Four

Kittridge High School Academy was about a decade old. Newly formed and originally re-enrolled with nearly a third of the students that attended Hornby High School, and thenceforth, split the district. They also took the 8th grade graduating class of Lawrence Preparatory and a few others. Hornby High School had overpopulated classrooms, and a big problem with delinquents. Gang violence and graphitied walls from buzzed haircuts and baggy jeans. H.H.S. didn’t have a uniform policy like K.H.S.A., but the third of the students that were taken didn’t seem like delinquents anyway. They weren’t as savage looking, nor did they look like they were in gangs. Like the cliched popular high school kids in some movies. I’d even heard that K.H.S.A. had received a 20 million dollar grant for construction and education programs because one of the departments exceeded expectations and others showed tremendous promise, or something along that line. I even felt a bit fortunate to be enrolled. But it seemed like K.H.S.A was life raft of survivors rowing away from a sinking H.H.S. I liked that idea, I thought as I looked at the newly built clock tower during break period. It read two minutes til the bell. I ducked back down and quickly scarfed the rest of my lunch beneath the bleachers. Pizza in the shade. I was a survivor.