Dire {h.s.}

1

Ava Manakova

Being alone is nothing bad, but being bored with your own life can feel like there's no way out.

My days share the same pattern, and there's never something new brought to them. The exact same routines, seeing the same people, learning everything similar, eating almost the same thing for each meal as every day moves on.

"Miss Manakova?" Ms.Wilder says, snapping my attention up to the board from my distractions, "Do you know the answer to question four?"

My eyes move over to the whiteboard, trying to catch the answer in the midst of random numbers and problems written all over it in red ink.

But there is no answer, at least not one I can find.

I shake my head, "No, sorry."

"If you were to pay attention," she says, "––you would see that I had boxed the answer seconds ago."

Of course she finds a way to embarrass me. There's no need for it, but there she goes. A few laughs come from the class. Most don't care anyway, but I hate being the center of attention.

I mutter a curse word, hoping she doesn't hear me. She doesn't and continues to teach.

Nobody here is my friend, not that I'm opposed to becoming friends with any of the students in this class.

Nobody wants to be my friend. I think I'm one of the few students who can disappear for a long time and nobody would notice. I'm unknown here, but I sometimes like it that way. With all the known people here, it's nice to seem different from them, to have something they'll never have... a reputation.

Being unknown serves you with no means of keeping a reputation for yourself, and that is the easiest task to do, considering I already deal with stress from keeping up with my grades and all that.

However, I do have one friend, one person who actually understands me and would notice if I were to disappear.

When class ends, I immediately meet up with my best and only friend, Alexandra, or Alex as I call her.

"Wilder completely embarrassed me in front of the whole class today, I hate her." I tell her as we walk side by side through the sea of students in the hall.

"Everybody hates that cunt, I regret taking this class. They made it seem so good to take, saying that it would look good on our transcripts and shit." Alex says,

I laugh, "Literally bullshit. She has us learning nothing new and she never grades anything."

"You still got a C?" she asks, raising a brow.

I nod, "Yeah, she hasn't put in any other grades besides the test the whole class failed."

Alex sighs, "Same, I have a fucking low B and if I don't get it to an A, I think I might kill myself."

"I think I'll kill her if she doesn't get her shit together."

"Save a spot for me and I'll bring a torch, yeah?" she says, making us both laugh as we continue down the hall towards the next class we have together.

School ends and I find myself in Alex's car. Of course, we're listening to only the best playlist, one we've made ourselves for the school year. It's what gets us through each day.

"Hey, so there's a party that I was invited to..." Alex mentions, turning the wheel to get us out of the school parking lot.

I sigh. She knows I hate parties.

"I've been told that it's low key, so nothing crazy..." she adds,

"Alex," I try to interrupt her, but she's quick to add more things to convince me to go.