I am one of those weirdos who is genuinely afraid of metal. Not just knives and needles, I'd say most people are scared of those, but I freak out whenever I see something metallic-looking. So, needless to say, it took a while for me to get used to the prospect of typing on a huge, metal, Saw-death-trap computer at secondary school rather than scrawling your essays on a harmless piece of paper. Whenever we had IT, I would scream. People would laugh at me, and the teacher would roll her eyes at me and tell me I was being a pathetic little drama queen, always after attention.
Yeah.
Needless to say, I didn't exactly have many friends in that class, but luckily I had my best friends, Joe and Katie, in Social Studies class, to make me feel a bit better after my realisation that I was a freak. Both Katie and Joe were outsiders; Joe was from Canada and was always bringing these Canadian goodies in with his lunch, and Katie's hair was bright orange. Like, it wasn't even dull enough to be called brown, or cute enough to be called strawberry blonde, it was literally orange. The exact orange of the wattpad bar. Katie couldn't see why no-one liked her, but in the second year of secondary school, she saw and decided to dye her hair.
Now, any normal person who realised that no-one liked their hair would simply dye it a 'normal' colour, like a sludge-brown, flashy-blonde, or jet-black. But no, Katie decided to dye her hair red. Proper, scarlet, crimson red hair.
I really should be blaming myself for that, though. I had recently dyed my hair a deep blue-purple to spite my parents and previously mousy-brown hair. I had it cut into a short, jagged bob with a blunt full fringe as well, but luckily Katie was sensible enough to not follow suit.
Joe started to realise that constantly bringing Twinkies into school was making him look different, and instead started bringing in miniature Dairy Milk bars like the rest of us.
So my life was pretty good, yeah?
My friends and I had overcome our insecurities and were beginning to be accepted.
Life was fabulous.
WRONG.
Little did I know, but it was about to go downhill from here.
