Becoming Miss Visible

Some pictures are not worth a thousand words

Chapter 13

It took about an hour to get my car cleaned off. Thankfully I had called my mom and Mr. Freeloader and they knew I was going to be late.

I spent the night blasting music and trying to forget about my life. I really want my invisible life back. I miss the anonymity. People wouldn’t think twice to completely ignore me, and that’s the way I liked it.

 The next morning I felt awful. I didn’t want to go to school, but like the dedicated student that I am I got up and got ready anyway. I dropped Bailey off and took and deep breath. Oh how I wish I didn’t have to go to school. But what could be worse than yesterday right?

I made my way into the parking lot and saw Dalton standing there with Mason with worried looks on their faces.

“Hey Callie, how do you feel about skipping today. Just us three, it’ll be fun.” Dalton tried over-brightly to convince me, and right away I knew something us up.

 “I’m good. I just want to get this day over with and go to class like the good little girl that I am.” I said walking into school. I was stopped by Mason.

 “Are you sure? I’m sure you could use a day off to just chill after yesterday.” Mason said, stepping in my path.

“Come on, I don’t want to be late.” I pushed past him, much to the boys protest.

“Oh no you don’t want to do-” They were cut off by my walking into school. Note to self: When you ask yourself if things could possibly be any worse, expect something worse to happen. The second I did, I dropped my books, horrified by what I saw. There were thousands of pictures of me plastered all over the school. Some were of Dalton and I at the park when I was crying on his shoulder, make-up running down my face, some were of Dalton, Mason, and I from yesterday with the words slut and threesome written all over them in red marker. One was of me last year when I had glasses and braces and they all said wanna be. I was floored at what I saw. Why would someone do this? What had I ever done to whoever this was? I just didn’t understand. And I thought the car paint was bad. The pictures were plastered all over the wall, on people’s lockers, everywhere you could possibly imagine.

The students were laughing and looking at the pictures until the second that I walked in. The hallways had become incredibly silent. Everyone was looking at me and expecting a reaction. I decided to play it cool and pretend to not notice. I walked to my locker and saw that it looked remarkably like my car did yesterday. I pulled all the paper off my locker and threw it into the trashcan that was set up across from my locker.

I could feel people’s eyes on me, but I chose to ignore them. Pretend I don’t care and maybe then they would leave me alone. I walked past people to my class. The bell rang and I sat in my usual seat. Not surprisingly the classroom was filled with my pictures and words written all over them. Whoever hates me this much must have really spent a good amount of time and money in this. I was flattered in an almost-sorta-but-not-really way.

“Good morning class, well I see someone was busy last night. Wow, I feel bad for the people in these pictures. I mean who would go to this great a scale to do something like that. Anyway, on to Chemistry class. Please pull out your texts and let’s discuss…” I stopped paying attention to him and started paying attention to the populars, Mason thankfully not among them.

“I can’t believe she isn’t reacting. I saw her and I knew she was upset about her car yesterday, but still I can’t believe she hasn’t had a total meltdown. This is craziness. I mean come on who wouldn’t freak out about this? It’s all over the school…” I had heard enough and immersed myself in my book until the bell rang. When I walked out of the door I expected to see Dalton there, but he wasn’t so I walked the halls filled with me alone. Maybe he just doesn’t want to be seen with me after all that has happened. I wouldn’t blame him. Maybe life would go back to normal and everything would be fine and I could sink into the background again without anyone noticing.