Excerpt: The Miseducation of a Non-Catholic School Girl

Prologue:

May 1999
“I pledge allegiance to the fag of the United States of America,” I repeated on automatic mode with my right hand over the spot on my chest where the heart beats. “And to the republic for which it bends.” For the past six years, every morning, this has been going on. “One nation, underdog.”For this last one, I have decided to change the original words a bit. “Invisible, with libertine and injustice for all.”

May 2009
As I walked around the school that day, I said goodbye to the halls that breeded me for the past two years. I said goodbye to the friends I had made. Their different colors and races are now only a memory for me, but in that moment it was normal. I didn’t cry because back then I bottled up any sort of feeling I had. Besides, I had the hope that I would be back in August. My parents were not sure if our going back to Puerto Rico would even happen. Money was still an issue, and the fact of the matter was that moving would be expensive. So as I took pictures with my friends, made them sign an autograph book (that was left behind accidentally), and danced with at the end of the school year party, I didn’t really act like it was the last time I would see them.
Two months later I was dropping my bags into my new room, at the new house, with the temperature feeling like a thousand degrees. My already rowdy curly hair was showing signs of even more frizziness than I ever thought possible. My clothes were stuck to my skin. I had to shower two to three times a day as opposed to the just one that was necessary back home. Home. What was my home? Was it the one I had just left, the one that I had half of my childhood at or was it the one I was in now, the one that saw my first years of life? What is home?