Maybe Before Today

Chapter 1

     The first day of school. The day I dreaded most every year. After a summer spent mostly alone, save for a few days out with friends or my parents, I stood in my bedroom, pulling my light pink sweater on over my white shirt, dreading the day ahead. I could feel the anxiety like a pair of hands slowly tightening around my neck, cutting off my oxygen supply. And my favourite sweater suddenly felt like it was constricting my chest.
     I closed my eyes for a second, then took a deep breath in. I started to feel some sense of relief, however minimal it was. I threw my hair behind my shoulders, grabbed my school bag, slung it over my shoulder and walked downstairs, where my parents were getting ready to leave for work.
     "Morning."
     "Morning, sweetie," my mom said, before handing me an envelope containing letters we had to hand in at the start of every year. I really didn't get why we had to. My address hadn't changed, nothing with my parents had changed; why did the school need a reiteration of the same old phone numbers and addresses?
     "Okay." I shoved them into my bag behind all of my folders then walked over to the table get my water bottle.
     "Morning, dad."
     "Oh, Alice!" He looked away from his iPad. "Didn't hear you come down."
     "Heathers tickets?"
     "Why couldn't they have gone on sale at the weekend?"
     I laughed.
     "But don't worry. There is no way that I'm not getting these tickets. I know how excited you were when you found out it was on at The Starlight."
     "Thanks, dad." I smiled at him before filling up my water bottle and starting to walk toward the door.
     "Oh, Alice, honey," my dad said, so I reluctantly turned back.
     "M-hm?"
     "Remember your lunch."
     "Oh. Yeah." I grabbed it from the fridge, hoping they would buy that I'd forgotten it. I didn't want them to catch onto how anxious I was and losing my appetite was the first thing that they usually noticed.
     After saying goodbye to my parents, I walked across the road and down the crescent to my friend Ziggs' house. We walked to school together every day. There was a bus, but the amount of people on it kind of made both of us want to scream. So we would walk every morning instead.
     "Sorry, sorry," they said, running toward me with their leather jacket only half-on and their t-shirt half untucked from their trousers. "I woke up late."
     I laughed, "Your t-shirt's untucked."
     "What?" They looked down. "Oh. I'll sort that when we get to school."
     "So, how come you woke up late?"
     They shrugged on the other side of their jacket. "Only got to sleep at, like, half five."
     "Jesus, Ziggs. That's bad."
     "I know. And I know I'm gonna be fighting to keep my eyes open by eight in the evening. But I couldn't help it."
     "How not?" We started to walk back up the crescent and up the hill.
     "I thought the tea I drank yesterday evening was decaf."
     "Ooh, that's not good."
     "Yeah... Anyway, first day of school."
     "Don't remind me."
     "And that leads me nicely to my question. How do you feel?"
     "I'm fine."
     "Come on."
     I sighed, "Fine. A little anxious. But I'll be fine as soon as we get there."
     "Are you sure? You've been unusually quiet over the summer."
     "I have?"
     I knew I had. It wasn't deliberate, but I was fully aware. It was just tricky to keep up with any sort of social life when I had so much other stuff on my mind. And there was a lot of that over the summer. To be fair, there had been for many years. But things got especially bad over the summer. Not bad, just... Not good.
     "Yeah. You have. You sure everything's okay?"
     "Just been a little busy."
     "All right. I'll believe you for now."
     "Do you wanna go get coffee? You look like you're about to keel over there."
     "Dear god, yes."

