The bus ride to school takes 20 minutes, and normally I'd want to get off as soon as possible. But today makes me feel like I'd enjoy staying in the bus the whole time while school went on. I just don't care right now. I want to stay in the warmth of the bus for the rest of my life if I could. You know why? It just feels nice to be driven around, and it could be absolutely anywhere. I just love the view--whether the view is beautiful or just horrid. A view is a view, and I'd give anything to be able to go out there into the world to see and experience things. I just want to go somewhere and see places that are other than the depressing settings I frequently attend. One of those depressing places is where I live. As fascinating as my living place may be, it'll never feel like a home. It's just a house. Nothing more, nothing less.
After a while, the bus makes a screeching stop. My breathing quickens, and my heart begins to accelerate. I'm here--some sweat starts to trickle down from my forehead as I clench my fists--here we go again.
The second I step out of the bus, people are swarming all around me. There are surely a lot of students here now, more than last year's students. This doesn't really comfort me as I start to feel more anxious than I first was.
A cool breeze then makes my maroon, plaid skirt fly upwards. Shit!! I frantically put my skirt back down. Thank God I'm wearing leggings. I hate showing even a little bit of my legs, arms, or anything else. I really do have an ugly body. I'm too short, I'm too skinny, I'm flat, I've got dark circles below my eyes, my hair is at a shoulder-length and it's dark (which nobody finds attractive), and I've got some things my sleeves cover for nobody to see--let's not get into the sleeve part. The point is I'm pretty unattractive. It's another thing I hate about myself. But who the hell cares?
I make my way up all those steps and step into the colossal building. I'm in an ocean of busy students--so many unfamiliar faces--and it's all just so alien to me even though I've previously been here all year long.
Since I've been here yesterday, I know a little about my way around. Knowing where my class, I start heading down the wide hallway that seems as if it has no end to it.
As I'm walking down the busy hallway, I look around and see all the blue lockers on each side of the hallway. In between a good amount of lockers, there are doors, and next to that comes a massively wide window exposing almost the whole classroom behind that door. I keep walking, with my class schedule in my hand, while looking around for a door that would have a noticeably big sign above it with the words "B2" in bold letters. That's Greenwood High for you, always having everything stand out extravagantly. But, it is a good school, just some of the people here aren't--specifically certain students.
When I take a swift turn right, I hear a familiar voice chatting with another. Immediately, I start dreading all over again. There's no going back once my brain is put into panic mode. My knees start to shake lightly and I hesitate to step into the conjoined wide hallway. I dare not make another step. Instead, I hide behind a locker and look over my shoulder to see who the speaker is. In the flowing crowd of students, I manage to catch a glimpse of the speaker through a small gap between the focused heads. I start getting so anxious that I forgot how to breathe for a moment. My vision starts blurring rapidly and my head is spinning with flash backs. My head starts to hurt with just how overwhelming it all really is--how overwhelming her presence is.
What does it matter if she's a grade lower than me? What does it matter if she's around my height? What does it matter if I do better in school than she could ever do? She can really mess someone up, but she chooses not to. Everyone--teachers and students alike--could only see her as the sweetest girl that is up-to-date with her assignments and helps anybody that needs it. She only is up-to-date with her assignments because I do them for her. And if I didn't do her work for her, bad things would happen. It happened quite a few times actually. This one time I tried to evade her when I had forgotten to do her essay for her English class. Let's just say things went pretty downhill after that. She savagely attacked me in the alleyway behind the school. She grabbed my face and scratched it wildly while her two shit-head friends were laughing hysterically, struggling to keep their firm grip on my arms. I didn't know I could bleed so much. I had scars on my face for weeks--which I hid from people by wearing a mask and putting my hoodie over my head. Did my parents care? They didn't even look at me when I told them all about my horrid encounter with that girl. Is that how parents normally treat their child? Or was I merely too ugly to look at?
I take a binder out of my backpack and hold it out in front of my face in an attempt to not be seen by her.
In the swarm of people, I try to blend in while keeping my distance from her. I walk faster than I've ever walk before. My body is just moving on it's own because it's apparently aware of how badly this situation can escalate. How can I not pick up my pace when there is a detected danger within my radius of 10 feet? I'm even starting to hyperventilate, my face dreading with horror. I feel like my heart's going to explode. I push through people as much as I can and in return I receive a handful of weird looks shooting my way.
But I don't care. I have no room to care for anything at the moment other than not having another terrible encounter with her.
YOU ARE READING
My Answer is You
General Fiction~description~ 15-year-old Pamela Jamison has a tough life. She's currently enduring the worst year of her life thus far; sophomore year. She's constantly being pushed around by people; her parents, her older sister, her classmates, her bullies. But...
