Everyday at lunch she would get up from the table, grab a plastic knife from a small container, and start cutting her wrists, encouraging the three of us to laugh with her, make fun of her stupidity. I was worried, but too afraid to stand up to our group’s nonofficial leader to rebel against what we were laughing about. Luckily, I had enough intelligence to realize if I had one more slip-up, everyone would kick me out of our posse. I was too afraid a year ago. I was too worn down from people stepping all over me to fight back. I was just a background idiot in my friends’ lives, just another person trying to blend in with everyone else. Well, back to the knife incidents. Whenever her wrist started bleeding, she would start fake crying. “Acting,” she called it. “Just in case this will ever fit a role for me in a couple years. It’s for the audience. Everything is.” It was so believable only because she was the actress, the singer, the perfect girl in everyone’s minds, but really, as I would soon learn, she wasn’t as perfect as she played it out to seem like.
“So, I’ve heard so much gossip about Twilight. It’s, like, the best movie of all time. I mean, Robert Pattinson is starring in it, and it’s all about cute guys like Edward and Jacob; I’m on team Edward of course. Anyway, it’s a love story and Bella rocks!” Gabby babbled. She could talk about silly Twilight and not be killed by Mairead, the depressed freak while one negative comment on the series from me and I would be the laughingstock of the whole school in less than ten minutes. Maya and Gabby had freedom, they deserved to be in the group as Mairead saw it, while my intelligence never got me anywhere in life. I just sat around like nothing waiting for Mairead to live out my life for me. She took total charge of my life and clearly went out of her way to make sure I turned out to be her little minion as Maya and Gabby seemed to be becoming. They were fine with it while I urged to be my own person. It was harder than it seemed and I felt like nobody understood what was going on in my complicated life I wasn’t living like I wanted to. That lunchtime was the longest half hour of my life, or so it seemed.
Immediately after lunch I caught up with my best guy friend Alex in the hallway and in truth, I wanted to cry about my life to him and tell him that I didn’t think I would survive. Of course, I couldn’t. He understood how to laugh and joke with me better tan anyone else I knew, but he couldn’t talk for one minute about emotions and troubles. I knew him better than that and refused to risk my friendship with him for stupid emotional girly crap. We just chatted about low-key terms like our algebra homework and our weird teachers, not going beyond my older brother trying to break my foot. It was freedom to talk about whatever I felt and just be myself, the girl who liked to laugh and talk about which football teams were the best. A break from the popular girls who wanted me to be one of them and threatened to ruin my reputation if I didn’t.
“Here’s our study hall,” I said as we arrived in Miss Flynn’s room. Miss Flynn was a great teacher. She was young and her students trust her enough to walk up to her and ask about what they should do about their problems. She was everyone’s favorite teacher and had her quirks, just like all of us kids.
“Hey kids. Take a seat anywhere,” Miss Flynn said, smiling as we and a group of chatty girls walked in the door. We sat at a seat in the back so we could make noise and not disrupt Miss Flynn too much because although she is a really cool teacher, she gives out detention twice as much as stupid Mrs. Dykstra who had temper issues. I think Dykstra’s going to a therapist once a week lately. I sometimes wish the people at our school were somewhat normal.
“So, do you understand this algebra, Sue?” Alex asked shyly. For some reason, he always acted shy and silly around me, sometimes teasing me to get on my nerves.
“Of course I do. I don’t mean to brag, but I’m at the top of my Honors Algebra class. Let’s see. Simplify the expression 2x-1x+4x. This is so easy. The answer is--,” I began.
“Dude, you don’t have a future as a math tutor. I’ll go to Mrs. Francis’s room and ask her for help. Maybe she won’t go around blurting out the answers,” he interrupted, somewhat rudely. We waved and I just sat alone, since besides Mairead, Maya, Gabby and a few other boys, Alex is my only friend. For a moment, I wished for life to be different, for me to be one of those girls who had a whole crowd of friends surrounding her every moment, but realizing that I would need to change my personality drastically, I changed my mind.
I survived the rest of the day, the rest of the week, the rest of the month. January and February passed pretty easily with teasing here and there at lunch, but I lived. March became the worst month of my life though and things were not going smoothly when it began.Do you like this story that I am writing? It's just the beginning.?
sorry not hitting me in any significant way.
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