Social Themes
Pushing open the car door, I dug my feet into the ground and took off for the gate. I could hear my social worker yelling, but then a huge roaring filled my ears. At the parking lot entrance, the horror movie gate still stood open, waiting for me.
I had to get away—that was all I could think about. The gate grew and grew, and then I was through it and out in the street. Everything in me pulled together and began to run, fast as my heart was beating, faster.
Where I come from, kids are divided into two groups. White kids on one side, Indigenous on the other. Sides of the room, sides of the field, the smoking pit, the hallway, the washrooms; you name it. We're on one side and they're on the other. They live on one side of the Forks River bridge, and we live on the other side. They hang out in their part of town, and we hang out in ours.
I scrambled back to the sidewalk and started cramming everything into my pack. At least I tried to. But nothing wanted to go. Paint tubes squirted through my fingers; brushes got caught in the sidewalk cracks. My water bottle rolled away. And that's when I realized there was someone standing near the end of the wall. I looked up. My mouth went dry. It was a man with a baseball bat. "I thought I might find you here tonight," he said.
