It was a strange morning. I was heading back to a school where the principal hated me, the student body thought I was a crazed lunatic, two girls could resort to their old tricks and make me miserable and I was hiding secrets from every member of my family to protect the woman who despised me from the moment of my birth. But I shocked both my mom and my sister as I jumped out of bed, took in another quick shower, took a little care in fixing my hair, even using some of the hair products they had bought me during Christmas break. And, as I fixed a bowl of cereal for breakfast, I hummed the song I had danced to when I was stuck in the music box. They sat there, staring at me as if I had changed into an alien from another planet overnight. I didn't care. For the first time in a long time I was happy. It didn't matter what happened at school, it didn't matter that my new class was the refuge of the dead, it didn't even matter that, should I put a toe out of line, I would be expelled in a heartbeat. Roland was safe, and I had a feeling we had done more than agree to an uneasy truce last night. I honestly thought we might have ventured into the unfamiliar territory of friendship. I had a friend. It didn't matter that he was imaginary; a figment that only existed in my dreams. I felt like someone out there cared for me. And if I could ignore his blind sense of justice, I could have a respite from my loneliness for a while. I knew someone out there had my back. It felt good to know it.
I got to school and things hadn't changed. I still sat alone on the bus, despite my new look. People still gave me a wild berth as we headed in, not bothering to notice I didn't look as haggard as I usually did. Mr. Daniels was still standing at the door as I came in, but I bounded so happily past him I know I saw him frown. He didn't get to me that day. He was sure he was going to find a broken girl walking by, and instead he got the new, improved me. It took all the wind out of his sails. I sat down in first period, all ready to learn about complex equations. Mrs. Craft for one was happy to see the change in my demeanor. She smiled at me, and I smiled right back instead of looking down at a book like I always did. I think I frightened my classmates more by being in a cheerful mood. Maybe this was the calm before the storm, my final joyous episode before I set the joint ablaze. The idea made me laugh.
The day didn't trudge by like it usually did. I got the work in my other classes done before everyone else, leaving me enough time to sketch Roland's face from my memory. It was so ridiculous, but this guy who tried to arrest me on several occasions had suddenly become a damn good reason for surviving the real world. It didn't hurt that he was uncommonly good looking. His shoulder-length brown hair, his beautiful blue eyes, his very masculine body; everything just fit together to make him perfect. And I found myself longing to be back there in that cold wilderness with him. It was the only place I wanted to be.
I was so deep in thought about the man of my dreams, the man from my dreams, I almost forgot about my plans to find out what was up with that girl in my Life Skills class. But I was reminded when I headed off to lunch. After I retrieved a tray with limp French fries and a slice of greasy pizza that resembled a colorful piece of cardboard I walked out to assume my place at the end of one of the long tables, with no one sitting around me for at least five seats or so. As I made myself comfortable at the last seat down the long stretch of stool-like seats, I spotted her.
She sat at the corner table all alone. All of the other tables were set up in long lines in the cafeteria; each row of tables had forty bench-like seats attached to its underside, and eighty students total could sit at each table. It got crowded sometimes, and if you wound up sitting beside someone who decided a shower after gym was a complete waste of time then you spent your entire lunch in an odoriferous misery. That girl, on the other hand, sat at the only table in the entire building that was small and round, four real honest-to-goodness chairs spread around its perimeter.
On any given day a sane person would have considered the small "visitors" table to be a little bit of paradise, what given the crowded nature of the long bench tables. And since parental visitors were unheard of at the high school level and other visitors usually wound up having business lunches with the faculty at the downtown mall, the table was open to anyone who wanted to sit there. Problem was, nobody ever sat there. It was a "cursed" table, and anyone who sat there was known as a complete loser, because if they were sitting there they were sitting there on their own, devoid of friends and so much of a loser that even the reject table rejected those who dared to plant their behinds in one of the cushioned seats. Her head was bowed low, her stringy blonde hair dangling so far it draped across the table like ribbons from an opened and discarded present. She never spoke to anyone. When she did speak it was only after she was forced to by a teacher, and it was ALWAYS the right answer, no matter what class it was. But it was the only time anyone ever heard her whisper-quiet voice. She was shy, she was depressing. And she was the only girl who was considered a bigger freak than me.
