Pen Pals (EDITING,, READ DESCRIPTION)

Chapter 2

I walked into my shabby English classroom  to find everyone already there, pissing about as usual and making chatting with your friends some kind of competition of who could be the loudest. All except the teacher, which was becoming a normal thing for us lately. She seemed to have better things to do then come and teach her GCSE English class that weren't even that good at English so kind of needed the teacher to be there and insure that we pass our exams in 2 years.

I took my seat at the back of the class and took my letter out of my bag which I had lazily dropped on the floor, the contents of it nearly falling out, all except for my pencil case and paper-pad which I had already migrated onto my desk so I could do my work. I waiting anxiously to give it to her, 'what ifs' running through my head as the doubt crept up on me and my mind suddenly went from optimistic to pessimistic in a second, because the reality was that there was about a 1% chance he'd read this. Not just that, but an even smaller chance of him even getting it.

Suddenly our teacher burst through the small door, panting and holding a steep mountain of books in her hand a long with her small glasses to fit her small head and her hair in a complete mess as if she's woken up 5 minutes ago and rushed down here half awake.

"Sorry I'm late class, I had a meeting in the.... Um..... Office." She said, thinking of an excuse that we all knew was fake. "Has everybody got their letters?" She asked the class, getting right to the point of the project and the lesson to avoid the fact that everyone knew she was a slight mess today. On the subject of the letters and her previous question, A few yes' where heard from the class and everybody nodded their heads, even though some of them didn't even look like they knew what the question was.

I listened intently to My Chemical Romance whilst bored students talked around me, I got a few stares from a few people, and even from the low position my head was in, slouched over my desk to draw in my book, I could still see their nasty eyes tracing me up and down and begging to throw sharp words my way.

To be perfectly honest with you, I don't care if they don't like me, they never approach me, they just talk about me behind my back. Sometimes people will call me out in front of others and talk shit about me, but non of its physical. I mean, yeah I have cuts and scars all over my body and technically it's their fault, but it's not them physically doing that, is it? And the only thing that really annoys me is when they bring up my family.

You see, my dad left me when I was a baby, he couldn't handle my mum being an alcoholic and fucking other men all the time so he and my brother took off without a word said. They didn't take me with them, I guess i would have just gotten in the way, at least that's what my mother had always told me, but how could she say that when all I do is get in the way of her too? It doesn't make sense why she didn't just get rid of me in the first place.

"Jodi? Jodi!" I heard, I then felt someone shake my shoulder and what sounded like a bit of a crowded laugh. Shit! I thought, I zoned out completely! I turned around to find my nerdy teacher looking at me. As well as my whole class trying to hold back laughter. "For the last time Jodi! Do you have you homework? The letter?!" She said, almost shouting at me, with a bit too much force in my opinion. I nodded quickly and handed her the letter, but the class wouldn't stop. The next five minutes of what was usually a fun lesson to me, even though my friends aren't in this particular lesson, where hell. People where still laughing under their breaths every so often, and as soon as one person whispered something to the next person, and then the next person and so on, it was like a domino effect, and everyone started whispering and chatting about me, obviously taking the piss due to the deliberate volume of their high pitched whiny voices.

So with that, and the profuse amount of sweat beginning to bead down my face as I panicked about what was being said about me, I packed my bag up quickly and headed out of the class, looking to my left at my teacher before I walked out to see her apologetic face, but it was too late.

I went to the park to calm down and sat under the old oak tree that was secluded from the main field and play area of the huge place, and was also somewhere I was very familiar with.

I plugged my headphones in and put some pierce the veil on to calm me down, they had always made me happy because as simple as it sounded, music was all I needed to stay okay for even a short amount of time. It was an escape, and one I valued greatly. I then got my actual drawing book out, instead of me using my scruffy English textbook and got to work on a drawing i had started a few days ago. It was a heart with cracks in it, showing the inside of it, and in the cracks you could see small, detailed zentangle patterns. To me, it showed a clear outside that didn't show much but a boing, white terrain. However when you looked you could see a beautiful inside with so much to look at and see, that looked pretty to anyone. To me the message behind it was to not judge people from the outside, because there could be something much more on the inside, but that was just my stupid words put to a stupid picture. No one would like it anyways.

After a while of drawing, I felt a light tap on my shoulder and looked up to see a girl, who looked about my age, stood in front of me. She had long, brown hair, just past her shoulders and it was styled with a bit of a fringe, but it suited her. She was wearing a foo fighters top and smiling at me in a friendly, non creepy way.

"Can I help you?" I asked, shy, but still tried to be nice and not freak out from having to engage in conversation with someone I didn't know, aka, social anxiety. "Umm, yeah, I saw your, umm, drawing and I just wanted to say it's really good." She said really fast, but I still understood her nonetheless. She sounded shy, almost as if she was worried I'd be upset by her compliment.

"Oh...um, thanks, I guess." I said, completely forgetting how to form a sentence because I never usually got compliments, especially not about my art as I didn't usually show it to people, so now that I'd been given one I didn't really know what to do. She then sat next to me and the pair of us managed to be shy and socially awkward together and somehow managed to have quite a long lasting conversation about nothing and everything at the same time. However, nothing could last forever, and as I looked at my small phone to check the time, I suddenly realised this for myself.

"Shit! I have to get home, sorry!" I suddenly said to her, promoting her to check the time too as she realised the same thing and nodded in agreement, "okay, here's my number, you seem really cool." She said, smiling and handing me a small, ripped piece of paper with her number and name, Layla, on it. I definitely wanted to be her friend, she seemed so nice and in need of a friend, just like me really. I did have friends at school, but they where at school, no where else. I wasn't a part of the things they did outside of school because I was too busy dodging my mum and doing work for her.

"Okay, I'll text you!" I said, smiling at her in what I hoped looked friendly because I honestly wasn't sure. She then started walking away, waving to me in replacement to the awkward 'bye' you'd usually get after every conversation.

"Okay, bye." I whispered to myself, clutching the number of my new friend Layla in my hand, hoping that this would be the start of something good. Praying, in fact, that this would be the start of something worthwhile.