As Dirty As Toms

Chapter 1

This isn't going to be one of those lame-ass stories where I start off by introducing myself and going on to discuss what High School I attended and how I have an uber hot vampire boyfriend that I shouldn't be dating because I feel like I'm not worthy blah, blah.

No, forget that crap. That even sounded lame.

First of all I don't really know anything about myself. Like yeah I know my name I'm not brain-dead but that's not what I mean. I mean I'm still trying to find myself. Yes, I, an almost-post-pubescent girl, am trying to discover my true calling in life. I've always just sort of gone with the flow because I've never known what else to do.

I'm currently walking around on the outskirts of town searching for my lighter which I seemed to have misplaced. I promise I'm not a hippie. If you could actually talk to me face to face I'd cross my heart and swear it but for now this'll have to do. Hello, my name is Jade Skye Thomas, and I approve this message.

XVIVX

I like to read, probably a little more than I like to tie my shoes or eat breakfast. I don't read anything important; just enough to tame my mind when music can't. But I don't really like music. I take walks...okay this is SO weird. I'm not really telling you anything important.

So, the first day of school is supposed to be the easiest day, right? And it never has been for me. I mean like, kindergarden is easy: you don't know what school is going to be like, its an entirely new realm that is yet to be discovered. But after you get into the swing of things, make new friends, figure out where everything is, what time lunch is supposed to be every day, it's less complicated than breathing.

By the time you get to fourth grade you're still kind of excited, older but not old enough for everything to be un-cool. Then your parents go on a trip to Uganda that Feburary and swear they'll be back before school's out; their first really big, major trip since you were born. You miss them yeah but they've been on trips before, they'll be back.

Except they don't come back, they die on a plane taking them to one of the halfway stops during their journey and then Summer drifts by in a foggy haze and before I know it school is back in session. It isn't easy anymore. Your friends still have their parents intact and like kids, they are bursting to ask those rude questions that nobody ever should. They write notes about you in class not to you, or they just avoid you altogether because they are scared to mess up, say the wrong thing. My friends were never over, my parents traveled frequently (because when you only have one child you can kinda-sorta still have a life) and didn't have many friends themselves besides each other.

So there I was finishing the year, eleven years old going on tweleve, the first anniversary of my parents death comming up and I realise how much I HATE the first day of school.

Because sixth grade is much, much worse; every carefully placed, progammed interface of manners, humanity, and etiquette, it's all smeared and wiped out by puberty, and is no longer instinctive. The young adults of middleschool way more wild than those of highschool but not by much.

Nothing can save you; not the endless piles of homework you seem to have suddenly accumulated or the studying that comes with it. Nobody can rescue you; not the mother you don't have or the teachers who assign the endless-but-overall-helpful-for-highschool-crap. Besides the teachers don't even want to bother with the hundreds of kids that they teach anyway never mind their own at home, which they are also hoping will someday GROW UP.

I bet you can start to begin to imagine what that was like. I wasn't bullied or anything. I just seemed to float through it all. I was simply misunderstood, for lack of a better term because I don't mean in the teen angst kinda way. I was just older in the head than most of my peers and couldn't really do anything about it, couldn't talk to anyone my age. Just older in the head. And it's been that way for a while and I'm sure it will continue to be for a good chunk of my life.