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THE FIRST TEN LIES THEY TELL YOU IN HIGH SCHOOL

1. We are here to help you.

2. You will have time to get to your class before the bell rings.

3. The dress code will be enforced.

4. No smoking is allowed on school grounds.

5. Our football team will win the championship this year.

6. We expect more of you here.

7. Guidance counselors are always available to listen.

8. Your schedule was created with you in mind.

9. Your locker combination is private.

10. These will be the years you look back on fondly.

TEN MORE LIES THEY TELL YOU IN HIGH SCHOOL

1. You will use algebra in your adult lives.

2. Driving to school is a privilege that can be taken away.

3. Students must stay on campus during lunch.

4. The new text books will arrive any day now.

5. Colleges care more about you than your SAT scores.

6. We are enforcing the dress code.

7. We will figure out how to turn off the heat soon.

8. Our bus drivers are highly trained professionals.

9. There is nothing wrong with summer school.

10. We want to hear what you have to say.

You have to know what you stand for, not just what you stand against.

When people don't express themselves, they die one piece at a time.

It's easier not to say anything. Shut your trap, button your lip, can it. All that crap you hear on TV about communication and expressing feelings is a lie. Nobody really wants to hear what you have to say.

Homework is not an option. My bed is sending out serious nap rays. I can't help myself. The fluffy pillows and warm comforter are more powerful than I am. I have no choice but to snuggle under the covers.

I have survived. I am here. Confused, screwed up, but here. So, how can I find my way? Is there a chain saw of the soul, an ax I can take to my memories or fears?

Art without emotion its like chocolate cake without sugar. It makes you gag.

Gym should be illegal. It's humiliating.

I wonder how long it would take for anyone to notice if I just stopped talking.

I am getting better at smiling when people expect it.

This is where you can find your soul if you dare.  Where you can touch that part of you that you've never dared look at before.  Do not come here and ask me to show you how to draw a face.  Ask me to help you find the wind.

I have never heard a more eloquent silence.

I know my head isn't screwed on straight. I want to leave, transfer, warp myself to another galaxy. I want to confess everything, hand over the guilt and mistake and anger to someone else. There is a beast in my gut, I can hear it scraping away at the inside of my ribs. Even if I dump the memory, it will stay with me, staining me. My closest is a good thing, a quiet place that helps me hold these thoughts inside my head where no one can hear them.

Sometimes I think high school is one long hazy activity: if you are tough enough to survive this, they'll let you become an adult. I hope it's worth it.

I want to make a memorial for our turkey. Never has a bird been so tortured to provide such a lousy dinner.

Do they choose to be so dense? Were they born that way? I have no friends. I have nothing. I say nothing. I am nothing. 

Mr. Freeman sighs. "No imagination. What are you thirteen? Fourteen? You've already let them beat your creativity out of you!

Principal Principal: Where's your late pass, mister?

Errant Student: I'm on my way to get one now.

PP: But you can't be in the hall without a pass.

ES: I know, I'm so upset. That's why I need to hurry, so I can get a pass.

Principal Principal pauses with a look on his face like Daffy Duck's when Bugs is pulling a fast one. <br/>PP: Well, hurry up, then, and get that pass.

There is something about Christmas that requires a rug rat. Little kids make Christmas fun. I wonder if could rent one for the holidays.

When I was tiny we would by a real tree and stay up late drinking hot chocolate and finding just the right place for the special decorations.

It seems like my parents gave up the magic when I figured out the Santa lie. Maybe I shouldn't have told them I knew where the presents really came from. It broke their hearts.

I bet they'd be divorced by now if I hadn't been born. I'm sure I was a huge disappointment. I'm not pretty or smart or athletic. I'm just like them- an ordinary drone dressed in secrets and lies. I can't believe we have to keep playacting till I graduate. It's a shame we just can't admit that we have failed at family living, sell the house, split up the money, and get on with our lives. Merry Christmas.

Why not spend that time on art: painting, sculpting, charcoal, pastel, oils? Are words or numbers more important than images? Who decides this? Does algebra move you to tears? Can plural possessives express the feelings in your heart? If you don't learn art now, you will never learn to breathe!

A little kid asks my dad why that man is chopping down the tree

Dad: He's not chopping it down. He's saving it. Those branches were long dead from disease. All plants are like that. By cutting off the damage you make it possible for the tree to grow again. You watch - by the end of summer, this tree will be the strongest on the block.

