Caroline
Caroline
by Christina Rozycki
At the break of dawn Caroline's alarm goes off. She slowly gets up, looks at the time, eyes half closed, telling herself “ten more minutes”. Going back to sleep and staying in her warm bed, time flies by and she rolls over, yawns and stretches her arms and legs out, letting out a sigh. Gazing over at her clock she finally hops out of bed in panic. She’s late.
Knowing that there is no time to brush her hair out or shower, panicking and running around her room, she stumbles over her backpack and a pile of books, while throwing on a pair of sweatpants and a hoodie that she found lying over her desk chair. Caroline, at this point doesn’t care for what she looks like or how she is dressed, she just needed to get to school and not get in trouble for being late, again.
She sprints down her stairs into her kitchen, hopping around trying to put her socks on, not realizing that they didn’t match. She goes around, flings open her pantry, and snatches the last strawberry pop tart and holds it with her mouth while fixing her socks.
Out of breath while grabbing her beat up tennis shoes, she realizes she doesn’t have the time or patience to tie them, so she shoves and wiggles her feet into them, grabs her car keys off the hook that’s next to her front door, rips open the door, and hurries towards her car.
Trying to start her old and rusted car, she freaks out, and punches her steering wheel. While turning her car key, a pop comes from the car and her car starts. Pulling out of her driveway, rushing to get to school, about halfway there, as she is stopping at a red light, she realizes something, “Crap, I forgot my backpack”.