How to Love Backwards

fourteen | callie

Morning walks to school are my favorite pastime. No music, no voices, just me and the cool air slapping my skin. Just me.

That feeling of absolute bliss doesn't last long when my school enters my view and so does reality. I feel the nerves in my stomach rapidly twirling around.

Dreadwood, Vermont was known for its cold fonts. Everyone hated it, always complaining that they can't wait until they graduate and go to warmer ground. I however, loved it. It was one of the very few things I could stand in this small hell hole.

Don't get me wrong, I hate it here too along with so many other high school students but it wasn't the cold that made me want out. It was the people in it and the air that they exhaled in a big cloud of toxicity.

Everyone in this town knew everyone and everything about one another. If you even one singular hair off your head, they knew. On a diet and can't eat sugary sweets or drinks? They're already prepared an hour PowerPoint presentation on how to stick with it. And the thing is, they thrived off of it. Didn't care that it was — is — a total invasion of your privacy.

Which is why I have to work harder to keep my life private. Some things I couldn't hide like my mom dying and the toll it took on my dad because he never made an effort to hide it. But they didn't know just how big the toll was.

I mean sure, they knew he spent most nights at the bar getting black out drunk but that was all they knew. They didn't know that he could barely get out of bed in the morning. They didn't know that he couldn't keep a job. And they didn't know that I was working two jobs— three when I'm finished with the poster design I've been working on for two weeks I made for babysitting— to make up for it.

Well, if they didn't know before then they certainly know now.

Graduation is only five months away (almost four now) and my grades are in no way going to get me my diploma. Neither is ignoring Vincent but that's what I have been doing for the past week and a half. I was —am — peeved about the fact that he was lurking on a private phone call that was supposed to be between me and my dad. He brushed it off like it was nothing but it got under my skin. Because someone else knowing how fucked up I am was not in the plan and for all I knew, he's probably blabbing his mouth about it to everyone he to and It's all out of my control.

So yeah, I'll avoid him for the rest of my existence if I have any say. And I say I never want to see his too-hot-to-punch face ever again.

There is exactly nine minutes and sixteen seconds left until first period starts by the time I reach the building. First stop: Anna's locker.

She's exactly where I knew she'd be, waiting for me. Or for Quinton. Definitely for Quinton but my narcissistic ego likes to believe that it's me. I roll my eyes at the scene in front of me. Anna smears lip gloss on, puckering her lips in the mirror that's hung in the middle of her locker door. Just above that is a picture that was taken at the seventh grade dance. Quintons arms are awkwardly wrapped around Anna's shoulders and I'm standing a few feet away shooting daggers into the side of their overly gelled hair with my arms crossed.

A ghost of a smile threatens to break through at the memory and I fight it away, remembering the words my mom used to tell me after I would gush about how magical my day was and wished I could relive it all over again if I could. She'd kiss me on the forehead, pushing the hair out of my face as she spoke in such a soft angelic tone that she often reserved just for me, "you mourn more when you look back on the good old days and realize how much you took it for granted."

When I stand in front of Anna I notice two things right off the bat:

1) She's glowing brighter than the sun and that's saying something because the sun averages about ninety-three lumens per watt of — Ok, my point being is that she is no longer slumping around like she has scoliosis. Which means her and Quinton must've made up.