You teenagers. Always with your colored hair.

Hey dad, so you know how you forced me to go to this prestigious, judgmental, turn-children-into-working-robots school? Yeah, well as it turns out, I don’t really fit in there. Earth-shattering, right?

FRIENDLY CONFINES BY TESSA ABBOTT 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 104

Hell on earth, I yell, as the bus drives off without me, a gust of dust swirling in the broiling Arizona air. The expression written all over the face of the old lady on the bench says, “You teenagers. Always with your colored hair.”

“Cry me a river, grandma,” my face says back.

With a dead phone, the last bus gone, I’m out of options, and I start walking home.

I yank my tie to loosen its death grip, the tie of the snake pit that my dad calls a school.

Hey dad, so you know how you forced me to go to this prestigious, judgmental, turn-children-into-working-robots school? Yeah, well as it turns out, I don’t really fit in there. Earth-shattering, right?

As if that would go well. I can hear him already, “Really Mia? You’re 16 years old, act like it.” That’s his favorite phrase. You’re a lady, act like it. You’re mature, act like it. You’re smart, act like it. Blah, blah, blah.

If the glare the principal gives people isn’t enough to send them running, her abrasive voice is. I want to poke her, many times, only in the hopes that I find an off-button. It’s all about freedom of speech and expression until it’s something that she doesn’t agree with. She has stupid out-dated rules, and she brainwashes those stupid kids and takes their stupid parents’ money with her stupid bloodthirsty grin. “Stupid school. Stupid tie.” I rip it off.