I didn’t leave as early as I’d have liked to but I left early enough. It was one of those beautiful California mornings; the ones that surprise the outsiders with how hot it is despite the fact that the sun has barely peaked over the horizon. I loved Southern California weather and I hadn’t seen it for a very long time. But on that morning I was leaving it. On that morning I had to drive, and I had to drive north.
It wasn’t a spur of the moment decision to see Allysin again, I had been thinking of it for a very long time, but today was different because today I did what I had never done before. And that was to put my ass in the driver’s seat and head on back to Monterey. It was going to take all day to get there but she was the most important person to ever cross my path. I though about her a lot but lately there was an urgency, a finality to it all. And so I drove.
The incredible thing about it all is that I never would have gotten to know Allysin if it weren’t for our last names. A thousand generations fought, traveled, loved and died and the culmination of those battles and romances won and lost lead to the two separate yet equally important moments when Allysin was given the surname of Tierney and I, Sterling. Those two names are essential because in 2008 at Monterey High School they fell right next to each other on the Biology, Navy JROTC and Freshman English class rosters. And given the fact that the average high school teacher creates a seating chart based solely on alphabetical order, we were together in half our classes. There’s more to it than that, of course, but at the same time, that’s one of the more important pieces.
Another important piece was the school itself: Monterey High. It was roughly a hundred years old and it looked it. Schools in that district were always pretty strapped for cash which was why walls were cracked but unrepaired, painted was chipped yet ignored and the field was torn up yet never properly replanted. I have found, due to the variety of residences that I have had over the years that most education systems are shitty. Even college education is relatively shitty most places. You can try to compensate for this failure of the United States School System but that’s a might silly thing to do because school has not and will not ever be about books. My very first period, every single day as freshman was Biology and because of how abysmal the teacher was in that particular course, my life was changed forever.