It was the first time I had ever noticed her sitting there. Of course I had so many other things on my plate and before I began Life Skills class I scarcely knew she existed. Then again, I walked with my head bowed low and avoiding all curious looks just the way she did. It was no wonder I didn't know about her and she didn't know about me. I don't know what possessed me to give up any shred of human decency I had left that day. The status of "crazy kid" had afforded me zero friends in that school, but it had also gained me a little bit of peace from the cyber crap that had been happening. People were terrified to make fun of me. So I kind of relished being the girl at the end of the reject table, occasionally listening in from five seats away to the daily arguments of "Hufflepuff versus Ravenclaw" or "Team Jacob" versus "Team Edward". After all, most of the kids at that table were deluded kids who thought their owls to Hogwarts were only days away or the Cullen clan would walk in at any day to make them a member of the family, even years after anything Harry Potter or Edward Cullen had lost its relevance and everyone else had come to the realization that the only things that even pertained to the two book series these days were being sold in an amusement park in Orlando or on Amazon...on clearance.
But I didn't want to make any additional waves at school. I had made enough waves to get me in trouble with the principal, some of the teachers, my mom, my sister, pretty much everyone. And the next stop on my fantastic voyage was an alternative school or juvenile hall, so why tempt fate? Besides, Jennifer and Sasha had stopped harassing me, treating me more like a disease than a human, but it was preferable to being tagged for open season so I figured, why make waves?
So why DID I make waves? I'm still not sure what made me look over at that particular table on that particular day. But I did, and what I saw took me back to a lot of pain. I saw Jordan, hunched over her plain bologna sandwich as usual, but the hunch was interrupted by the occasional sudden rise and fall of her shoulders. She was crying. I could tell from tables away she was crying, and from the looks of it she was crying pretty hard, though I could tell she was trying to hide it. I watched her for a moment mesmerized, remembering all the times I had cried to myself, having just been tormented and knowing that, even if I expressed my displeasure over my lot in life it would do no damn good. Nobody was interested in the hysterics of a 16-year-old girl. At least not 16-year-old girls like me...or like Jordan.
I'm sure if it was one of the Terrible Two or their cohorts in deep emotional pain the entire faculty would be wringing their hands, wondering how to fix a broken cheerleader or the principal's daughter. Girls like us however, we were on our own. So, standing there for a mini-infinity, tray in my hands, butt inches away from the safety and security of the last stool at the reject table, the sound of the age-old argument of "Who would you sleep with if you had the chance...Harry or Draco?" barely reaching my ears, I suddenly reversed course, steering both butt and tray toward the almost-empty table in the corner. There, in front of the thoroughly agog masses, even catching some startled looks from the people I used to sit a mere five seats away from, I dropped my tray on the table and planted my rear firmly in one of the other three seats. The chairs were so nice and ergonomic. I suppose for the lucky few adults who sat in them who suffered from hemorrhoids or muscle aches, who knows? But I felt so uncomfortable in this cushy seat, longing for the comfort of the tiny round circle that had been my former place of residence. Still, I soldiered on.
"Hey Jordan, what's up?" I asked, probably a little more chipper than I should have been, because much like one of those Animal Planet specials where the photographer sneaks up on a defenseless animal and the animal gives them a glazed, startled look before bolting into the wilderness, Jordan's tear-stained face jerked up, looked at me and she started clutching her books and her unfinished lunch in order to make a clean getaway. Knowing I was fully in this and there was zero going back, I grabbed her hand and said, "Hey, hey, calm down. I'm not going to bite. I just wanted to check on you."
