FEEL

19. Apolytus

Apolytus ~ the realization that you are changing as a person.

~ The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows ~

~°~

Change can be gradual. It may take years to alter something with perfection, to make it into something new, to train people to behave a certain way, to make something once damaged look new. Although, other times, change can be abrupt. It can happen in just a second. One second and everything is the complete opposite of what it was yesterday.

That was the case with school. The second that I stepped into the gate, I felt the change. Felt it in the atmosphere, like it had dissolved into the air and adopted a scent that can be picked up. Felt it within the students, their shift in attitude, their demeanor, the mere energy that erupted from the pores of their skin as they looked at me. But more importantly, I felt it in me.

Because there was not a shadow of fear in me as I walked down that hallway. Even when eyes all turned to me, when whispers broke out, when male whistles and whoops taunted me, I felt no fear. Breanna's words kept me moving, directed my every strut, straightened out my posture and lifted my chin.

The behavior of my peers today, and the next few days that followed after that, proved my assumptions to be correct. They didn't care about having any valuable input to their circle, they wanted someone who had a look that matched.

It reminds me of when I was a little girl and me and my cousin would play with her dolls. She had many, whereas I had none. My parents were never ones to invest money into things that, in their words, I would break in the next few weeks. When playing with the dollhouse, we would only choose the Barbies who looked the best, who didn't have their hairbands removed and their hair all disheveled, or who had the best dress or who didn't have their faces drawn with markers by her baby brother.

That was what I must have been to them when I first came here. An old Barbie with improper hair who didn't dress the way that they liked and so would ruin the aesthetic of their dollhouse group. Except we're all humans, not Barbies. How we look shouldn't matter half as much as what we say and do. I couldn't see myself mingling with people who couldn't grasp something as simple as that.

So, when a group of prissy looking girls offered me to sit with them during lunch not once, but twice, I kindly declined. Over that, the male population of the school seems to have expanded tenfolds. Where they once barely existed, I found them in every corner I turned in. Like cats in an alley, lurking around aimlessly and bothering me when they saw fit.

Subsequently, I've adopted carrying a book with me and acting busy when I wasn't walking. And when I did walk, I made sure that it was with purpose, like I was headed somewhere important that couldn't wait. If someone came over, I would tell them I had somewhere to be and couldn't talk. It worked for the most part, save for a few persistent individuals.

Mr Pierce was gone for the week. We had a substitute English teacher, a nice lady who had the look of a mother who was done raising her kids. “He's just doing some marking moderations for Brown in Rhode Island,” Mrs Andrews had been kind enough to tell us. “He'll be back Friday afternoon.”

Friday afternoon meant he wouldn't come on time to be there for the English lesson or to talk in his office during lunch like we usually do. The week without him felt like hell, for the most part, except for the two times Breanna had come over after school to chat while I did my homework. A pleasant distraction, but a distraction nonetheless.

To add to my already unfavorable week, my Biology teacher tells me that he cannot find my investigation sheet and I need to rewrite the whole thing.

He was overly apologetic that morning. “I'm terribly sorry, but I looked everywhere. Do you think you can come this afternoon to rewrite?”