The eerie, barren forest was cold and dark, like it always is on a late November night. I’m sitting on a ledge on the roof of our house that is outside my window; laying on a blanket and covered by another, looking up at the stars and finding out how many constellations I can point out before my parents realize I’m out here. All the leaves had already fallen and you could almost see through the vast amount of trees if you walked about halfway through them. My dad, mom and I live a life of almost total seclusion, so the only time I get to see any other living soul that I can actually communicate with is in school. Sadly even then, the regular teenagers attend school for ten months of the years and I only go for five months each year which is probably why, I have no friends, sit alone on the bus and at lunch during the school day and am voted most likely to live alone for all eternity. It may not have been the best accomplishment but at least they know who I am and what I appear to be on the outside even though none of them took the time to ask me why I only came to school for half the time and never really spoke. Sometimes random people in school felt the need to let me know I had the best parents in the world for not making me go to school full time, and they didn’t even know the first thing about my wacky parents. If only they knew I wish my parents would let me attend a full school year so I could learn more about the world, have a real friend that I can hang out with, and not live in a huge house all by myself other than my wide collection of stuffed animals and dolls that resemble story book characters. When I was younger they were the most perfect things I could ever want; I mean what can I say, I was a delusional five year old who thought toys were alive and could drink invisible tea.
Granted, I had my parents in the house, I just never saw them except for breakfast, lunch and dinner when they had to make my meals since they didn’t want me going into the cabinets; and they still don’t for some strange secretive reason I never bother to ask about. My parents built the house themselves a few years before I came into the picture. The house is practically a mansion with its three floors and over seven rooms, five bathrooms, a freakishly large foyer, and more doors than I would like to count. Some hallways are blocked off from me and I grew up knowing which doors I was and wasn’t allowed to enter and/ or go remotely near. When you’re on the outside the house looks like an everyday home would, other than the fact that it’s huge and seems like Dracula’s castle. When walking up to it will seem like it’s abandoned and a few hundreds of years old by its cobblestone pathways, huge and thick wooden double doors, two domes on opposite sides of the roof, and the grey color of the house is faded into a deep black on the edges giving it a dusty look. Luckily for us though, there are no such things as vampires, werewolves, the boogey man, and all of things that go bump in the night; which were only made to scare little kids into eating their vegetables.
I checked my phone and saw that it was almost eleven o’clock; so I climbed out of my cozy stargazing rooftop blankets and back through my window so I could pretend to be sleeping when my parents came to check up on me at precisely eleven’ like they do every night if they are not on business trips. I sat on my bed for a moment to imagine what I wanted the next day to be like; after all I’m a lonely girl that has no friends so all I wish for is to feel like I’m a part of something. Sometimes it’s all I think about and mostly when I look at the stars. They are all together up there in one big universe they cal their home; although they are thousands of mile apart, they somehow come together in the night sky. I climbed under the covers, turned on my side, and closed my eyes wanting to drift off into sleep; knowing that my dream world is probably going to be more exciting and normal than my real life. Before I closed my eyes, I saw the moonlight creeping in through the window from me leaving the curtains pulled out and the window slightly open.
* * * *
The first period bell rang telling me I had about a minute to go through the door and into my English class. I walked in with my hair covering a part of my face and my books held closely to my chest as if they were a shield to protect me from the outside world. As I walked down the hall, I could tell you it basically was like any other high school. There are the cheerleaders, jocks, class clowns, rebels, wallflowers, mathletes, actors and drama queens; those are the ones that somehow stand out the most even though some of them have a secret reticent side that nobody notices. Well, I do, and I could tell you all about these people along with what they really were like behind the masks they hide behind just because they are scared of being their vulnerable selves.
I reached my English class and took my seat in the middle back row, and then placed my books neatly on the floor unless it was my ELA binder, so I kept it on my desk. Everyone took their seats and my teacher barely noticed when a new girl walked in the door with a blue note in her hand. My teacher wasn’t very observant sometimes when she gets lost in thought, but maybe that’s why she is the best short story writer I have ever met. In fact, she might be the only short story writer I have met, but I’m sure you get the point. When my teacher looked up she put on her biggest smile to welcome a new face in her classroom. The girl that had walked in was a fairly normal height for any sixteen year old girl; her hair was a dark brown color that some may have called it black and it had big loopy curls that went down barely past her shoulders. She had some light freckles sprinkled across her nose and eyes so blue, they could have been the exact color of an ocean. There were only three empty seats left, one to my right, another near the front of the room, and a chair next to the windows. She started walking towards the desk next to me and all I could think was, there are two other options to choose from and sitting next to me is social suicide. Turn around and pick a different seat.
My mind encouragement seemed to be failing as she kept walking right towards the empty seat right next to me. She glanced at me and gave a quick and slightly bashful smile that was surprisingly welcoming. At first I felt some what stunned, and uncertain of how to react. I made sure not to make eye contact with her but if I didn’t give her a response it might make me seem like a rude person, which is definitely not the case here. Shyly, I gave a bit of a half smile to her, then went back to my warm-up like nothing ever happened and I was a ghost. Apparently I turned out to be one of those ghosts you can see like in, “a Christmas Carol”. I felt her curious stare locked on me, leading me to believe she was from a place with no shy people because it’s all sunshine and rainbows.
Class went on with the usual going over last nights homework, the teacher giving us a long speech about the from of writing or vocabulary we were learning about, and closing with a chapter from a book or short story that relates to the lesson. When the teacher said to take notes, or asked the class a question was probably the only time the new girl didn’t look at me. Every other ticking second I felt her gaze on me like I was a big red target, and any minute an arrow as going to come out and hit me in the face.