"Could you please go away?" Jordan almost whispered, still clutching her lunch bag, her sandwich now crumpled up in a ball and tangled in the paper under her iron grip. Maybe she had heard of me, which is why she looked so cornered right now. Or maybe she was just that shy. Either way I wasn't all that concerned. I had just surrendered the last of my dignity to come sit at the pariah table in order to check on this girl out of the goodness of my heart. I didn't care what she wanted; she was going to sit down and talk to me.
"No, I CAN'T go away. I want to know you're all right. What's going on?"
Jordan glared at me. "What do you care?" She demanded. "Besides, I'm fine. NOW will you go away?"
This girl just didn't get it. "Nope. You gotta tell me what's got you crying so badly first. If you don't, I'm going to follow you all over school."
"No you won't." She mumbled. "Nobody is that stupid."
I laughed. "Apparently you haven't been paying any attention around here. I'm the resident psycho. Didn't you know? Me following you around school would probably be one of the more normal things I've ever done, according to the powers that be." I chanced a glance over at Jennifer and her unholy crew. As expected, they were staring at me and laughing their heads off. I rolled my eyes and turned my attention back to Jordan. She was looking over in their general direction as well.
"I hate those girls." was her quiet reply. I couldn't believe I'd just heard that. She seemed like one of those kids that was too mousy to hate anyone. Like Carrie White, pre-prom burning. I bet she thought I would rat her out to her parents the moment my foot hit sweet freedom. Maybe they made her pray in a closet. I had no idea, but the way she reacted made all these wild ideas run rampant in my head about her home life. I honestly thought she might pass out from fright and the regret that arose from what she had just said.
"Yeah, me too." I laughed. She relaxed very slightly, looking less panicked. "But you don't know about what they've been doing to me, do you?" She shook her head. Jordan wasn't one to keep up on the school gossip. "Welp, so far I've had my wrist broken and I've been made a laughingstock on the internet. Not to mention Sasha's jerk of a father is trying to have me expelled. How about you?"
"They told everyone in our History class I was a....I was a..." she looked around to make sure no one could hear what she said. Hell, I could barely hear what she was saying. "They said I was a....lesbian."
I nearly laughed. If that was all they could come up with for poor Jordan then she was doing good. But I realized something. With her being a very religious girl, being called a "lesbian" might not be a good label to live with. "Oh, I'm sorry about that." I responded. "But it's pretty obvious you aren't...well...you know. You're just shy."
Jordan smiled through her tears. "I didn't care what people in class thought. Nobody in this school ever liked me anyway. It's my dad. If he thought it was true, I'd probably get kicked out of the house." She stopped again, shocked she was being so open with a total stranger. I wasn't about to betray her trust. She was the first person in this lousy school who had spoken to me in a few months. It was an added bonus to what started out as a great day.
"Well, I think Jennifer and Sasha are a little too close for comfort, if you get my drift." Jordan almost snorted her milk.
"That wasn't a very nice thing to say." She reprimanded me.
"Yeah, you're right. Calling those two 'gay' is an insult to gay people." I apologized. "I've never known anyone who was gay to be such bitch...er, I mean jerks." I figured I better watch what words I used around her out of respect. I was having fun talking to another human for a change.
Jordan looked very interested in what I was saying. "Do you know gay people?" She asked, acting like she was interviewing an archaeologist who had discovered a lost tribe. Apparently knowing gay people made me a scientific discovery.
"Yeah, sure. Don't you?" I asked. She shook her head furiously. "Well, I'll tell you Jordan. You probably do, you just don't know it." I took a bite out of my sandwich, leaving her to ponder that amazing factoid. "Believe it or not, being gay is really not a big deal. Now, being one of them," I nodded in the Terrible Two's direction; they eyed me suspiciously, "now that's a terrible thing to admit!" Jordan laughed, despite herself. The group surrounding Jennifer and Sasha looked like they could murder the pair of us, but I could have cared less. We were talking and having a great time. Lunch was an enjoyable experience for once.
