During the same period of time that I had taken Larry hostage, I was also a student at Sand Hill elementary, a place of which, to this day, I felt I never belonged. I knew exactly how Balki felt when he moved to America from Mypos; after a recent move from Connecticut, Villa Rica was a strange land. I never made the connection that possibly Larry the turtle was going through the same ordeal as I was, as I did take him from his home and made him a new home with me. This school was foreign territory. When entering the parking lot of the school, one who is observant may notice that the building seems to draw within itself. It is a low, dirty, ominous looking school, which at the time, was surrounded by trees, a Patel-run gas station, a small rash of trailor homes and three dumpsters housing stray cats.
Every time my mother dropped me off at the car-rider’s station, I looked at the sidewalk leading to the door, grass growing through the cracks, and dragged my feet inside the cavernous enterance. I walked down the hallway past the lunchroom every morning, looking ahead at the gleam of light that slithered up the glossy, dingy-tan floor, and out of the back door of the building to my classroom. The classroom was actually a small trailor, where I believed the teacher Mrs. Ethridge, dwelled day and night.
Mrs. Ethridge was a teacher of whom I was terrified. She had a sharp tongue, which was hidden during parent and teacher conferences, and quick darting eyes and a nose like a beak. She would squack orders from the Pledge of Allegence until the last bell of the day.
Because I was afraid of Mrs. Ethridge, my father made up a story which I believed, about the habits of Mrs. Ethridge. With Larry on my knee, I listened as only a gulliable daughter would, as Daddy told me that Mrs. Ethridge had webbed feet and ate pickled frog’s legs in the classroom when the kids went home at the end of the day. With this knowledge, Daddy and I cackled at the expense of my web-footed, bird-like teacher. Apparently, Mrs. Ethridge was a witch of sorts and had I not been able to find solice in my one friend, I think I would have been at my wit’s end.
My best friend, aside from a delusion that Larry was my best friend, was Abby Smith, a short chubby shy girl who loved cats. We braved the 3rd grade together. She would talk about her cats during recess and pass me notes from across the room about cats when Mrs. Ethridge was illegedly not looking, and I would pass her notes about Larry and his progress in becoming a house turtle. A kid named Jason, of whom I would have a giant crush on in the 4th grade, would deliver the notes back and fourth between us by pretending to sharpen his pencil, eagerly wanting in on the fun.