Social Casualty

Chapter 3

School has been torture lately. People keep staring at me like I'm a freak wherever I go and the classes seem to last forever. I can't focus and I always feel too skittish to manage to do anything. I was alloud to do my British Literature exam today, and i'm not gonna lie, the only thing I managed to write in the exam paper was my name. I'm almost sure that by the end of the semester I'll be failing half of my classes minimum, if I continue like this. The thing is, I have no motivation to try any harder, it just doesn't come. After the realizations I had the other day, I understood that I actually wasn't happy with everything going on in my life. What was the point in working my but off to have the perfect grades if they weren't going to give me the fullfillement I so much need? There simply is no point.

So I decided to do what Haymitch told me, do what I really want to, not what other people want me to. That's where the other problem lyes. What am I actually pationate about? What trully makes me happy? All these years I've been focusing on what made my father and society itself happy, to the point I lost myself trying. And now there's nothing for me.

I scanne the cafeteria looking for a spot to sit. Usually, I would sit with my friends, but lately things have been off between us. Since I arrived from the psych ward, they've been treating me differently, as if I was some sort of ticking bomb that could go off at any moment. Of course this upsets me more than it should and I'm probably over reacting, but I've been trying to avoid them lately. Today they all went out for lunch and I said I had to stay in school because I had to study for some exam I'll be having. To not make me feel bad about lying to them, I keep telling myself that it was only half a lie, I am going to be having an exam soon, I just don't intend to study for it.

Highschool is a very well organized chain, everyone belongs to some group, and from the moment you enter a group, you don't leave it. That's social suicide, because from that moment on you are an outcast .(And no, there is no outcast group, because if there was, then they wouldn't be outcasts, since they belong to a group) So, when I see Katniss Everdeen sitting by herself, away from the pretty girls and the jocks, I almost can't believe it, which doesn't even make sense because the other day, when I spoke to her, she said she and the popular girls weren't friends anymore. I find myself walking towards the table she's sitting in the corner, staring at her lunch as if it was the most interesting thing in the world (which obviously isn't, because today's ementa is some weird meat broth).

"Can I sit?" I ask, dropping myself on the bench infront of Katniss'.

"You already are." Katniss huffs, spinning her spoon around the broth.

"I'm gonna take that as a yes." I mumble. Why did I come to sit here next to her? What was I thinking, I thought I had made myself clear that Katniss Everdeen was a bitch. For a few seconds I think about standing up again and finding naither sit by myself, but there are no more sits beside the ones at this table, so I decide myself against it.

"Shouldn't you be with your friends?" Katniss asks tiredly, looking up from her meal.

"There's no rule saying that." I argue.

"Technically there is." Katniss says. I know what she means. She's referring to the academy's code of honour. It has three points: A-Do what you're supposed to; B-Stay where you belong; C-Respect the others. Shity code, right? Principal Snow himself wrote it, and expects everyone in this school to follow it, and of course, everyone does. Until this moment, when a popular girl and a regular guy sat together at the same table and interacted in public.

"Maybe. But I think we both are exceptions." I state. And we are, because we did the unexpected and we are the unexpected. Teenagers shouldn't get pregnant or try to kill themselves in this school. So yes, we are the minority, and we'll always be from now on. Katniss looks at me attentivily, pounding on the words I just sayed, when she finally diverts her gaze to her lunch I know she understood exactly what I said.