I'm taking my first creative writing course this semester. I wrote a 500 word piece of creative non-fiction. All of this actually happened. Enjoy. Also, I was not supposed to write in "the passive voice". Lameee.
A Non-Adventurer’s Adventure
“School is for chumps,” said the tall, African-American adolescent standing next to me. “Tuesday is your birthday and there is no way we are going to show up. As your best friend, I cannot you to sit through three hours of tech courses,” he concluded. I considered the situation: Ditching and going to the skate park would mean certain death if the rent-a-cops saw us, or possibly only partial dismemberment, public shaming, and waterboarding if the administrators decided to go easy on us. Maybe I am exaggerating, but the mind of a high school senior is a place of great exaggeration.
But would those low men catch us? I am nothing if not an optimist, or at least I was, before my high school principal’s conservative and liberal[1] use of waterboarding drained me (just as that very water that my high school principal waterboarded me with drained into the drain of the boys’ locker room) me of my will to live. Again, high school students exaggerate sometimes, occasionally, rarely. High school students also understate things sometimes, but almost never. Eventually, in the spirit of Tom and Huck (and Jim), I said yes. What could possibly go wrong? Would the police fish my dilapidated cadaver out of the Rio Grande? And, if so, would I float face down like a real man? Would the police use the steamship’s cannons to surface my body? Would my oversized noggin grace milk cartons around the nation for months until my parents gave up hope? Probably, but I would have my day in the sun at the skate park—or die trying.
My mother dropped me off at school at the usual time the next morning, but the day progressed rather unusually. As soon as the car turned around the corner, I set my right foot on the grip tape and my left foot on the pavement and pushed off and was off; adrenaline lit up my bones like an x-ray. Out of sight of the rent-a-cops and with all of my worries and textbooks and those disgusting school restrooms behind me, I headed straight for the skate park.
But upon arriving at the skate park, I could not find Keovar[2]. Could it be that all my efforts were all for naught? The journey down the perilous side-walk road, a road in plain view of cars that look just like my parents’ cars or my teachers’ cars or that evil car in that Stephen King book, in vain? No! Just as I began my long “ubi sunt Keovar” speech, I saw him, that nappy-headed bastard, skating, rolling toward me, carrying a blueberry slushie from Sonic. The day turned out to be one of the best that I’ve had, and easily the most memorable. The weeks of torture and humiliation (however imaginary), struck me as less enjoyable.
[1] ‘Conservative’ refers to political conservatives who, allegedly, condone waterboarding. ‘Liberal’ refers to the adjective (e.g. “he applied salt liberally to the steak”). Not sure if this makes sense but I wanted to include/explain it. It’s supposed to be a paradox.
[2] I wanted to write “but Keovar was nowhere to be found”, but that would be passive. But it would be better than what I replaced it with. This is upsetting.
