Unsuspecting Blessing.

ii

ii

Julia Greenwood looked at herself in the mirror, brooding, staring pensively, like how an anorexic would stare at delicious food feeling peckish but choosing not to eat a scrap of it. She wondered how the girls from her former highschool got the opinions they held. Julia was no prude, nor was she a snitch, and she did everything to make her body and personality fit in, but yet they tortured her to no end on social media; spreading fake news, and making posts about Julia with terrible candid photos of her. Why were they so brutal, so mean? She would think to herself while non-verbally demanding answers from her dirty mirror.

With a sigh, she decided that she would never know the reason behind malefic people, and hoped that the harassment would cease with her starting college this past spring. She had not encountered rudeness to the same degree so far, nor had she really encountered much at all—she kept to herself in all five of her classes and did her work punctually. But maybe that was the reason why she had not felt any spec of socialization, because she faced such troublesome people in highschool she felt repelled from the peers surrounding her. In Julia's mind, it was all up to speculation, and she hoped for brighter horizons each day when she got ready and walked to class.

This morning she wore both long sleeved pants and shirt, despite the still lukewarm weather her town had been having. A sweat was worth feeling insecure about her skin showing or possibly being made fun of for being too far from the crowd. Her pants were a dark navy blue, which would surely attract the sun but not any attention; just the way she intended upon buying them. Her shirt had little to no design, and was not too tight, but not too loose—it featured a pattern of white and orange circles that made two converging lines across her chest.

Julia had her phone in her pocket, and took it out. She decided whether to take a picture of her outfits or not, but inevitably chose not to. Having her phone so readily available nowadays felt strange and foreign to her, because of the last summer she spent in highschool. She had made the choice to outlaw herself from using her phone, so she locked it away in a wooden box and literally threw away the key; to keep herself from distractions, and bloodthirsty badgering. Before leaving her government apartment complex, she smelled the snowdrops on her dresser that stood next to the mirror. The white flowers gave her hope because the color of them reminded her of purity, and the smell flattered her nose with light honey and almond butter fragrance. She took one last peek of her mirror before leaving.

The warmth of the outside felt like an uncomfortable blanket on her skin, like when a comforter is too hot but a sheet is too cold, and it punched her cheeks with its wet heat. The sun did not reach her yet, however, because it was behind the roof of her apartment, but she knew once she started along the sidewalk that it would pierce her light eyes like nails—or more dramatically, like a death-ray. What she did not account for, and mentally prepared herself for, was that once her feet touched the sidewalk, she felt an immediately hot pressure on her head where the sun targeted her nearly black hair, which was held up by a singular clip.

The trees in neighboring yards to the sidewalk ached over her, and a pleasant breeze blew all of the leaves to orchestrate a melodic, natural rustling over her head. They provided support for her eyes by shading parts of the sidewalk, and Julia thanked the trees for that. She minded the cracks in the sidewalk, watching them go by underneath her feet like canyons being jumped by stunt bikers—in some of the cracks she saw ants marching in and out, and in others rolly pollies sat by feasting on fallen leaves that looked up to their healthy brothers in the branches. Julia did not pay much mind to the cars racing by and revving their engines, honking their horns, coming to abrupt stops trying to beat the traffic lights, but the sounds physically haunted her ears with the sheer loudness of it all.

Eventually, she came to a crosswalk that connected the sidewalk with one directly across in the same direction. She pushed the button to signify that she was indeed waiting for an opening to walk through, and then had to further wait for the traffic algorithm to allow her to pass. The metallic button felt grimy on her fingertips afterward, and she had no choice but to wipe her hand on her new pants, or else the feeling would drive her mad all the way to college. After a minute or two, the light across the street changed from a red hand to a green person in walking motion and Julia walked along the crosswalk, watching the white lines pass under her feet. Sometimes she wondered if humans had not overtaken Mother Earth, if pollution would still have prevailed onto nature. If there had not been humans to make up most of the world's pollution, she wondered, would there be another creature that would have evolved similarly and caused just as much? Perhaps it would have been cows, and more than just their farts would contribute to the greenhouse gasses.

Julia laughed to herself about the thought, but she still felt a certain seriousness behind her pondering. She came to the final crosswalk, which would lead her directly to her college. She pressed another filthy metal button and waited, feeling the clip in her hair to adjust it. The clip unexpectedly broke off from her hair just as the light across the street turned to the green walking man, and all of her hair fell loose into an uncontrolled storm of follicles. Julia felt embarrassed, but realized there was nobody around her, not even a car. She bent to look for her clip, but could not find it in time, and dreaded being late to class because all of her classmates would stare at her coming into the room. Finally she decided, whatever, and forced herself to cross the street. Once she did, Julia took one optimistic glance back, and saw her hair clip on the sidewalk she had just left. The sight of the clip gleaming in the sun like a doubloon in the ocean was a relief, and she pressed the button again to cross the street again. Once the light finally flipped green, Julia rushed over to the other side of the street. That's when she saw a classmate of hers—Brian Peterson, she believed—and slowed her frenzied haste, and waved at the boy. He was tall, had a thick patch of hair on his head, and looked anatomically lean underneath his clothing which did not very much match so well.

When he passed her, she hastened her speed again, and bent over to pick up her hair clip. A loud shrieking and scraping sound erupted in one of her ears and pained her deeply as a giant, hard, blunt object rammed into her, causing her body to go flying the opposite direction of her hair clip. Was she screaming? She could not tell, but she must have been screaming. Her mouth felt like it was open and her throat hurt, but it did not hurt as much as her leg. She felt for her leg, still screaming she supposed, and felt a piece of thick and wet sandpaper was jutting out of her leg in the shape of a tree branch. She realized then that she was touching her bone, and she was screaming—screaming for a damn good purpose.

A face appeared over her, a face she had just seen. Brian Peterson grabbed her by her arms and spoke words at her, but she could not understand. Julia blacked out.