The Finish Line

This is a little piece I wrote in my recent writing class. These little snippets are what I'm working on as a greater part of my memoir project.

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I stood in the dim light of the backstage with the sound of my heart beating in my ears. I nervously shifted my convocation cap and wiped sweaty palms on my black gown. Anxious sighs and whispers of my fellow university peers permeated the thick air as sweat beaded on my brow. We intermittently shuffled forward as each graduate at the front of the line eagerly sprang onto the stage to claim their place in the world of things. 

Families would be watching. Parents, siblings, grandparents, aunts and uncles. The halls were filled with the sounds of their laughter and shoulder slapping only an hour before. I wondered, would this feel different if any of my relatives came to witness? Did it matter? 

After what felt like an eternity, I was beckoned. This was my finish line.

“Heidi-Ann Wild. Psychology Major, with honours.”

I took a deep breath. My legs felt like custard but they carried me forward and into the light.

Fourteen years before, on a sunny spring afternoon, I was called to the high school office while hunkering over my desk in art class. The only class I made it to that day. I was fifteen.

“Heidi-Ann Wild. To the office please,” rang a woman’s loud voice over the classroom intercom.

Still groggy from a joint smoked over the noon hour, I lumbered into the front office. A square-jawed secretary with black beady eyes saw me and motioned dismissively to the left. “They’re in there.”

I looked through the doorway of the room on the left and saw my mother sitting in a chair. Her hurried, agitated tones were intermittently crushed by the booming lisps of Mr. Samborski (otherwise known among us teenagers as Mithter Thamborthki).

I walked in. “Hey.”

My mother turned to me with the daggered look of one who had been freshly defeated in battle. Mr. Samborski had that effect on people, but I knew this look on my mom’s face. I had seen a lot of it lately.

“Heidi-Ann,” said Mr. Samborski, “I was just explaining to your mother that you will no longer be attending our thchool”.

“Oh yeah?” I did not care.

“You’ve been given lots of warnings. Thith isn’t another warning. You’re done here.”

I knew by the steely look in his pale grey eyes that this was true. My mother was a fighter, and she was all I had. But too much blood had been spilled here and this battle was done.

My mother and I left the school together soon after the paperwork was signed. Without a car, it was a long walk home to our apartment. I felt a sense of liberation filling my limbs. I tried to hide my buoyancy.

“You need to get a job,” was all she said.