Demon Copperhead

by Barbara Kingsolver

Either way, it no longer pertained. Now I watched other kids raise their hands, get their answers right, and good for them. Topic sentences, Appomattox Courthouse, life cycle of a plant, what is all that? If all your brain wants to know is, where’s the door out of here and wherever it goes, will you still be starving. The teachers, principal, and Miss Barks all gave me the same lecture on how I was not working hard or living up to my potential. I had no fight with them. You get to a point of not giving a damn over people thinking you’re worthless. Mainly by getting there first yourself. I wanted to tell them: This right here that you’re looking at is my potential. What the fuck would you call it? Do you seriously think this is the person I wanted to end up living inside of? But hard work? Let me tell you what that is: trying to get through every day without the gangling ugly menace of you being stared at, shamed by a teacher, laughed at by girls, or sucker punched. Again, if you’ve been there, you know. If you have to guess, you might not even be close. All these people had to keep on asking and asking: Why was I flunking out? What could I do but look at the wall and say nothing, just sorry. I was learning to love the brutal burnt screw-you taste of that word I’d been given to eat forever. Sorry.