Hello, Stranger by Barbara Moran

Author:Barbara Moran
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: KiCam Projects
Published: 2019-02-15T15:48:51+00:00

Chapter Twenty-one

Some Kind of Incentive

One day I was outside the school waiting for my ride back to Menninger’s. Someone came outside carrying broken glass to throw away. Some part of a stage set had been accidentally pushed through a window. Because I thought of the building as alive, this upset me and I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

There was no sense of being welcome in anyone’s presence at Hayden. Paul Jackson kept up his thing about being in love with me, but I knew it wasn’t real. And I didn’t want a guy who was such a rebel. I had to invent a reason to like going to school there. I needed some kind of incentive so I could feel close to someone.

I’d seen the school building before I’d started school, because it was right on the main drag. I’d just never paid much attention to it. But now I started having a thing for the Hayden High School building. Freshmen and sophomores went to the old school downtown, but juniors and seniors went to the new school, the one I was going to, which they called Hayden West. West was, to me, the building’s last name.

Hayden West was oblong with three floors. Everyone went in and out on the north end. But I imagined the other end, the south end, being the front and I imagined the face being on that side.

It didn’t make any difference whether I was inside or outside of it. If I considered the building to be a person, that made it more pleasant to be there; it was like being close to a friend. If I could have drawn that building, I think I probably would have drawn it with a smile. But I’d already decided I should stop putting things on paper, anything somebody would see. I had to keep it all to myself, buried in my head.

On Fridays, I looked normal: I was wearing that pep club sweater, just like most of the other girls. But nobody realized the sweater also had a special significance to me. Inside the big “H,” in the middle, was the word “Hayden.” And of course, Hayden was the name I had given to the schoolhouse.

Menninger’s had childcare workers whom they referred to as “floaters,” who took kids out to several schools. That first semester they took me over at 9:30 and picked me up at 11:30, so I never really got a chance to talk to Hayden.

But later on, when I was attending school all day and walking home, before I went back to Menninger’s, I’d walk around to the south side of the building and say goodbye. I doubted I could be seen back there, and no one ever caught me there at the little niche at the south end. I wanted to be there looking at Hayden West’s face. It was very satisfying to stand out there and talk out loud, like it was a conversation. Buildings don’t talk, of course, but they can listen, and I just sort of thought I knew what it wanted to say.

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