School

As I'm writing this there's a girl sitting across from me, staring at me. She's got an open book she's not reading resting in her lap, and a pen in her hand that looks like it's frozen to the page. The only things moving are her eyes, burning through my shoes as I took them off and tossed them next to my bag. Hah. I keep glancing at her through my hair, or carefully twisting my neck up to pop it and scanning my eyes past her, but the second I see her still staring at me I look back at this paper and start writing again. She has a bag and a purse. I don't understand that. I've never had that much to carry around, or maybe I just keep it all in one bag because the chances of me losing my things is all too high. She's wearing heavy eye make up, which isn't helping me feel any more comfortable to have her looking at me. Blonde hair...blue shirt...wait. She just coughed. The girl sitting behind her has boyishly short brown hair. Her shoulders are hunched so the shoulders of that nice button up shirt she's wearing are bunching up around the green vest she has on over top of that. She's wearing dangly earrings that dance back and forth even when she's not moving. I wonder how she's doing that. She's completely consumed by a book, and she's got a smile permanently plastered on her face. She keeps looking over like she's talking to someone, but there's no one sitting anywhere near her. The first girl I mentioned is staring at someone else now. I knew the second she looked away from me because I instantly stopped feeling sick. She's let her mouth hang open for the last few minutes. She hasn't shut it even to swallow. Another girl is tapping her animal covered moccassins to a beat I can't pick up on. Hah. I wonder if these people know how easily they can be preserved on a piece of paper. I wonder if they'd do anything differently. There's a symphony of swishing pants, squeaky shoes, the coffee machine downstairs, and little coughs every now and then. There's an overweight girl in a lime green shirt walking around behind me. Her steps are different from the others, her short legs take even shorter steps that are too heavy and loud. The girl with the dangly earrings is still smiling, but looking out the window and shaking her head. I can't see the mountains across the lake. I live by a lake and I only really look at it a handful of times a year. Maybe that's because it's full of almost as much shit as most of the people around here, so why do I look at them all the time? I can smell the BLT they just called out downstairs. It's disgusting. Woody Guthrie got a hereditary brain disease that eventually killed him. He was only 55 when he died. The disease caused his body to move uncontrollably and it ended up getting so bad that he couldn't even hold his guitar. It's strange to realize that everything will die. I'd like to see a post-apocalyptic world, where all that's left all are a bunch of billboards and twisted scraps of metal lining every horizon. Cars will be immobile homes for cats that aren't called "strays" anymore, but instead are called wild.