Flawless: Gazelle [COMPLETE]

Prologue

Prologue

We are children. We were all raised to believe that school was to bring us all together. When I was young, in elementary school, whenever I was asked why reading, or writing was a good thing, I would reply, 'because they teach it to us in school.' And who could blame me? We were raised in a bubble called protection, and knew so little of what lay outside. School was heaven, and teachers were angels. It was simple to us, like our ABCs, because the adults said so.

Then there was middle school. Back then, school was known as 'Seven Crappy Hours Of Our Life', class was known as 'Come Late And Start Sleeping', math was 'mental abuse to humans', and we would imagine what it'd be like to challenge a teacher, though it would never actually happen apart from the rare exchange between Carson and Mrs Whitby. Teachers were devils and homework was boring. We would pass around an opinion that everyone agreed to: we did not need music, we had YouTube; we did not need sports, we had Wii; we did not need other languages, we had google translate; we did not need English, everything was abbreviated anyway; we did not need mathematics, we had calculators; we did not need geography, we had google maps; and we did not need history, everyone there was dead. That was the problem. We agreed, we grew accustomed to these thoughts, because our friends said so. Which is why, honestly, we were no different than kindergarteners. We didn't have our own individual opinions.

After that is junior high school. 'Oh my gosh, that dress is so cute!' 'I have got to buy these pumps!' 'Um, hello! That purse is so yesterday!' Our goal in life was to swipe our parents' credit cards until they grounded us for spending too much. Nothing special, just a part of the growth process.

Now we come to senior high. This is when life truly begins. You go cliff-diving, or bungee jumping. Just doing reckless things, because, when you think about it, you only ever live once.

Only, for me, it's different. For me, I don't regret things, or go sky- diving or toilet-papering someone's house. I've never been one to take risks, and to me, high school was the biggest risk in my life, a risk I couldn't run away from.

The only things I enjoyed were dance and music, not because they were particularly fun, but because they were safe, yet exhilarating all the same.

In dance, I didn't have to pretend to be someone I wasn't. I could jump around and land on my toes without a wobble each time. I could spin and spin and spin and spin without falling over.

In music, I didn't have to be afraid. I could sing and sing until the world was full of song. I could play and play until my tuneful melody resounded in the universe, but I would never get tired of it.

And nobody, absolutely nobody, knew of my adoration for choreography and song. I was not popular, or hated, or a nobody in school. Frankly, everyone knew me. I remember my first day at Carlyle High.

People stared as I passed, a hoodie and a glossy curtain of wavy brown hair covering my face from their prying eyes. I walked past all of them quietly, reaching my locker and spinning the combination I had just succeeded in memorising. They told me I could decorate it any way I wanted, but I couldn't be bothered. I came in the classroom seconds before the teacher did, taking a seat in the back row and slowly removing my hood just enough to expose my face to them. I wasn't vain, but I knew exactly what all of them were thinking. I looked beautiful, yet my cold emotionless eyes were the centre of attention, like gravity, pulling their gazes to its icy depths and shooing them away with no more than a glance in my direction again. No one ever approached me after that. To them, I was a mystery, and quite an interesting and puzzling one. They wanted to know about me, they tried to, but I never let them. In their minds, I was an unreachable, endless maze, twisted with regret and sadness and hopelessness. And I let them think that way. After all, it wasn't really that far from the truth. Hope was for dreamers, and I, if anything, was not one.