It is my first morning of high school. I have seven new notebooks, a skirt I hate, and a stomachache.

I just want to sleep. A coma would be nice. Or amnesia. Anything, just to get rid of this, these thoughts, whispers in my mind. Did he rape my head, too?

I see IT in the hallway. IT goes to Merryweather. IT is walking with Aubrey cheerleader. IT is my nightmare and I can't wake up.IT sees me. IT smiles and winks. Good thing my lips are stitched together or I'd throw up.

Cold and silence. Nothing quieter than snow. The sky screams to deliver it, a hundred banshees flying on the edge of<br/>the blizzard. But once the snow covers the ground, it hushes as still as my heart.

I want to be in fifth grade again. Now, that is a deep dark secret, almost as big as the other one. Fifth grade was easy -- old enough to play outside without Mom, too young to go off the block. The perfect leash length.

I watch the Eruptions. Mount Dad, long dormant, now considered armed and dangerous. Mount Saint Mom, oozing lava, spitting flame. Warn the villagers to run into the sea.

"The next time you work on your trees, don't think about trees. Think about love, or hate, or joy, or pain- whatever makes you feel something, makes your palms sweat, or your toes curl. Focus on that feeling.

You'd be shocked at how many adults are really dead inside- walking through their days with no idea who they are, just waiting for a heart attack or cancer or a mack truck to come along and finish the job. It's the saddest thing I know.

This is wonderful, wonderful! Be the bird. You are the bird. Sacrifice yourself to abandoned family values....

IT happened. There is no avoiding it, no forgetting. No running away, or flying, or burying, or hiding.

Mr. Freeman: You are getting better at this, but it's not good enough. This looks like a tree,but it is an average, ordinary, everyday, boring tree. Breathe life into it. Make it bend - trees are flexible, so they don't snap. Scar it, give it a twisted branch - perfect trees don't exist. Nothing is perfect. Flaws are interesting. Be the tree.

My first class is biology. I can't find it and get my first demerit for wandering the hall. It is 8:50 in the morning. Only 699 days and 7 class periods until graduation.

They say they have noticed me drawing. I almost tell them right then and there. They noticed.

I pushed my ragged mouth against the mirror. A thousand crushed bleeding lips pushed back at me...

Rumors are spread by jealous people

I pull my lower lip all the way in between my teeth. If I try hard enough, maybe I can gobble my whole self this way.... I didn't try hard enough to swallow myself.

I cry to let everything out

She turns to us, acts surprised to see us, then does the bit with the back of the hand to the forehead. "You're lost!" "You're angry!" "You're in the wrong school!" "You're in the wrong country!" "You're on the wrong planet!

It doesn't hurt. Nothing hurts except the small smiles and blushes that flash across the room like tiny sparrows.

I am not going to think about it. It was ugly, but it's over, and I'm not going to think about it.

I can see us, living in the woods, her wearing that A, me with a S maybe, S for silent, S for stupid, for scared. S for silly. For shame.

I look at my homely sketch. It doesn't need anything. Even through the river in my eyes I can see that. It isn't perfect and that makes it just right.

I open a paperclip and scratch it across the inside of my left wrist. Pitiful. If a suicide attempt is a cry for help, then what is this. A whimper, a peep? I draw little window cracks of blood, etching line after line until it stops hurting.

The parents are making threatening noises, turning dinner into performance art, with dad doing his Arnold Schwarzenegger imitation and mom playing Glenn Close in one of her psycho roles. I am the Victim.

Mom: [creepy smile] "Thought you could put one over us, did you, Melinda? Big high school students now, don't need to show your homework to your parents, don't need to show any failing test grades?

Dad: [bangs table, silverware jumps] "Cut the crap. She knows what's up. The interim reports came today. Listen to me, young lady. I'm only going to say this to you once. You get those grades up or your name is mud. Hear me? Get them up!" [Attacks baked potato.]

I sit at a table close to his desk. Ivy is in this class. She sits by the door. I keep staring at her, trying to make her look at me. That happens in movies--people can feel it when other people stare at them and they just have to turn around and say something. Either Ivy has a great force field, or my laser vision isn't very strong....

I don't know what I'm doing in the next five minutes and she has the next ten years figured out. I'll worry about making it out of ninth grade alive. Then I'll think about a career path.

The same boys who got detention in elementary school for beating the crap out of people are now rewarded for it. They call it football.