Matilda 'Dixie' Green, who gets dragged into the unfathomable events at Starcourt Mall by her hopeless crush on Billy Hargrove and new-found middle-schooler friends. She struggles to cope with the trauma, which gradually costs her, her popular cheer...
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𐮜Suspended𐮙
Matilda's POV༒༒16th September, 1985
I splattered a load of concealer on my face, I wasn't surprised to come home to another slap from mom yesterday - I was home two hours later than I should've been because of the memorial and, after a lightbulb began to flash in my head, I visited 'Licorice Pizza Plaza' for a job.
I knew Kenny, the manager of the record store... well, I hadn't seen him in years, not since Mason had been working at the store. Kenny seemed to be lonely, no one worked there but him now, he missed his friend Benny Hammond and told me that he had 'high hopes for me - your brother knows everything there is to know about music, would blabber on about it to customers all the time so I'm guessing you got your fair share of passionate musical lectures at home?' I responded with a quiet laugh before saying, 'I did'.
Then I got the weekend job - I got it and I was not gonna say a word to mom, but I planned to write Mason another letter, telling him.
Even as I blended the concealer onto the red mark on my face I was smiling because I'd have money to get the clothes I wanted, boxes of honeycomb - just anything, it was an element of freedom that I hadn't experienced before.
I walked to school excitedly, but with each step I took, like yesterday, the same sense of bewilderment gradually took over until I was an anxious mess stood at the main entrance of school.
Everyone was staring because they'd either heard about my outburst at the memorial, or witnessed it themselves - I kept my head down again until I reached my locker and took my flannel shirt off, tying it around my waist. Everything the same as yesterday, except, when I opened my locker a piece of paper fell onto the floor... deja vu struck me as I picked it up.
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What?Who did this? Somehow, some way - Ozzy the tiger was back, but - but how? Billy isn't here to write them. I turned speedily on my heel to look around but no one was coming forward - how could someone be so insensitive? Insensitive... Jason - it made sense for Jason to do this... he seemed to always want to hurt me.
