Seneca Rebel

1

MY BOTTOM LIP split straight down the middle from a combination of breathtaking G-force and peppery dry air. It stung like crazy. The skin on my cheeks pressed tight against the bone. I crinkled my nose at the motorized odor of BoomJet fumes, and blinked continuously to try and moisten my eyeballs.

I was a BoomJet virgin. I’d only flown on a regular jet once in my sixteen years, but one time was all it took to know this was far different. The low, monk-ish hum of the BoomJet wasn’t like an engine’s forceful whirr. It was hollow. Clean. Precise. Like the sound you hear when you press your ear to a conch shell, only amplified. There were no dings to say “buckle-up,” no overhead fans or lights. Just a slick, amber ceiling. Dark gray automated belts strapped us into black rubber seats. The only familiar thing from the other, old-fashioned flight I’d taken before was how all the passengers were trying to meditate away their concern.

Nothing assured me that I’d made the right choice, but here I was, being hauled off to what was probably some kind of reform school, so I had to go with it. It was my own fault for thinking I could transfer that money unnoticed. My arms, piled high in retro friendship bracelets– red, purple, gray, black and blue– were plastered against my rib cage. My hands grasped the seat, and even though my palms were hot and clammy, they weren’t going to slip. The force was too great. My ears popped. I swallowed, but that only made the throat scratchiness that was a normal part of my daily life in Southern California, worse.

Hydration was impossible.

I sat, quiet, staring at a bulletproof mirror that separated us from the BoomJet cockpit, the faces of the other four passengers reflected in it. Just like me, each person moved only his or her eyes.

Mine shifted to look out into the acid-washed sky. The entire siding of the BoomJet was a window, one inch thick and clear as purified ice. Just one inch between me and a thirty thousand foot drop. Every minute, steam was released inside a paper-thin slit that ran through the outermost layer of the window, melting away any freeze before it had the chance to settle. I watched Los Angeles shrink to nothingness below. In an instant, as we rose above the cloak of smog, one of the most populated cities in the country vanished.

I was on my way to a place foreign to me in every way. I shifted my gaze forward again, and found myself staring back at my own reflection. Pale, because I spend less time in the sun than a baby’s butt. Full lips chapped raw by thin air and insufficient time to find a Vitamin E melt. Suddenly an electricblue digital read-out popped up and hovered in the mirror showing a countdown clock: 48:12. In under an hour I would be on the ground in Washington, D.C.

Just forty-eight hours ago I’d been twiddling my thumbs during a calculus exam I couldn’t have cared less about. I closed my eyes, recalling those final moments of normalcy. My mind had been far away from that stupid math exam, thoughts bouncing all over the map, from Timbuktu to the shores of the Cayman Islands. Wanting to get home and see if my latest gambling bots were bringing down the house. Wishing I had some prickly pear cacao. Wondering if my dad was really dead. I always thought about my dad– every single day.

He used to take long walks when he wanted to think about things. We couldn’t know how long a walk would last– an hour, two, sometimes even three. He never came home from his last one. After a day we got really worried because he had become super depressed about things at work. It had been a roller coaster the week before he vanished. Right before his depression kicked in, he’d been overcome with excitement. I’ve heard that’s a sign of being manic, but I just don’t think that’s what was up with my dad. Either way, my mom and I never felt settled with it. I thought about it all the time. If he was dead, could he see me and was he proud? Or if he was alive, why didn’t he ever come back? It didn’t make sense that he might still be alive, because then he wouldn’t have left us, or at least he’d have told us what was going on. I couldn’t accept that he was dead.

My mom, on the other hand, was angry. One day she missed him and the next she cursed the fact that he’d ever existed. His pictures are still up in our house. They should be. He’s only been gone three years– three excruciatingly long years. They say time flies, but for my mom and me the weight of it lingers, like the chocolaty aroma of roasted Guatemalan coffee that clings to my hair after five minutes at Café Firenze. It doesn’t ever seem to go away.

I didn’t miss a beat between each “C” I’d marked off on the math test because, quite honestly, it’s absurd. The school administrators think I’m some kind of genius sheep. That my only purpose is to elevate the test scores of a public school on the brink of losing funding from the federal government. The rest of the class, deep in calculus hell, didn’t want to hear about me, what a great student I was and how I’d save their advanced math program. All they wanted were tickets to Endless Horizon concerts and to get bent on Mojo Sticks.

