Just Another Teen Romance Novel

𝗖𝗛𝗔𝗣𝗧𝗘𝗥 𝗢𝗡𝗘

I have to wake up every morning at the ungodly hour of 4 a.m. so I can get to school on time. I've been doing this year after year, making me question how I haven't ever fallen asleep in class. School doesn't start that early, in fact it starts quite late for high school, but I live extremely far away from it. 

I could easily go to a more basic school, but my mother insists I go to this one because it grooms academic success. I love my mother, but she constantly pressures me into being what she calls 'my best self'. I must be as perfect as possible, or else I might already just deem myself to be a colossal failure.

Evelign, you must be the top of your class. Evelign, when you graduate I expect to see you as valedictorian. Evelign, sit up straight. Evelign, don't talk back to me. Evelign, why aren't you smiling properly? Evelign. Evelign. Evelign. 

She tells me this again and again, breaking me down and re-constructing me to be the girl she wants me to be. The girl my father wanted me to be, before he left and abandoned my mother. She's convinced if I am the textbook definition of perfect, then he will come home. Yet I know, he never will.

"Evelign, get up. It's your first day of senior year and you will not be late." Mother screams at me from the kitchen downstairs like she does every day. Sometimes it amazes me how she hasn't broken any of her vocal chords.

It takes me a while to actually get out of my bed. I'm tired. Obviously. I didn't get enough sleep. I never do. I honestly wish I was allowed to go to a regular school, a public school, but no, I'm not allowed. "Evelign, you must be trained in a higher level than what public school teaches you." Mother would constantly tell me.

I would have to spend days tutoring and studying so that I would be good enough to get into a prestigious high school. My mother's positive that if I can graduate with perfect test scores at a pressure school then I will be assured a place in an Ivy League.

I change out of my pink bunny pyjamas and into a plain white top and a black skirt. It's simple, but I don't really care. I'm not looked at in school, because I am a walking shy and smart girl cliché. I don't consider it a bad thing, at all. In fact, it might just work out in my favour. After all, every teen romance movie's main character is the pretty girl who is also very shy and classified as a nerd, who ends up falling in love with the rebellious bad boy who magically is able to keep his spot in an esteemed school that is distinguished for having smart students.

Once I go downstairs, my mother greets me with a smile and a stack of chocolate chip pancakes with syrup on the side. It smells absolutely delicious, so I do what any hungry person would do, and try to quickly devour it.

"Evelign, don't rush to eat your food, you need to keep your model figure." My mother says. Oh my god, can she not go one second without telling me what to do? No, of course she can't. She's my mother.

"Eating fast doesn't make you put on weight. Eating unhealthy food does, and you are the one who is literally serving me chocolate chip pancakes every day." I snap back at her. I'm so tired and hungry right now, I don't even care if she gets mad at me for saying that.

Surprisingly, she doesn't. She just starts stealing some of my pancakes and eating them. I guess she is hungry/tired too.

After breakfast, if breakfast is even allowed to be at this hour, I grab my bag and put on a pair of boots before heading to the bus stop. Fortunately, there is a bus right a couple blocks away from my house which takes me almost directly in front of my school. The only pain is that it's a small bus and it's full of the same nosey and weird people. There's Geraldine, around the age of seventy or so, who is always asking me about my love life (non-existent), and Christina who a bit younger than Geraldine who is obsessed with the way I look despite looking absolutely flawless herself for her age, and also Luke, a grumpy old guy who sits in the back off the bus and occasionally enters the conversation to oppose an opinion someone has, and well, you get the point. A very interesting set of people.