...
❝He was the poison I was dying to taste on my lips.❞
...
I was a coward.
The coward who wanted to leave behind the wreckage of her life for the man who had tormented her for as long as she could remember. The boy who had spit venom at me gro...
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february 2008 — age thirteen
I SKIPPED SCHOOL the next day, completely aware of how I would look. Weak, vulnerable, pathetic. They could take their pick for all I cared at that point.
Somehow, over the three years I'd spent in Glésford, I'd gotten alarmingly good at lying and my parents had brought the lie about me getting into a cat fight with a girl over something in dodgeball. They'd been concerned and my dad asked if he should speak to the principal about it but I stubbornly refused it, laughing and saying that the girl and I would be fine when I went back.
They let me take the day off and I spent most of the morning in bed, only getting up to go with my mum to the appointment she'd booked. I sat with her as she described her symptoms to the GP and winced for her as he took a sample of her blood to send for a test. To my curiosity, he even made her take an x-ray despite it likely only being a flu. He bid us a grim goodbye and told us the blood work would be back in a week, booking my mother another appointment for when the results came in.
We walked back home, me hopeful that my mother would be back in good health while she seemed distracted and stressed. She immediately went off to the mansion for work, telling me to get some more rest and wipe the scratches with another antibacterial wipe. I smiled, glad that was the worst she could see.
Back at our cottage, I stood at the mirror in my bedroom, staring at myself. I'd always thought that I looked average. But puberty had put everything through the wringer and I'd started to look and feel completely different. Only, I hadn't realised that the change had been for the worse, based on what the girls had told me.
I tried telling myself that they were just spewing ugly words. I tried remembering the features that I liked, but suddenly, the brown of my irises grew more dull and the purple of my bruises grew more vivid.
I sighed, falling back on my bed. This town was poking at all of my insecurities and blowing them out of proportion until I couldn't ignore them any longer. I pinched at my stomach, patting it down, growing aggravated that it was always slightly bloated and gave me rolls whenever I sat.
Things that I'd once thought were normal were now becoming things that I was self-conscious of. I hated it. I hated that I had excess fat. I hated that I had back acne. I hated the fact that I had hyperpigmentation when everyone else had clear, even skin. I hated that I wasn't appreciating my healthy body. I hated that I wasn't realising all these differences didn't make me ugly.
It's natural, Ishwarya. Natural. We're all different.
I shut down the self-deprecating thoughts and distracted myself by focusing on something more worthwhile. I got a clean sheet of paper from one of my drawers and sat down at my desk, channelling all of my frustration into my short story for English.