Our school was probably the last one in America that still had LCD monitors. We were so far behind the current technology and everything else, too, and the gap grew by the second. In every movie or show I watched, the schools had holographic touch-screens, but not ours. In malls, hospitals and schools across the country, virus and bacteria were eradicated by UV sweeper bee-bots, but not at our school. We just accepted the pungent odor of industrial ammonia. It was there for our own good, according to the administration. My teacher, Mr. Malin, still used a phone. He had been fiddling with it as he always did during exams, but in that moment he’d had his eyes on me.

I had been so done with that exam. Judging by the look on Mr.

Malin’s face, he was so done with me, too.

“Finished already?”

“Yep.” He was a good guy, but there was no way I’d give in to the system.

“A word.”

Mr. Malin stepped up and headed out the classroom door. As I followed, I looked for any sign of approval from my peers across the room. I’d rather they see me as a misfit than some teacher’s pet, but nobody seemed to notice my calculus test strike. The teachers did everything in their power to keep me on a tight leash. They all hated my anti-authority threads: Nirvana Smells Like Teen Spirit tank top, cut-off bleached jean shorts and black sneakers marked up with vintage Wite-Out pen art. Three dozen other high school juniors cranked out numbers as best they knew how, but it wasn’t good enough for the administration. They expected me to bring up the test score average of the bunch, and I wasn’t down with that.

It was just the two of us on the other side of the classroom door, in a drab hallway of empty concrete sockets, remnants of lockers from when kids still carried books to class. Nobody knew what would take their place. Not us, not the teachers, not the people who made the plans to get rid of the obsolete lockers. It didn’t matter what the plans were anyhow. There was no money to complete them.

Mr. Malin eyed me with disappointment. The way he tipped his chin down and peered at me over his wire-framed eyeglasses will stick with me forever.

I figured things might go better if I spoke first.

“I know what you’re going to say.” My voice bounced off the cold, empty wall sockets.

“This isn’t you, Campbell.”

“If it isn’t me, then who is it?”

“You tell me.”

I couldn’t look Mr. Malin in the eye because I knew that I wasn’t being the best Doro Campbell I could be. But I was the Doro who could fight the tyrannical school system and deal with the judgment of all the kids at school. I wasn’t a goody-goody. I was Doro Campbell, certifiable badass. At least that was my goal.

“You tell me why the most gifted mathematician I’ve ever had in my classroom wants to present herself like she’s the worst. I just don’t get it.”

I blanked for an answer.

“The grades speak for themselves, Campbell. I wish I could do something more for you, but I just can’t. You should really be in advanced calculus, but at this rate, you’re going to end up repeating regular calculus your senior year and your gift will be flushed straight down the toilet into the bowels of the Los Angeles Unified sewer system. Do you know what it’s like down there?”

“I don’t really give a crap.” I grinned, proud of my pun.

Mr. Malin dropped his head. He’d tried to get through to me so many times before. I heard him, but I’d already made up my mind. As much as I respected Mr. Malin and knew he respected me, it was all about the big picture. I wasn’t giving in to the bureaucracy of this bunk education system.

Mr. Malin clenched his jaw. I felt bad for him. It was his life’s work, seeing to it that his most promising students spread their wings and soared. His face muscles twitched a few times before he finally nodded in resignation and stepped back into class.

I remember thinking that couldn’t be it. That it wasn’t my destiny in life to be a mindless follower. I was more than ready to split from this place.

***

I was so deep into re-living what had happened two days back, that I missed the BoomJet’s initial descent. There was no time to prepare. With uncanny speed we plummeted towards the earth at forty-five degrees, and then made a hard turn, parallel with the off-white concrete runway. A hollow thump and we landed, doing at least two hundred miles-per-hour. I was nearly suffocated by the restraint of the belts. My breath accelerated. We made a fast and abrupt, but considerably smooth, stop. I could breathe again.

Like I said, I was a BoomJet virgin. It kind of hurt, it went by super quick and before I had a chance to really enjoy it, it was over. We’d taken off from Los Angeles and landed on the outskirts of the nation’s capital in forty-eight minutes flat. Before I left, my mom said that the last time she’d flown to the east coast, it had taken nearly ten times as long. As I tried to imagine her reaction to the crazy-fast trip I’d just taken, I realized how much I missed her already.