Summer

Lopsided

Everything around me remained silent, so still and quiet you would have thought someone died. And if you count the looks I was given you would have alreadly assumed I did. I had thought about not coming back, all last night I had dreamed of how this was gonna go. And somehow I think this is maybe better than what I thought what happen. Or maybe it was worse. I really didn't know anymore. All I knew was that high school was hell, or more specifically my hell. It was the last place I thought I was ever going to go back to and yet here I was walking down the hallway like nothing had ever happened.

Like I hadn't had my heart shattered a million times in this place. Or like I hadn't hid in the bathrooms to cry when it got to be too much, when the rumors and Brent and the supposed people I called my friends were just too painful. And just standing here, looking down the hallway it brings back all those memories and the feelings that came with them.

Like I couldn't see myself standing in that spot down the hallway, trying to ignore the whispers, trying to ignore the anger as boys hollored and hooted at me while Brent watched. While he watched and didn't say a word knowing full well he was the only person I only fucked. The only person I had trusted enough to give myself to. And just as blissful as it felt, as beautiful and pure as I thought it was, what came next was everything shattering around me. Everything exploded and destroyed me from the inside out, until I was nothing but a girl watching the boy she loved fucking every girl in sight. But that wasn't even the worst part.

The worst part was that I let myself drown, I held myself in a cage and became an empty shell of a person. The tears I cried for him were nothing. Telling myself I loved him was nothing. Everything that mattered before became nothing as soon as the first whisper, the first rumor emerged and after that I lost track of what became true. Days started to blur together as fast as they started and yet at the same time they never moved slower. I couldn't explain the way Brent made me feel, whole and empty everytime he looked at me, all the attention I craved that he could never give me. I was rotting and decaying but he couldn't even see it.

Which is why when I finally shattered that cage, when I finally screamed at him I had never felt more free. Not caring about what people thought or how they perceived who I was as the most beautiful fucking thing that had ever happened to me. And I was in love with it, being free, so free I couldn't fucking think about what was next or how embarassing it was to fuck someone I barely knew at an abandoned amusement park of all places. No matter what happened next to me, or if I was a different person years from now I'd never forget that feeling.

Even as I spied Brent, who took one look at me and and walked away without a word. I couldn't decide if that was what I wanted or if I wanted him to announce to everyone that I was a person. That I was someone he cared about, someone he loved and that I was worth more than this place. That nobody knew who I was anyway, and then he'd ask me to walk from it all with him. But that obviously didn't happen.

And it would never happen, not today or tomorrow. He'd always be the person who hid behind everyone else. And me? I wasn't sure who I wanted to be, what I wanted but I knew it wasn't this. No, not this.

But before I could resist, turn and walk away I saw the familiar faces of the people I had once called my friends. And suddenly they were surrounding me like a swarm of flies that I couldn't swat away no matter how hard I tried. So I did what I always did. I gave in, letting them take me down the hall where everything shattered for me.

It was only later when I answered all of their questions, where was I, who did I sleep with, and how much shopping did I get done. They all believed I was visiting my mom and I was exactly sure who told them that but I didn't deny it. I managed to escape them, feeling like I could scream my head off and they'd never notice a fucking thing. I found a spot underneath the stairwell where I could sit and breath. I could hold my knees to my chest and cry as much as I wanted to without them ever knowing a thing.