I was back on the first floor and had just turned the corner to what seemed like the main section or hallway of the school, along with two other students I didn’t know, when a uniformed security officer suddenly appeared. It was a black woman who looked like Kash Doll. She asked what we were doing in the hall or if we had permission to be out of class, something like that, as she slapped handcuffs on the boy to my right. She must’ve had encounters with him before.

“I went to the restroom,” I told her in a fake friendly voice, though not in those exact words, as we continued to walk, “We’re having an assembly in the auditorium.” It wasn’t a total lie. There was an assembly in the auditorium and I was there; I remember a staffer moving me to the back for not wearing a Covid-19 mask; but it was damn-near an hour before and I didn’t go to the bathroom. I was basically skipping class, sitting in an empty room, roaming the halls and even the streets outside.

My lie, which was made up on the spot and told perfectly with the body language of a grade-A student with rich parents who feels he shouldn’t have to explain himself to peon security guards, worked, meaning she seemed to believe me. “Okay,” I think she said as I headed toward the auditorium; the direction I just happened to be walking when she saw me. The boy she cuffed was going to jail, getting expelled or suspended, I assumed. I don’t know the fate of the third student.

2020 [ September 07 ]