Are You Afraid of Musicals?

Chapter 6.4(2): Hard Realizations

Hanna's pov:

Crazy. That's the only word that seems to fit to describe the last few months, and I don't even know where to start explaining why the world seems to be upside down.

I don't have to go further than a few hours today to give a perfect example of exactly just that, cause sitting with Gabby, Gina, Luke, Jai and Carlos on the first period? Talking about hanging out all together after class? That's definitely something that last year was unthinkable, almost laughable, and now it seems to be our new reality.

Hanging out together became a regular thing during summer and since school started again a month ago, having lunch together it's also not a weird thing. It's not always of course, we still do things separately but I can't deny that we've basically became a bigger group and... I don't hate it.

At first the guys and Gabby were the ones that made it work. Gabby was already friends with Dani's group and with the guys basically becoming bffs after that afternoon when we helped Gabby at her work, everything turned out to be unexpectedly fine.

For me it wasn't that easy though, because lots of the things that Gabby had been through because of being friends with them, specially with Dani, were still fresh in my mind.

And you can call me a bitch, you can call me annoying, but finding your best friend sitting on the bathroom floor trying to suppress a panic attack it's not something that's easy to forget... or forgive.

Because that day my heart broke into a million pieces when I saw Gabby there, holding everything in and not allowing herself to fully break until Gina left the bathroom, and when she left and Gabby finally let everything out, I swear it was one of the worst moments of my life.

She was completely broken, sobbing desperately and clinging to me as if I was her lifeline... and everything was Dani's fault.

I still don't know what she did, Gabby never even told me that Dani had something to do with what had happened, but she didn't really had to because I already knew, and not only because Dani was the one that came to find me.

I never liked her one bit, I tried to make Gabby understand that what Dani said didn't matter, but ever since Gabby saw her for the first time, Dani has had all the power over her and anything she said affected Gabby to no end.

Because a lot of people messed with Gabby because of her glasses, mostly Jave, but it was just the day after we overheard Dani calling Gabby "four eyes" two years ago that Gabby appeared the next day without her glasses, and it was not until I saw her squinting her eyes and fighting for her life in every class that I realized that she didn't even have contacts.

Of course, she was worried because she thought contacts where expensive and she couldn't bring herself to ask her mom for them, so after talking it through I came up with the only idea that allowed Gabby to be able to talk to her mom: getting a job to be able to pay for the contacts herself.

That's how Gabby started working at the cafe and one month later, after getting her first payment, she asked her mom for permission to start the process to get herself contacts.

So yeah, she struggled at school for that whole month because she kept refusing to wear her glasses, she almost failed an exam and she got a job. Everything just because we overheard Dani making a comment about her glasses, and that's just an example amongst many others.

I could go on and on talking about how many times I overheard Dani saying something cruel, snapping at someone or doing something just to make someone feel less, just like she did when she kissed Gabby last year.

She kissed her and then left, not caring about the consequences, not caring for a moment about the mess she was going to turn Gabby into, probably just wanting exactly that and the worst part is that she succeeded, because for the following two weeks that leaded to Taylor's party, Gabby was indeed a confused and zoning out mess.