CHP 10 another ladybug?

 
        I wake up with a clear conscious because I have finished my biology homework. It is another day of another day. I don’t know why lately all I    remember is waking up. During the waking up process, I do not think much of it, as I never do. I think about what I am learning and wonder if I am an educated member of society yet. My grades are good, yes, but I still feel as though there is so much that I don’t know. Yes, I don’t know a lot, still, but I feel as though I am one of them now. I am no longer from another world. I think ahead and not about waking up.
        At this point, I realize that Valentine is dead.
        There is still a lot that I don’t know, but what I know I am taught. I suppose, by that logic, it would be an assumption and not fact that he is dead. No one told me that he was dead – no letter, no knock on the door, no reliable source at all – but I realize that it would never happen anyway. His place of employment would mark him down for three no call – no shows and his actions would be deemed “job abandonment.” Aside from that, no one would miss him. He had only me.
        I realize he is dead, though it is only an assumption and not fact. I do not know how long he has been dead because I have not thought of him in a long while. One week? Two weeks? Could it have been a day after he saw me? Did he realize then that I was lost to him forever? Or did it take a week or two. He had only me and that is flawed planning on his part. I cannot be held responsible.
        I catch my room mate as she is about to walk out.
        “Hey wait!”
        She turns around. What is it? she asks.
        “Can I borrow your copy card? I need to make some copies.” I am doing a presentation for my lab.
        She pulls out a card from her wallet. Are you going to be here next semester? she asks me.
        “Yea. Probably the summer, too.”
        You don’t have to give it back, then. I am going back home next semester, she tells me.
        She places the card on top of my biology workbook. Before she leaves I ask her, “Why?”
        I don’t really like it here. I miss my friends back home, she says.
        “Are you sure they’re going to be there when you get back?”
        I don’t know, I hope so—you never know, though. She says good-bye and leaves.
        One day, between now and the time he was selling watches, Valentine decided that he would not wake up that day. He thought about it and that was his decision. I respect that. He felt that his life was ending, and that if he did not end his own that no one will. He is not mortal like the rest of us. It was not a suicide -- the drastic cutting of a life that was already too short. His life was long and arduous. As the years went on, he became more and more ill-fitted to the world.
        I have no choice. It is either this world, or death. You have chosen, and I respect that. That is your choice. Now, I must go to the copy room and make copies of the data from my enzyme lab.