who said it had to be summer days? Nights work just as well! Now… where do I get started?

Soon I was having another stare-down with the blank paper. But this time, I was determined to win. 15 minutes later, my pencil touched the paper, and successfully stayed in motion for 10 minutes.

20.

35.

I soon lost track of the time, I was concentrating so hard. Dusk, crickets, nights alone in your backyard… Write Liz, Write write write… directly from your mind… go, don't stop until your mind stops. It was a race between pencil and mind, and I was determined to win. My pencil didn't stop until my mind finished the race; until I had written that final thought.

I laid my pencil down after what seemed hours. Pulling the paper toward me, I began to read.

I could vaguely believe what I was reading.

Had I written this? It was sarcastic, cynical, sardonic, funny… it had definite traces of me in it. But the things that I wrote about that all seemed so hopelessly irrelevant to each other (another one of my fatal annoying flaws) miraculously fit, in some strange, foreign way, forming artful circles on the paper. (Ha! The writers' way of thinking is beginning to rub off on me too!) And I had actually enjoyed writing it.

After a few minutes of shock, I remembered that there was something else I had to do. I glanced at my watch. In panic, I immediately pulled out my Algebra book and started doing the problems.