The Sea in WInter

I’m late to homeroom. Not because my bus was running behind schedule, or because my knee was flaring up again, or because of any other reasonable explanation. I walk into homeroom six minutes after the bell, because I couldn’t force myself to come straight here. I couldn’t walk in this direction. Couldn’t follow the same path I go down every day.
My classmates are journaling at their desks. Several heads snap up as the heavy door latches shut behind me, as I hurry to my seat in the middle of the room. Curious gazes cut back and forth between me and the clock. Ms. Porter looks up from her own journal entry to beam at me and say, “Welcome, Maisie.”
I drop into the cramped desk. Slender metal bars attach from the tabletop to the chair to the shiny tiled floor. Rooting the desk to this particular place. I fumble with my book bag. Pencil tips whisper against paper all around me, a gentle contrast to the coarse rip of my book bag’s zipper, the obnoxious clacking of its buckles.
Seven minutes after the bell, I finally slap my composition notebook down on my desk and read the prompt on the whiteboard. Ms. Porter changes it every day. She shares quotes from famous novels, random facts about nature, or sometimes even song lyrics. Today, she has shared this word and its definitions:

Sanctuary
A place of refuge or safety; a place of protection
from danger or a difficult situation.
A nature reserve; a refuge for wildlife.
A holy or sacred place; a building or room for
religious worship.
Synonyms: haven, harbor, retreat, shelter,
immunity, asylum.

I stare at the words. Flip to the next open space in my notebook. Pause, with my pencil hovering above the blank page.