We started sprinting to her house which was but a couple of miles away! Or was it meters? Never mind
that! The house beckoned us into its womb. We were clever enough to crawl through the cat door. Our
slender bodies worked frantically with us. Once in Emily’s domain, I scrutinized her house….it consisted
of a lot of wood all over…and large guns were over the mantle fireplace thingy. There were touches of
horses and hats splattered everywhere, overall very… ‘Texanish’. Emily led the way to her room, double
the size of mine, and there we examined her various gizmos. In later years I cursed myself for having
such a feeble mind as not to have room for concerns of the repercussions my absence at school was
causing.
“Heeeyyy look at this! My sissy got this for me last year at the school carnival!”
She handed me a doll that had been lathered in rouge, lipstick and…marcara…maskare? Never mind that!
I was about to ask if she knew to a higher degree what the correct enunciation of the anonymous product
was when suddenly we heard our names.
“Merusha! Emily?! Are you there?”
“Emily please honey, come out”
Unsure on how to conduct ourselves we crawled out of the cat door, not clever enough to unlock the
actual door. There was absolute chaos outside. I was astonished to see a police car with gruff looking
officers in it, alongside the stubby principal, and my sobbing teacher standing by what seemed, due to
physical correspondence, to be Emily’s parents. Emily ran to her parents while I vainly scoured the
vicinity for my own. My sobbing teacher smothered me in a poorly delivered hug and soon we were all
shepherded back to school, per se the dungeon.
My parents never did come; perhaps they were smart enough not to get involved in what seemed like such
a trivial matter. All the other people though, gave us stern looks and lectured as on the severity of the
matter and the grievances we’ve caused.
“Girls what you’ve done is very serious. You could’ve gotten hurt. What possessed you?!” our principal
earnestly inquired.
“A movie!” blurted out Emily in complete innocence.
Her parents stroked her and shushed her whereas I would have just slapped some sense into her. I didn’t
see the crime in what we had done, not at that moment and not a long while after it had happened. In my
defense, which wasn’t given much notice to, I was driven to madness by the very school system I was
being punished by. Not to mention, Emily was the one who concocted the idea! I sat erect in the massive
chair with my legs crossed and my hands tightly clamped together. The principal’s flabby chin kept
dancing at me. It was the only thing I could focus on. First it did the salsa, then flamenco, then a tango
with the neck!
“Merusha…Merusha! You’re glaring right at me m’am. Please respond.”
I blinked rapidly and came crashing back into reality.
“I hope you kn ow you and Emily have to face serious consequences and blah blah blah” was all I heard.
Shouldn’t it be… ‘Emily…and you..’ Mother said the other person should always go first. At the thought
of my mother I was jolted back into an even more real reality. I wasn’t intimidated by what the school
would do, it didn’t matter but I was mortified to what my parents’ reactions would be. I hoped I hadn’t
upset them…because when I do that…they in turn take away things I cherryish, like tv and candy!
Cherryish? Ah…English is teeming with oddities! Against all odds though, my parents were cool and
collected (relative to the fervent behavior of Emily’s guardians). I had to endure the speech on severity
and consequence once again, but by that time I was starting to worry about what consequences everyone
was so eager to purify me with. I soon found out my tv privileges and sweet consumptions had inevitably
come to an abrupt end. I mourned my losses but gave myself satisfaction knowing it was likely
Emily would receive worse. I was sweetly unaware of the evilness all the consequences would finally
amount to.