Déja Vu

Seven

 "I'm really okay don't worry" I hold the phone closer to my ears so that the echo wouldn't show him something.

"Not convinced." I hear Nick sigh after I've told him that I'm fine over six times now. I don't wanna make him feel bad for lacking with me because of his basketball practice. Big match in two weeks against the greatest basketball team in the whole country.

"I'm just tired nothing more."

"You are impossible." He lets out a small almost unheard giggle "I gotta go, break is over."

I drop the phone to God knows where as soon as we hang up and let out the towers of trapped tears inside me. Head buried in the space between my body and my knees that I'm hugging to my chest right now. I sob all of my self-hatred out.

I am a failure.

I don't get anything right and when I finally think I've figured out my thing, it all turns out to be a fake string I was hanging myself onto.

Just like me.

Fake.

I've told Nick I was fine as if that one story I've been working on for a year wasn't just tossed in the trash bin before my eyes followed by a phrase of "That's beginners shit."

How a fool am I to dream I could make a writer out of my fifteen-year-old self. A fool to believe I could get anything out of my uselessness.

That was the only thing I was willing to do in my life. I have no interest in anything else. The writing was the only place I could find myself, where I would let my soul fly to the words I scatter to the paper. Writing meant everything to me, meant tranquillity.

I'm in the middle of the school's hallway waiting for dad to come pick me up. Olivia didn't come to school today so I'm stuck here alone. Dark hallway with no one but me, perfect. I'm not even sure if there's someone else or not, I can neither hear nor see from the amount of sobs my heart is pounding. Now there are footsteps coming closer to where I am balled.

I have company.

I feel the someone kneel beside me, pulling my hair gently away from my face and tangled arms. I catch a glimpse of the hand and spot the small black and white beads of a bracelet.

Now I feel safe that Adam is here.

He takes all of the hair off my face and carefully ties it in a ponytail. He doesn't say anything, just sits there, hand on my arm until I finally sniff it all inside of me again.

"Didn't go well?" I shake my head as I stare at my wet hands and wet shirt sleeves. It's pretty chilly for a October afternoon but I can barely feel that now. I slide my now ruined printed out story to his side to show him how not well did it go. He picks it up, swaying it in between his fingers then to the floor between him and I.

"It was Josette Tait right?" Head of writers' club, the one I've looked up the most since the beginning of middle school. She is a senior now, and our school's best writer. The principal himself said he ain't letting her go even after she graduates. She was my role model. I wanted to be like her one time, but now after she crushed my dreams underneath her shoes, I really hope I don't see her again.

"I swear she has mental health issues." He picks up the file again, smoothing the title with the tip of his finger. He skips through the first five pages and starts reading the rest. I really don't want him to read that. I have only four friends and I'm not willing to lose any of them today. He has already read the first five pages back when we were in Miami, but it was an offer for him anyway. I watch him read because I've got nothing else to do but to probably cry all over again.