Chapter 8 Myra

                   It took all my willpower not to sleep in class today. A normal trip left me exhausted the next day but last night had been especially bad. I only had one class left and it was an easy A so I was debating skipping it today and taking a nap instead. I was almost to the door to outside when I ran into Leven. He was dragging Lizzy to the principal's office again. I failed to hold in a laugh. "Trying to head out early Miss Hellskin? Why don't you join us in Mr.Hagdorf's office." I was so unused to someone actually stopping me that I didn't do anything but smirk at him when he started leading me with Lizz to the principal's office. "So Lizz what'd you do this time?" I asked trying not to burst out laughing at how weird this all was. " I filled all the drawers of his desk with wasps. He let them all out the window and didn't even get stung once." "Where and how did you get enough wasps to fill all the drawers on his desk?!" "Oh they're not too hard to find if you know where to look and all you need to get them is a big net a few cardboard boxes and some patience. The patience was the worst part." "Actually when I dragged you out of the room I was thinking more about the fire ants in my car." he said in a very irritated tone. "Oh! You found those already? I thought it would be a little surprise for you at the end of your day!" Lizz exclaimed as cheerily as possible. I just laughed feeling strangely energized from the whole affair. I didn't have anything against Leven he was a good teacher and he meant well. And it's not every day I met someone with the guts to stand up to Lizzy. But I had to admit I was really enjoying their little feud. Mr.Hagdorf had the dumbfounded look on his face I had ever seen when Leven walked in with us. Me with a ridiculous smile on my face. "Mr.Starshade what in the world are you doing!?" "This one I found cutting school," he said gesturing to me casually. I smiled wider and shrugged. "And THIS one." he gestured angrily at Lizzy. "Somehow managed to fill my desk with wasps and then dumped a truly amazing amount of fire ants in my car. I'm well aware that you don't have nor have ever had the nerve to even TRY to get some of these students to follow the rules. Which is why I'm not here to get you to punish them. I just thought that I inform you that they will both be in detention. Miss Dezrow for a month. If that means that I'll have to run detention please let me know now so I won't have a teacher running out when they walk into the room and leaving all the delinquents there." Mr.Hogdorf's jaw dropped to the floor and everyone that had been present in the room was equally as dumbfounded. I laughed again for over the fifth time this week. And Lizzy had a determined smile on her face. She had finally found an opponent.

           It turned out that Mrs.Hotchkiss, in fact, was unwilling to run detention with the two of us there. So Leven ended up taking over. None of the regulars were too thrilled about us being there either. They were all, of course, terrified of me and most of them had at some point tried to pick on Lizzy. One of them only recently got out of therapy. I used the time to get my homework done since nothing really happens in detention. Lizzy used the time to try driving Leven insane. She had thrown a kid out the window (we were only on the second floor) spray painted the walls, shaved a kids head while he was sleeping and flipped Levens desk over. And we had only been there for twenty minutes. Leven found some duct tape and then tapped Lizzy's arm to a chair. The next day he brought and cuffs and a couple of dumbbells. Lizzy had brought a bag of poisonous snakes, fireworks, expired milk and an ocelot. Where she found it I don't even want to know. After a week my time was done but I went anyway most of the time since it was a good place to do my homework. That and I loved watching Leven and Lizz fight like a bunch of three-year-olds. He even started pranking her back occasionally. Dumping paint on her, filling her desk with frogs. It was nice to have people that weren't scared of me.

         I walked home with Lizzy after detention that day. She was being strangely quiet. "Lizz is something wrong? You in such a good mood before we left school." "... my dad's dragging me off to look at courthouses in Texas. I don't know what made him decide on Texas but." "Your dad's taking you on some weird trip again!? You just got back from your aunts! It hasn't even been a week since you got back!" "Ugh! I know! This sucks he's probably going to take me to meet a bunch of lawyers and judges as well. Myra, I don't think I can wait until college to get away. If I ran away from home would you come with me?" "Lizz... where would we even go? We have nowhere to run TO. If we left town and you got pulled over you wouldn't be able to bully the cops into letting you go like you can here." "Then we can just go by foot till we get out then take a bus!" "TO WHERE?! We still have no place to go and if we just run off how are we going to live? We can't get jobs if we're on the run we have no way to support ourselves if we run away." "... maybe we can get some fake IDs." "Lizz... they can't make you do something if you really don't want to. Why is it that with anyone else you'll fight them tooth and nail but when it comes to your parents you just try to run away?" "Because I know when it comes to my parents there's no way to win. There's no point in fighting someone if you know you'll never win." I sighed I never got her. Lizzy was the most stubborn person except when it came to her parents. She would yell and scream and argue with them the way any normal teen would but she never REALLY fought them. They got away with dying her hair and all sorts of other stuff without her even yelling at them. She just did her best to get her hair back to normal as quickly as possible. All the trips to courthouses and prestigious colleges she begrudgingly went on. She only ever even complained about that stuff to me. Lizz let out a sigh "If it makes you feel better I'll try and see if I can get out of it or at least delay it but I really don't think that I can do anything about this." "Lizz it's not what I think about this it's you caving into doing something you hate. You NEVER cave to anyone. It's very unnerving when you do." I said teasingly. She rolled her eyes and waved as she headed in a different direction than me.

       I walked on alone thinking. I had never considered going off on my own... I didn't even know what I was going to do after high school. I had always just been focused on getting through my life in general. I shuddered turning a corner and almost ran over Favio.                                   

             Favio true to his strange self had some new gadget he had been waving around. It looked something like a metal detector and an Apple watch if it had been in the TRON movie. I rubbed my head where he had hit it and glared at him. He flinched a bit at it but surprisingly shook it off and started looking at me curiously, rubbing his chin with his pointer finger. I rolled my eyes and got up and moved to walk past him. He got up and ran in front of me waving his device around in my face. I was about to slap it out of his hand when he stopped and looked at his screen. He nodded his head a few times at it and walked off still looking at his screen. Myra stood there not sure what to make of that. She shook it off after a while. She swore silently under her breath. The people in this town just keep getting weirder every day.