Best Wishes for Isadora *HIATUS*

Hall walk.

  I never really paid attention to the bullshit that goes on in the hallways.
  But everything lately has made me more aware. Everything was crystal clear as soon as I realized that people were looking at me out of commiseration instead of admiration.  Their glances of pity made me feel weak.
I remember when Isadora and I would walk down the corridor and everyone would always stare at us as if we ruled. We did rule...
  No.
  I shoved the bitter memory back down my throat, forcing it to be digested by stomach acid. Forcing it to be completely decomposed.
Isadora is decomposing right now.
  Walking through the hallways had gotten so hard. I was used to always being comfortable. Ready to take it all on.
  But I'm falling apart now. I've been falling apart for the past two weeks and three days.
  But today seems so much harder. So impossible to live through.
  Walking felt like I was on hot coals and glass shards completely barefoot.
  Add Legos to the mix, actually.
  I was standing in front of the firing squad but the bullets ripping through me hadn't killed me quite yet.
  I wanted to just get a bullet in my brain. Right where the pain receptors were. Or the memories. Either way, I would be ecstatic to have them go away.
Shut me up.
  I finally got to my next jail cell of a classroom. One fan and a cracked window were the only reprieve of the broiling cold that I received. I used to sprint to the Fan Seat, and so did everyone else, but I couldn't even walk at a moderate pace.
  I was like a zombie. Five minutes late to class, five pounds lighter than before it all, and exhausted and moaning and sad and tired and groaning and frowning and sleepy and depressed and mumbling an apology to my unforgiving Social Studies teacher Dr. Stinque. The Fan Seat was taken by an unfamiliar boy in a swim team sweatshirt. And I guess he didn't get the memo that the Fan Seat was marked territory by yours truly.
  I gave him a dirty look and slouched to the back of the classroom.
Who was this kid? Did he seriously think that he was important enough to take the pity-party hot mess's seat?
  God, I sounded like a bitch.
  Because I am one, obviously.
  He was attractive, sure. With these oak-colored eyes and kind-of-dark-blonde-but-really-brown hair, along with a light speckle of freckles like dirt on his cheeks. His nose was small but out-there like a toothpick or something. A weird right triangle, perhaps.
  And he was skinny. Like, really skinny. The next Slenderman. He was pale and, admittedly, incredibly attractive.
  With thick glasses like mine, I was surprised that he didn't seem like a nerd. In fact, he'd probably be a drunk jock by the end of the day.
  But I glared at him because he took my seat and I would be stuck in the disgusting back of the room with humid air heavier than a car.
  All because he didn't know that it was my seat.
  Biting my lip, I sat down and huffed. The new kid rose an eyebrow at my attitude but didn't give me a second glance. Of course he wouldn't because I was completely forgettable. And there was no reason to remember me (besides the fact that I gave him a dark look that could burn even water to a crisp) after all, without Isadora around I was literally invisible. Except for the fact that I reeked, and looked as gross as I felt.
  But after a week people got used to it. Stopped noticing it.
  My greasy hair was in a knotted, greasy mess. My hair epitomized how I felt inside. Messy. Filthy. Guilty. Disgusting. Vile. Cumbersome. Something people chose to look over because it was too gross to even think about.
  Dr. Stinque chose to take attendance as soon as I sat in the sticky seat, pooling with the sweat of it's last user.
  "Rose Aarons," he drones. I roll my eyes at how I'm always the first person to be called because of stupid alphabetical order. Double-A means I have to pay attention when I have those jerk teachers who, for some reason, just love the letter "A."
  Or because I never really listen to the shit they say.
Aarons. The name rolls off of the tongue with the grace of an emu on a unicycle. But Isadora had such a perfect-
  I snapped out of my reverie as the next name was called. "Jackson Abernathy."
  "Here," the new kid grunts Ina mellifluous voice.
What a mundane name for such an interesting individual. I thought as I looked over at the new kid, who I could finally put a name to.
Jackson Abernathy. Jackson. Jacksonabernathy? Abernathy, Jackson? Abernathy? Just Jack, maybe?
  I tried to create a nickname. One that seemed different, so I could remember it.
  But I knew that I'd be able to recognize it speedily. Because Jackson Abernathy, Jack, was nothing but extraordinary. He didn't fit the name.
  So I refused to pay attention in class, as always.
  But instead of focusing on the numbness I felt, I guilty grasped onto the the sudden infatuation and curiosity I felt for Jack.
  Because feeling something was such a relief.
  Perhaps it was desperation that made me fall into...deep-like with him. Maybe it was more than that. But what mattered was that he was the first person I'd really spoken to. And he would start something so priceless for me.
  But eighth-period Social Studies, with my chin resting on my palm, elbow on my desk, forearm extended ever-so-slightly, was the first class I'd look forward to for quite some time.
  Before Isadora left me behind, I enjoyed school like I was a chubby six-year-old being spoon-fed an ice cream sundae on a hot summer day. Or some dehydrated poor fucker in a desert that gets a holy drop of water just on the brink of death.
  But for the first time in seventeen days I acted as if class was as exhilarating as a tightrope walker suspended on thin wire.
  I was scared. But excited. And ecstatic because I actually felt.
  But joyous emotions were erased as I realized that I was forgetting Isadora because of some cute boy.
  I didn't know that it was impossible to forget about her. No matter what.
But I pretended that it was.