When I got out of the car I felt the world moving around me but I heard the bell of the Church and I began to run towards the entrance of the school because I knew I was already late. My sister walked calmly behind me. I crossed the street without looking and a car nearly hit me. I unintentionally blocked out the insults the driver shouted at me and the screams of warning and frustration from my sister, I continued the race to the door. When I got there they had already closed the gate. “Come on! I’m only a couple of minutes late!” Mirna opened the door. Gosh did I hate that woman. She was about half my height, and I was pretty short at the time. She was also irrevocably chubby, with long plastic red nails (I wondered how she did most things with those nails), she had a gigantic mole on her forehead that screamed “look at me,” and as if her genes had not been bad enough, she always wore a ponytail that was as tight as her pants were, and I swear those pants were tight. “You’re late again” she said in her nasally tone “It’s the third time this month.” “I know but I couldn’t help it” I said “My dog ran away this morning and I had to wait until she came back so that I could open the door for her.” I knew she had stopped listening because she turned around and looked for her folder. “Well your only option is to sign here and you will have to stay two hours this afternoon for detention and on Saturday you will come to paint the walls of one of the classrooms,” I could see her smile of satisfaction that was hidden under her horrific make up. “Alright” I said in a defeated tone. I wrote my name but I didn’t really sign, I didn’t have a signature and that was something that troubled me. I wanted to do something important in my life but I had never heard of someone important that didn’t have a memorable signature. I had to work on that. After I wrote my name I began to walk uphill towards my classroom. I don’t want to sound superficial or mean but I think it is easy to say bad things about people you dislike. I disliked Mirna, deeply. She had been my computer teacher and she was one of the worst teachers I had ever had. I don’t think she even deserved to be called a teacher, she never studied for that. She would write our assignment on the board without any explanations aside, and then she would stand in the hallway talking to our P.E teacher and the worst part was that she would get mad when we asked questions.

I got to my classroom and before opening the door I took a deep breath because it was honestly the worst day to be late, I had math that day. As I opened the door I heard Mrs. Claus, the teacher, say “oh great time for you to arrive. Maybe you will enlighten us with the problem.” I blankly stared at her but she handed me the marker. My hand was trembling. I could not for the life of me remember anything about polynomials because that was one of the things about algebra I hated the most. I approached the board and saw my best friend Sarah say “the first one squared.” That triggered my memory and so I finished the problem easily. I knew Mrs. Claus intended to embarrass me for being late, but that backfired after I was able to solve the problem. “Go ahead and sit down” she said. It was interesting that she disliked me the way she did considering that my sister Sophia was one of her favorite students. I sat down in my usual seat behind Simon. He had caramel colored skin and penetrating green eyes and if he wasn't so mean to me I would admit to myself that I found him cute. I had that feeling with most guys in my class. After the bell rang Mrs. Claus approached me and said if I was late again she would not allow me to enter the class. I thought that was fair, after all I was often late and I truly had no excuse for it other than the fact that something always happened in the morning.

Sarah and I walked out of the classroom. “Did you hear about Alex?” she said. “What about him?” I didn’t really care about it but I had pretended I did because that was all my friends ever did, talk about the things that happened to others. I hated that but I was more often than not forced to do things I hated. “He got kicked out for a week for smoking pot in the boy’s bathroom.” That didn’t surprise me at all, most of the people in my class smoked weed, in fact I was surprised they hadn’t been caught before. “Oh well, nothing new then. I got detention this afternoon and on Saturday I will paint the walls of the biology room.” I assumed it was the biology room because my sister and her friends had had a cow heart war, and what I mean by that is that instead of dissecting the heart of a cow as they should have done, they shredded it to pieces and began to throw the bloody muscle all over the room. Now the walls were covered in blood and we had all missed biology the week before. But the worst part was that I had to do that. I had become a vegetarian exactly for that. I could not stand thinking of what they did to the poor animal. Of course I would get the worst punishment. I bet my sister only got detention that afternoon for being late. “That blows” she answered.

After the ten minute recess was over we walked back into our classroom. We had Castilian and Literature next. That was honestly one of my favorite classes, maybe it was because of the teacher but maybe it was also because I had always liked languages, even if it was the one I had spoken almost all my life. Our teacher Mrs. Bolden had a very deep and rough voice, I supposed because she smoked more than a chimney, and she was very cruel to students that were lazy and disobedient. She would often say “if you want to sleep, you can get out of my class and go sleep under the avocado tree.” Everyone made fun of her because of that and so we called her the “avocado tree” but deep down we all respected her because we knew she would not even think it twice if she ever had to kick someone out. I stood up next to my seat because that was what we were supposed to do before she came in. It always took us about fifteen minutes until everyone took their place next to their desk and was quiet. I never understood why she made us do that. Maybe she just wanted to prove that she had control over us.

Most of the time I felt like I was over high school although I wasn’t sure what I wanted to study or if I wanted to study anything at all. I didn’t feel like an adult although I was sixteen now. I was the type of person that doesn’t really have a specific talent I was just mildly good in different things but there was nothing special in it. I mean almost everyone can memorize a formula and almost everyone can identify the direct object of a sentence or analyze a poem. Those were things I did well but I didn’t see any potential. Maybe I could be a translator, that sounded like a good idea. I was perfectionist enough to obsess about the accuracy of words, after all I would spend great part of my time trying to remember words I wanted to use but had forgotten. If I became a translator I would definitely have to create a signature. And how crazy are signatures. It seems to me like they are just scribbles we write on a page and call them ours. But at the same time I understand what it means. It means identity and it means uniqueness. Maybe I can’t do anything worth doing, but at least I’ll have a signature that is my own.

A banging noise on my desk brought me back from my thoughts “Perhaps you would like to take a nap under the avocado tree?” everyone laughed and I could feel my head throbbing from blushing so much. For now I was here. For now I had no signature.