At War With Myself

Chapter 5

The next day I woke up shaking. I guess I didn’t realize but in my sleep I must’ve kicked off all my covers. I grabbed my pills and took one; It was nice because they were chewable and also small so they went down nice and easy. My feet glided into my slippers and my hands pushed through the sleeves of my robe. I opened my door and walked down to the kitchen; I grabbed the milk and some cereal from the cabinet; If there was anything I hated most at rehab, it was the food. I sat down and started eating. A few moments later Cami came downstairs.

“Good morning sunshine,” I said. I used to say that to her everyday as soon as she woke up. She looked at me and smiled; I guess she missed having her big sister home. I went back upstairs, got dressed, and then braced myself for my first day back in the hell-hole known as school. As I walked to the bus stop many thoughts occurred to me like what if everyone is still really mean to me; In recovery they showed me how I could handle my anger and sadness is easy ways, but now that I try to think of them, I can’t; I know they were childish though and had to do with pillows or something.

I finally arrived at the bus stop and was surrounded by teens staring me down and whispering in each others ears. I ignored it, I guess they didn’t think I’d ever come back. When the bus arrived I stepped confidently onto it.

“Nice to see your face again,” said Nancy, my bus driver. I smiled at her and then took a seat near the front of the bus. It took around 20 minutes to get to school normally between all the stops and the traffic lights, so I decided to close my eyes and rest a bit more.

I was suddenly awoken by the noise of people laughing, and I turned to see them all facing me. I looked at them confused, then realized there was a bit of drool on my chin. Ew. I looked at all of them, and without thinking took one of their hoods and wiped my face on it. They all fell silent. I smiled, grabbed my bag, and then walked off the bus. For some reason, today I felt really confident. As I walked down the hall, I didn’t care that all eyes were on me; I’ve changed, and now I’m happy and proud of myself. As I walked into Social Studies (my favorite class) all eyes turned on me. My teacher, Mrs. Hawk, turned around and smiled.

“Nice to have you back Sarah,” she said. I was her favorite student even though I only had her for 3 months before I left for rehab. I always got hundreds in her class, it just came easily to me. When I was in social studies I could just picture myself being in a textbook for doing something amazing, it was my nerdy secret dream. “I assume your recovery went well?”

“Hello. Yeah it went well, at first I hated it but I’m glad I went." I smiled at her and then walked to my seat. Everything was going great at my first day back, that is, until Carmen walked into the classroom.