     After getting coffee, we arrived at school. And the anxiety just grew, the hands around my throat tightening.
     "You ready?" Ziggs asked me.
     I inhaled sharply before nodding, despite my lack of willingness to enter that building. As usual, we congregated in the games hall with the other people in our year. It was strange to look around and see all these people who's existence was completely inconsequential to me over the holidays. I had kind of forgotten about a lot of them to be quite honest.
     "Oh. My. God," Ziggs said.
     "What?"
     "Is that... Are Danny and Deb like... a thing now?"
     I looked over to one corner of the hall. That was where the 'smoke club', a group of stoners at my school, always stood, always looking vaguely suspicious. Danny seemed to have his arm around Deb.
     "It seems like it," I said, not really caring.
     "I did not expect that."
     "Why?"
     "No reason."
     With a roll of my eyes, I looked up at the clock and picked up my bag. "Bell's gonna go in a second."
     Ziggs grabbed their stuff and, as if on cue, the bell went and we walked to our first class, English. I had always loved English. I absolutely loved writing. It had been my dream for as long as I could remember to see a play I wrote performed one day. I had wanted to be an actor when I was really young, but then anxiety kicked in. And, to be honest, I enjoyed writing more anyway.
     "I hope we don't do too much work today," Ziggs said.
     "For your sake I agree," I said as I opened the door. Just as we were about to make a beeline for the only free desk, somebody pointed to a seating chart on the front desk. And my throat felt even more constricted. The metaphorical hands would not relent.
     Ziggs sighed, "Who am I gonna copy from?"
     I forced a laugh. "It'll be good for you."
     "It won't be good for my grades!"
     "You can still have help with homework."
     "I'm sort of counting on that."
     After finally finding my name and looking around the class to find my desk, I saw that the desk was against the wall in the second row and the inside seat was already taken. Thank god I got the aisle seat, just the thought of being trapped in there made me shiver.
     But, when I realised who it was taken by, my stomach dropped. It was Lex Foster. I had never known her well, but she always sort of intimidated me. Although, she was out of school pretty often so at least there was one upside.
     When I walked over, she had her hood up and her legs were crossed over the table. Not entirely sure if she noticed me, I sat down and put my bag on the floor, careful to keep my gaze focused on the desk.
     I just sat there for a few seconds, biting my lip and drumming my fingers on the desk before she turned to me and said, "Hey."
     "Hi," I replied, smiling uncomfortably.
     "You know where the teacher is?"
     How on earth should I know?
     "Probably dealing with people who have gone to the wrong class or something. First day drama."
     She just nodded before turning away. I turned back to the desk.

     "My god, English was torture," I said to Ziggs at break.
     "What was so bad?"
     "I'm sitting next to Lex Foster."
     "She's the one that scares you, right?"
     "There's a difference between being scared of someone and finding someone mildly intimidating."
     "Right, right. She's the one that scares you?"
     I rolled my eyes, "No. She intimidates me a little."
     "She might be nice if you get to know her."
     "I'm not saying she's not nice, she's just..."
     "Scary?"
     "Intimidating."
     "How so?"
     A very long list of reasons. But I kept it to, "She never speaks to anybody. Like, ever. Other than that guy in the year above."
     "So she doesn't like people. What's so scary about that?"
     "Intimidating. And I don't know."

"God, I forgot how exhausting school is," I said, flopping down onto my bed as they sat in my desk chair when we got back to my house.
"Yeah. Summer's barely over and I'm waiting for October to get here."
"You wanna order pizza? I'm starving."
"Sure."
So we ordered pizza, put on the TV and did very little for half an hour. It was basically my idea of a perfect day. But then my dad came into my room and he looked mildly peeved.
"Hey, Alice. Hey, Ziggs," he said, standing in the doorframe.
"Hi," I said nervously whilst Ziggs smiled and nodded.
"Guess what."
"What?" I started to fidget with the end of my sleeve.
But then a smile broke out across his face. "I got the tickets!"
"Oh my god!" I jumped up and threw my arms around him. "Thank you thank you thank you!"
He laughed as I sat back down on my bed, "I've gotta go do some work stuff, you guys had dinner?"
I pointed to a pizza box.
"Good. And how was the first day back?"
"It was good," Ziggs said to distract from my eye roll. I definitely did not agree with their assessment.
"Good. I'll see you two later."
"Okay." I nodded as my dad shut the door.
"That's the first time I've seen you smile all day," Ziggs said.'
I rolled my eyes. "It is not."
"Alice, I've known you long enough to know when you're faking. So what's up?"
I could feel my face start to tingle, as if nails were touching it, just gently enough not to leave a scratch, and the smile on my face vanished. "Fine. Maybe you're right. But I... I can't say anything just yet."
"Alice," they said softly, moving from my desk chair onto the bed next to me. "Whatever it is, you can tell me. You know you can trust me."
I nodded. "I know. I know I can trust you. It's the secret I can't trust."
"Well, I'm not gonna try and push. But, whenever you're ready, you can talk to me."
I nodded, staring into my carpet.

"Hey, dad," I said, walking into the kitchen with the empty pizza box after Ziggs had left.
"Hey."
I sat down across from him.
"So, tell me about the first day."
I sighed, "It was a very average first day. Nothing exciting happened."
"Nothing?"
"Nothing."
Accepting defeat, he turned back to his laptop so I stood up.
"Uh, where's mom?" I asked just as I went to walk upstairs.
"Uh, I think she said she was working late."
"Oh. Okay."

~

(A/N: I know writing this isn't the same as being able to go back to MAT, but it feels so good to be writing about that same world again. I'm still not emotionally ready for MAT to be over and it's been over for ages)