No Rain, No Flowers

Chapter 2 We're Going Through Changes

Fourth and fifth grade were not easy for me. I was very chubby and not at all popular at school and there was this problem that I still very much so loved Christian who was around even less than before if that was even possible. And now that the cover was blown that I was taking the whole "Chris' little girlfriend" thing too seriously, the affection stopped. He was still nice to me, but it was different. I was sad. Plain and simple.

My only real friend was Cleo, who'd been my best friend since the summer between second and third grade. Cleo and I originally met at a pool when I was 8 and she was 9. My dad worked at a recreation center called VIP picnic place. They had mini golf, an outdoor roller rink, a pool, an arcade, a snack bar, plus a ton of picnic areas for larger parties and gatherings. I lived there during the summer. One day I was in the pool perfecting my mermaid swim, and as I came out of the water, a big inflatable dolphin hit me in the head. "I am so sorry..." this tall lanky girl with wild red hair said wading up to me. "My BITCH mother got me this dolphin and I can't get on it..." A woman from the side of the pool spoke up. "Hey... Language..." My mouth was dropped, and my eyes were wide. "That's my mom..." she said. I couldn't believe that she'd called her mom a bitch. And to her face! We played the rest of the afternoon together and ended up exchanging phone numbers and we were best friends from then on.

The kids I went to school with all made fun of me because I was so chubby. The only kids who still spoke to me were the Burland's and that was only because they got bullied more than I did. Jessica was very short and what everyone thought was funny looking. Julie and Craig got made fun of just for being Jessica's siblings. I had friends that were nice to me when they wanted to be or when no one else was around, but for the most part, I just got ignored. When I thought I meant more to Christian, what the kids said about me at school didn't matter much because he always made me feel better about myself.

As though I needed something to make me less popular than I already was, I had an incident in the fifth grade that sealed my fate. It was winter, and I had was getting over the flu. I'd missed a couple of days of school and to avoid missing a big Social Studies test, I went back to class. My stomach was still not great, and I had the sniffles. Sitting in complete silence as the test was going on, I felt a sneeze coming on. My eyes were watering, and my nose was burning and just as the sneeze came out, a loud fart followed. I instantly felt the blood rush to my face, but I kept my face down praying that the fart was only loud to me because it was near me and I was in the back of the room. A kid named Brian Smith sat next to me. He was a bit of a bully. Tall and stocky like most bullies are portrayed to be. For a boy to be tall and chubby makes them a teddy bear. For a girl to be tall and chubby makes them an ogre. Brian had curly dark brown hair and blue eyes. I didn't find him cute at all, but then again, who would find a boy cute that was so mean to you?

So back to the fart. I continued with my test hoping no one noticed but of course Brian freaking Smith looked over at me with his stupid face all scrunched up in disgust. "Ew... Did you just FART???" he said loudly. I looked up at him. "No.... SHUT UP..." I said, my face burning at this point. I looked around and all the kids were laughing. I even looked to my teacher hoping for her disapproving looks at the laughing students, but instead I found her face covered with the papers she was holding and her shoulders bobbing up and down.

The summer between 5th and 6th grade, I spent most of my time at Cleo's house. Cleo lived in a different town than I did called South Park. Cleo's neighborhood was different from mine. There were still kids all over the place who played together, but her street was nice and flat. Most of her neighborhood was relatively flat. There were a few easy to climb hills, but nothing like my street which was impossible to do anything on. Cleo lived in a blue house that wasn't anything special. It was just a house on a street of other nothing special homes. There were enough rooms for she and her two brothers to all have their own spaces to live. Her house was messy and lived in. I loved being there because I could just be myself. Sometimes I felt like I lived in a museum.