Personal Narrative Essay: Spring Break

Spring Break rolled around, same as always. My so-called friends ran off to get drunk or high or whatever it was they did down in Florida. I, like a sane person, went home and studied because I wanted an actual job instead of slinging fries for the rest of my life and getting a beer gut. Or I tried to study. You don’t skip three grades, get a 2400 on your SAT, and get into Princeton at sixteen if you’re stupid. But sitting in my old bedroom on the twin bed I’d finally outgrown, listening to the TV downstairs blare out some brainless television screamfest, and watching my thesis spectacularly fail at writing itself into the blank Word doc, I felt dumb.
My parents had been supportive. They were always supportive. “We have a little genius on our hands.” “Going to school early can only help.” “Take that semester off in Europe.” “I’ll get one of those ‘Princeton Mom’ t-shirts!”
They were apparently loaded up with the whole signs-and-wonders package without having to sit through a sermon. Bend reality a little for the low price of, if you went to one of the intermediaries for a classic immortal one who had probably been the Oracle of Delphi once upon a time, your first-born or something. Let me tell you, I would have sold my soul for that doctorate or just not another B minus. A kid I couldn’t have one way or the other was small potatoes.
The mad scientists were trickier. They had agendas instead of something simple like a taste for eating babies. They also had a knack for blowing themselves up accidentally. And other people, less accidentally. Look, I’m not a good person, I’ll admit, but...killing people who didn’t leave their dirty dishes in the common room (Becky) didn’t sit right with me. Except maybe murderers or something, but that didn’t mean I was the one who should help kill