The audience hooted and howled as another student was ushered up onto the stage. The Supervisors watched silently from the seats, examining each face that crossed the spotlight. They never spoke, they just scribbled things down in their little notepads and nodded to each other occasionally.
Most students had already been called. It was, in our view, an achievement ceremony. The people who had excelled in some type of sport were the ones who had to stand in front of the hundreds of students and faculty in the crowd and be cooed over by the speaker.
I was not going to be called on today. I sat with my friend Audrey, watching the others be talked at and appreciated. Our school was one highly focused both on academics and athletics. Though we had the highest test scores of our state, our sporting achievements were what made us "preferable".
"Please pick me next. Please, please, please..." Audrey squirmed impatiently in her seat, fingers crossed. The next person to be called was some junior that I didn't know. "Ugh!" She fell back, resting her neck on the metal frame of the chair.
"Settle down. They'll call you soon enough. What's with you lately?" Audrey looked down at her feet, as if she was thinking extremely hard. It had never been difficult for us to talk to each other, but now there was some invisible force walling its way between us.
"Audrey Fenner!" Audrey shook, smiling beside herself. She got up quickly, not even turning and shaking me in her giddy, stupid way like I thought she would.
"Audrey," I shouted to her as she reached the stairwell. She turned back to look at me. "Good job! You deserve this!" All of a sudden, the air around us changed. She gave me a look, something melancholy and teary; a mixed of unequal emotions. It seemed as though she wanted to tell me something, but then she turned and jogged down the stairs to be mentioned. For one second, the world, along with my heart, sank.
After Audrey was praised and as she took her position amidst the other athletes, the speaker started speaking to the rest of us.
"Now," he said, a smile still plastered across his face like a permanent stamp," I invited all of the Normals to step out of the building at this time. You will see Representatives from group classes stationed along every stairwell and at every exit. Each designated Representative will escort you out to the loading lots. Are there any questions?" All was quiet. Everything was dead. The kids that still sat around me were as pale as ghosts, eyes wide with utter disbelief. I myself was frozen in shock. "Good." The speaker gestured to the Representatives, signaling them to herd(or more like apprehend)the kids who had not been called to the stage. A man grabbed my shoulder, telling me that it was too late to run. But my mind never caught on.
"Audrey! Audrey, help me!" I cried pleadingly to my friend, desperate for some kind of intuition that this was all just some twisted joke. She hid her head, averting her eyes even though she could hear me. At that moment, I realized that she had previous knowledge of this. I could not believe it. "You jerk! I thought you were my friend!" I spat and cursed, both her and myself for how stupid I had been. It wasn't long before the Representative pulled me away and started dragging me to my last exile.
In the parking lot, the other Normals and I waited for whatever was coming. We didn't speak. Some cried, not knowing their fate. It seemed so weird that our high school lives would end like this. Hadn't we worked hard during our time there? Hadn't we been promised a future if we worked hard? Suddenly, a dark, beige-colored vehicle approached us. It pulled up beside the curb, it's doors opened revealing a seat-less back seat where we would undoubtedly be crammed in during our trip. As the other seniors piled in to the vehicle, I stopped and turned to the Representative who had dragged me out of the auditorium.
"Why are we being taken away? Why is this happening?" The Representative's dark sunglasses hid his emotion, but I could hear the seriousness in his voice.
"You had four years," he said, now lifting me up and into the odd cube car," If you don't participate in some kind of athletic activity during your four years of high school, we are licensed to take you away." I finally realized why Audrey had been so anxious to be called on. I realized why she had gone to every soccer practice and worked so hard. I suddenly felt overwhelmed with hatred toward myself for what I'd said to her. "Don't worry kid," said the Representative, his hand resting on the open car door, "you wouldn't have been any use to the world anyway. I mean, if you don't play a sport, what else can we expect of you?" The door closed, leaving me to my thoughts in the dark, along with the lonely sighs and silent prayers of the Normals.
This was a short story I thought up and typed on the spot to reflect my feelings about how much athleticism is favored over knowledge and other miscellaneous talents. I guess I just felt that if you're not in some kind of sport, you're not worth anything to our school. In some ways, this is all too real concerning our school pride.
