The Importance

The Kidnapping

I don't have many friends and the friends that I do have, are just acquaintances, merely peers. No one knows me very well, and I intend to keep it that way. I only need a few people to care about because if I care about too many people, my heartache will tear me down. I am better off alone. I get all of my schoolwork done, and I am not bothered by the drama of others, even though I know everyone's secrets, who they like, etc. People trust me, but I don't trust them. I plan my relationships wisely, watching the person that I am interested in and deciding if they are even worth the trouble and all of them aren't that I have witnessed so far.

I analyze people quietly. No one notices. No one sees me because I'm not detected as a threat to them. I blend in flawlessly with everyone else, even though I am the exact opposite of a majority of them.

Sometimes I am caught as an annoyance and have been beaten up several times because of saying the wrong things when confronted about my staring problem. I strain to avoid many of the kids at school, but when I get home, my mother and father sometimes hit me. They make it their way of "scolding" me when I do something too immoral. I still love them both significantly because I know that everyone has their personal diminutive problems they harbor. 

Mom and Dad fight only once a month, but their fights occasionally become too drastic. I lock myself in my room when they clash. I fear their arguments because items are broken, shattered, crumpled, and downright ruined. When they finish quarreling, they clean up their disarray and sometimes proceed to the basement where we all punch the heck out of black fighting sacks that Mom got the family for Christmas one year. It may not be the most successful way to solve problems, but it allows us to disperse our anger. 

"What?" The kid who sits next to me in 7th -grade world history says as he stares blankly down at his progress report. His eyes flicker back and forth between his paper and mine. I detect an 87.5% as his current grade.

Alexander Emmerson. He is taller than me, about 5'7. He has pale icy blue eyes and dark black hair which contains a slight definition of a disorganized style of curls. He has a twin sister named Emma Emmerson, but she isn't in class with us currently.

"How do you get a ninety-nine point nine percent? How can you lose point one percent?" He asks, his voice cracking narrowly as it makes its journey to deepening.

"I-I don't know. Point-one answer wrong, I guess," I chuckle as he grins. Warmth lurks underneath my eyes with embarrassment fueling my blushing. 

Please stop talking to me.

"Well...I got an eighty-seven point five," he states reluctantly with a dazzling smile.

"Yeah....okay. Cool."

I can also see your paper clearly, genius.

I silently roll my eyes, yet again looking away from his handsome face as he purses his faded red lips into a funny smirk that I catch out of the corner of my eye. I focus my gaze back to my plain red notebook, full of helpful notes from our teacher's slideshows of lecture teaching. 

I would get in deep trouble if I got an 87 percent, that is for sure. 

Earlier, during the first period, our teacher, Ms. Baits, an older lady, reminded us that middle schoolers get an end-of-the-year dance, or a Prom, of sorts. I am not going. I don't care if a boy asks me. I didn't go to homecoming and surely won't go to Prom. My "friends" said I should go, they told me it would be fun. No. That's not true. Plus, my parents probably won't even let me go because they dislike those types of things and say they are for when I am older and have my own home and bills to pay. I doubt they are fun anyways because middle-schoolers are too focused on becoming "cool."