Knife

2 - Preschool

Preschool started a trend that would snowball throughout the rest of my life; it was the beginning of a world of wishes and nothing else. Everything I did there was fake, a calculated plot to make sure that I was queen, that I had everything I could possibly want.

This is my domain now, and there's nothing you can do about it.

It's mine.

Goodbye, everybody else. I'm the only one getting noticed, liked, and admired here.

It's all mine.

My first day was fine. There was no manipulation, no fake feelings, and we were all happy together.

But this isn't my domain. That's not okay.

This is supposed to be my world, not everybody's. I'm not sharing with you.

Then came the fake smiles, the forced laughter, the cute faces, the alligator tears.

I'm here for my world.

I was king. Or queen, as I loved being addressed as. Queen Lexi, I love your hair today, I'd always hear from Mia, and Queen Lexi, your outfit is so cute!, as I'd hear from Heather everyday. My ego was undeflatable. Even when someone just didn't address me as Queen, they instantly dropped from my inner circle. Instead of being revered like they could have been, they became shunned.

This is my world. You cannot escape. Try as you might, there is a wall that you cannot scale. There are mountains that you cannot climb, and even the sky will thunder down on you to keep you inside.

There is no such thing as "escape."

Nathaniel, once my close friend, dropped from 3rd in command to the target of bullies because he didn't compliment me for a full week.

He wasn't needed around me anymore.

Nathaniel, I don't want you anymore. I wish you'd just go away, become the target of other because of your failures. Take a taste of that for a year, and see how you treat me next time, all right?

Genevieve, one of my closer acquaintances, become the loner of the class.

Ignore me when I talk, and next time you might not live. Instead of just eating and playing by yourself, how about you just get a taste of this negativity before you choose who to ignore?

My sweet smile and my all-powerful weapon of my mind were never far apart. If you didn't respond to my smile, your social status dropped. Hard.

I guess honey and poison aren't so different after all.

And teachers? They were hardly part of the equation. Miss Grant, I wish you would please leave us alone to mind our own business. Because really, you aren't a part of it, so please don't butt your head in to "check" on us when you really just want to the intimate details of our life.

Please. I know your mind almost as well as you do.

So don't even try to pretend, let your eyes go blank and walk away, just as I command.

My friends were always on a precarious ledge.

Don't look, and you'll go down a hard, one-way fall.

One without mercy.

But my spot at the top was saved since the first day. Even with my already glorious looks and mind-blowing intelligence in school, there was no way I was going to let anyone come so close as to become popular enough for me to even call them a rival.

There was no way.

So each day, I tapped into a new person's head to place in thoughts about how Lexi is amazing, I wish I could be like her, and how Lexi is so smart, I want to be friends with her, and the wrongest one of all, Lexi is so nice, everyone in the world should get to know her!

Day by day, I put together the pieces of my throne and secured them until, by the end of the first month, I was indisputably queen.