Musing for Brooke -- The Great Escape

Brookie -- I was browsing through some old computer files last week -- journal entries, etc. -- and according to the file information on this one, I wrote it sometime in February 2005. I thought you'd enjoy it. It's referencing the day we were threatened with suspension for our "insubordination" ... Here you go:

So there I was, in detention at Heritage Christian School, unjustly convicted of a crime I’d never committed. I’d been denied the right to speak to a lawyer, my parents, or even my best friend.

She (my best friend) was in interrogation at the moment. I wondered how long it would take ‘til they broke her, ‘til she confessed everything we’d never done. I knew I could never be as strong as she was, and I could count on my emotional strength lasting about half of whatever she could endure. I’d seen her battle head-to-head with these tyrants before.

Oh, they were cunning, they were crafty. But she knew how and when to stand her ground. She’d been exiled before, sent to solitary while the rest of us were forced to continue singing like the caged birds that we were.

My thoughts drifted back to my current situation – the hard, unforgiving chair in the cinderblock room, the voices – oh, the voices that were drifting through the wall and under the doors. I knew it couldn’t last much longer – my turn in The Library was coming soon. My heart pounded, my hands sweat, and my mouth went dry at the thought. I knew that this part had to be one of their tactics – to make us sweat before we even sat under “Ol’ Floury,” the cruel fluorescent light that made us doubt even our own sight, much less our assuredness in the truth – they wanted to make us question our motives, our stories … even our sanity before we faced “Butch.” Yeah – Butch.

If a snarling, snapping, ferocious bull dog comes to mind, erase the image immediately. “Butch” was a fuzzy-faced, sneaky enemy. He had the appearance of the neighborhood “good dad” – friendly-looking, well-dressed, well-spoken … fake. Yeah, he’d start off with another tale from Avendale. Good ol’ Avendale. He’d lull your consciousness to sleep with those stories and them BAM! He’d hit you. It almost never failed. The truth would just slip out of an entranced mind, through an untrained mouth and into the ears of the Enemy. Another secret spilled – another comrade lost to the torture chambers.

The stars on the wall outside the room of my fearful vigil read like a roster of heroes. These lucky few had paid their dues, had survived, had been paroled to the Real World. I was supposedly within grasping distance of my own star, but I knew it was a cruel, cruel joke. It was the Avendale Story of all Avendale stories – the ultimate trick to lure my uncensored thoughts out of my unwilling mouth. Staring at the plastic spoon left over from the yogurt that had been my meager lunch, I vowed, then and there, that I would tunnel my way out of prison. It would take a while to get through the carpeting, and even longer to pry my way through the concrete slab foundation, but with time, I could do it. I knew I wouldn’t be going anywhere for a while. The Count of Monte Cristo had almost succeeded in his tunneling escape; I would succeed.

Deftly, my tortured mind mapped my course of escape: I would tunnel under the wall, under the grass, under the graveled parking lot, under the road, finally surfacing in the vacant field across the road from the building. The culvert would shield me.

Unlike the Count of Monte Cristo, there would be no beneficent priest to teach me of languages, economics or government while we tunneled; but what cared I for such trivialities when freedom lay only a plastic spoon away!

Just as I was cementing the plan in my mind, committing it to memory and infamy … the door opened.

My doom was upon me, kicking my floundering hope the way a cruel boy kicks a helpless puppy. I almost whimpered, too, as I made my way to the interrogation room, known by some as The Library. On those shelves, I was sure I could read my doom, lined right up with Shakespeare and the incomplete sets of Nancy Drew and Trixie Belden books. It was there – The Mystery of the Rebellious and Now-Missing-and-Feared-Dead High School Senior. Neither Nancy nor Trixie would ever solve this one. It would leave J. Edgar Hoover himself scratching his head. My unwitting words would condemn me, and my body would never be recovered. We all knew it – once you entered The Library, there was no coming out.

My heart pounded in my chest, all of my seventeen years flashing before my eyes. It was a brief autobiography, full of monotone commentary on how this brave girl stood her ground, even in her last hopeless moments. It brought a little tear to my eye, and I sat in the cold metal chair, facing my accusers, who would also decide my fate. I swallowed the lump in my throat, blinked twenty times, clutched the plastic would-be purveyor of my now-lost freedom, and prepared to meet my end.

I was ready.