Glasses

Uno

I could almost taste the judgemental stares as my fellow students ran their eyes up and down my body. I dodged the lines of boys in leather trousers, and looked wistfully at the crowds of girls in mini skirts and denim jackets, flaunting their chests like peacocks.

Meanwhile, I was the hippopotamus. Barely reaching the height of the third row of lockers, and my podgy stomach hidden beneath an old shirt of my mothers, I was definitely the odd one out in this school of absolute perfectness. I felt like I was at a zoo, but this time, I was the one in the cage. Everyone surrounding me was simply waiting to see what trick I'd perform next - in this case, how long it would take for my stupid glasses to slide down my pathetically large nose.

It wasn't like I didn't have another option, though. I was offered contact lenses, but they terrified me. What if something went wrong? What if they got stuck? I shivered at the thought, clinging to my latest Shakespeare novel, A Midsummer Night's Dream.

I hated Shakespeare with a passion. Honestly, he was the one person that - if he was still alive - I'd happily spend my entire life working in a tiny little office just so that, eventually, I'd have enough money to buy a freaking lorry and run him over, just to be able to feel that kind of intense pleasure when he screamed out his final words.

Yeah, that was what I dreamed about. That, and Finn Edwards. Even the way his name rolled off the tongue sent me into a state of ecstasy. I could produce an entire project on him, and still have more to say, he was just that gorgeous.

I was brought out of my intense daydream when my body collided with another's, and my glasses seemed to fly off of the bridge of my nose.

"Watch it, Nerd." The tall boy in creased jeans scoffed, laughing with his friends as they continued to walk down the corridor. I sighed, dusting off my spectacles and placing them delicately on my face, once again.

Anyway, he was just that gorgeous. In fact, It was very possible that I could write a book about him and his hypnotic beauty.

The only problem was, so could every other girl in the school.

---

Why did it have to be Monday when I woke up. Fair enough, I actually had the best lessons considering maths didn't start until Wednesday and my English class was always covered, but still. Just the word 'Monday' made me want to explode internally.

On the positive side, I had Finn in three out of five of my lessons today. For three entire hours, I got to gaze at his wonderfully carved face, and fantasise about situations in my head - not that I didn't do that when he wasn't around, but having him in front of me made it easier to visualise. That was what I thought about when I hopped on the bus and had chewing gum thrown in my hair.

It wasn't until I stopped outside the girl's toilets to see him snogging his girlfriend's face off against the wall opposite the bright pink door, that it seemed like a bad idea. My stomach plummeted, like a stone in a pond, and all of those previous fantasies were thrown into the murky water of my unreachable dreams.

His girlfriend, Joanna Hummers, was one of those people who was accepted in society, solely because her family was absolutely loaded. In any other case, she'd be regarded as a gossip, or even a joke, but here, she was queen. It was like, she knew things about people before even they knew those things - like how she knew her best friend's mother was sleeping with the History teacher before they actually started hooking up.

I don't blame him for dating her at all though. Believe me, if I were a guy, I'd be all over her - how did they even control themselves? She hardly wore any clothing for a start, not that the school board would ever say anything - her family was the school board. She was a five foot eleven blonde bimbo, with an extreme addiction to boys. She'd take anything and everything - it was purely bad luck that she got the best man in town.

When I returned from the bathroom, my hair now free of gum, they were still there, their tongues shoved down each other's throats, except they'd gone further. Her hands were practically down his pants, while his were grabbing her breasts. I almost winced, reluctantly imagining the pain she must be feeling - why doesn't she just tell him to stop?

Anyway, their eyes were way too far down each other's pants to notice me, and I carried on walking to my first lesson, Art.

Finn walked in the the lesson twenty minutes late, adjusting his tie and top button as he sat exactly a metre and forty six centimetres away from me. It wasn't hard to guess what he'd been doing, Joanna's perfume radiated off of him like the glowing sun.

"And where have you been, Mister Edwards?" The entire class glared at him, snickering as they whispered in each other's ears.

"Nowhere, Miss. Just running errands." This seemed extremely sketchy, but our teacher couldn't do a thing about it. It word got out to Little Miss Princess that her precious boyfriend had been scolded, she knew she wouldn't have a job the next morning.

"What're we doing?" A voice like chocolate asked from a distance, and I immediately looked up to face him. I was absorbed in his cobalt blue eyes as I struggled for an answer.

"Finishing our work from last lesson," I replied, my voice barely louder than a whisper. His keen smile edged me on as I pushed my glasses up with my sleeve covered fist. "Yours is up front." My head shot down as his chair scraped along the laminate flooring, counting to ten and taking deep breathes to try and slow my melting heart.

"Thanks."

---

Finn didn't talk to me for the rest of the day. Not that I expected him to, or that he normally does, but I guess I thought we were making some progress.

I was obviously wrong.

I'd seen Joanna and Finn snogging a total of sixteen times since the start of the week, and it was only Tuesday. It was starting to bother me so much that the only way I could keep myself from ripping the two apart was to imagine myself as the one tugging at his hair and squeezing him bum.

My pocket notebook was full of reasons why the two of them shouldn't be together - it had almost been dedicated to them. I guess I wouldn't mind the couple so much if Joanna were a nicer person, and I didn't fancy the hell out of Mister Edwards.

But honestly, they're so different, I don't understand how they've been together for five months. For a start, Finn would never, ever talk about someone behind their back, especially not a friend. Meanwhile, as soon as someone leaves the table, Joanna starts complaining about their outfit, skin routine and probably the pin sized mole on their upper thigh - because she knows these things.

Also, all she does is ask for money. Money to buy clothes, make up, shoes, expensive eyebrow treatments, anything she can get her hands on. I used to suspect that she had actually forgot her family were the richest in the school, but soon realised she used her wealth to give her immunity, not possessions - that was what boyfriends were for.

I'd find myself sitting at the back of the bus every morning and afternoon, staring at the back of their connected heads as if they were the greatest things on earth, purely because - to me - they were. I'd never seen such perfect human beings together, and it made me so inhumanly jealous that I almost wanted to run off that vehicle in an instant and start ripping my neighbour's front gardens to shreds.

As much as I agreed that our personalities were perfectly suited, we'd never look right. He was unimaginably beautiful, with cheekbones that could cut gold in half, and teeth that'd blind anyone who looked for too long, and I was the frumpy girl with glasses, who walked around reading stupid Shakespeare books and bumping into everything moving her way. And I'd never be anything more than that.