Fat Chance

The Badass with the Mountain Dew

Something happened today that has legitimately NEVER happened before.

Since school started in September, I've never done this. In fact, I never planned on doing it ever. I'm not that kind of person, the badass girl who does rebellious shit just for the hell of it. But today was different.

I skipped Math class.

I know, I know; it's not that bad. But I'd never been the kind of student to make a joke out of school. Even when I switched to alternative school and my grades dropped, I never thought that wasn't serious. I would cry for days at home, hoping I wasn't damaging my future even more then it already was.

But like I said, today was different. I couldn't think clearly, which wasn't too good considering I had a test over the material covered in class today. I decided I needed to just sit out and gather my thoughts for today- I at least deserved that after the morning I had.

Now here's the funny part. If we pulled a group of people off the street and asked them to tell us the perfect place to hide in a school if they wanted to skip class, most of them would say something cliche like the janitors closet (several teen fictions surround that idea for some reason) or the library or something weird like that. But no. That isn't the direction we're going.

Word of advice: if you ever want to skip class, go to the stairwell. Yes, that's right. Go sit on the levels between each set of stairs; preferably a set of stairs at the back of the building away from the bathrooms or any other classes. I can guarantee you will most likely not get caught.

The stairwell leading to the old boys locker room hadn't been used in weeks, If even that. Nobody ever needed to come over to this side of the building anymore, so I pretty much had the place to myself for the hour.

Pulling out my iPod, I decided to try kiking Wyatt. I usually didn't take out my iPod during school, mostly because people are so nosy here, but I had nothing else to do but think, and that's kind of the last thing I wanted to do right now.

My dads smoking was still scratching at my mind. I can't believe he could lie to everyone like that. I mean, he's never been a saint, but I just thought that he had really quit for real this time....I thought he cared about someone other then himself for once..especially after that cancer scare..

I shook my head to clear my thoughts. 'Snap out of it!"' I ordered myself. 'This isn't what I skipped class for.' I went back to connecting my iPod to the school wifi. Once I did that, I opened the kik app and checked Alicia's messages.

There was, of course, hundreds of messages that I had left unopened from the might before. I opened and replied to nearly all of the messages before deciding to finally kik Wyatt.

When I opened Alicia and Wyatt's chat log, I noticed something odd: Wyatt hadn't messaged Alecia's account since last night, which was kind of weird since he always tried to send a good morning message of some sort. 'Whatever.' I thought, shrugging my shoulders. 'Probably just got busy.' But deep down in the pits of my stomach, I had a bad feeling. What if he found out that Alecia wasn't a real person? Then what? Would he even tell me he knew first or would he just never talk to me again?

I couldn't let this be another distraction to me, so I shut off my iPod started to think about my pottery project.

The temptation to just Google some ideas was very strong, but I had made an oath to myself back at the beginning of the school year that I would be 100% creative and independent in my ideas in pottery. Ms. Mortiello deserved that at least.

I leaned my head up against the cold brick wall and started to think. What would be a good representation of love? 'Besides a heart' I thought bitterly to myself. Racking my brain for any possible ideas, I grabbed my backpack and pulled out my earbuds and a bag of potato chips, along with a bottle of Mountain Dew. Food and music were the two things that always helped clear my mind, which is exactly why I'm so very morbidly obese.

I had a few ideas for my project already, but they weren't good enough to be seriously considered. For example, I though of sculpting a heart, but using a tool of some sort to draw lines in the heart to single off different sections, and then using that tool again to write the names of different things I loved in those different sections.

But no matter what I did, I would have still sculpted a heart, which showed a great lack of creativity on my end. So I kept brainstorming.

Finally, towards the end of the hour, I thought of an idea that might actually be plausible. It wasn't the best ever, but at this point, I was grasping at any good idea I could get my hands on.

My idea was to sculpt 2 sets of swans back to back, one pair cuddling next to each other, making a heart shape with their necks, the other side is one of the swans holding a broken heart while the other swan is kissing another.

It might sound like a stupid, cheesy idea, but I thought it was worth a shot since it wasn't totally cliche.

Since we were required to show Ms. Mortiello a sketch of our project before sculpting, I put in my earbuds, blasted some Rihanna, and drew a half recognizable version of what I planned to sculpt.

When I was done, something in the form of pride snaked through my body and made me start crying tears of joy and I smiled to myself. Thinking of something decent to sculpt before anyone else in the class was a huge accomplishment for me, and I was proud.

Suddenly, the bell rang, shattering my thoughts. I sat up and groaned. My next class was U.S. History, which I majorly disliked, mainly because of the teacher and the way he taught. But I couldn't very well skip another class, so I pushed myself up off the ground and up the stairs to my classroom.