I Never Cried

Who Is This Lady: Chapter One

"Ring Ring Ring" the shrill tone of an incoming text message wakes me up at the hardly-light hour of five in the morning. With a glance at my phone, I read the text and slowly face palmed. My friends are always up so early! I wasn't too tired

About an hour later I've finished writing and it's the time I'd normally be awake anyways so I take a quick shower, brush my hair, and do my makeup. Because it's almost summer and the weather is getting warmer I put on a floral patterned dress and a denim jacket that way I can take off the jacket once it warms up.

Just like every day I make myself an egg, avocado, sprout, and mustard sandwich for breakfast. With my sandwich in hand, I slip on my shoes, grab my bag, and pick a five dollar bill and my debit card from the container my dad leaves out with my lunch money in it.

"Bye daddy" I yell

"Bye sweetheart, have a nice day and could you bring me home a cookie from the cafe after school, I've been craving one for a week. You know the ones shaped like animals with the colorful icing!" I hear him respond from the shower upstairs.

I giggle a little because my dad wants a children's cookie and proceed to walk out the front door. The frozen grass crunches beneath my feet as I walk to the sidewalk.

I breathily laugh to myself about the cute, little, chalk drawings my neighbors drew decorating a large portion of the sidewalk. There's a space ship flying over a rainbow and a monster truck driving underneath it. Thankfully, Woodknot High is just a couple of blocks away from my house so I get to walk to school every day.

Once I reach the door of the Viva Cafe I push it open and hear the bells of the door and am greeted with the sound of college and high school students chatting over coffee and pastries. The smell is incredible, with every step I take further into the cafe I can smell more coffee, chocolate, and cupcakes. I step up to the counter and order my dad a yellow rubber duck cookie, and a vanilla cupcake and a mocha for myself.

Ding. Ding. The door opens and two of my best friends walk through the door. When the barista had finished making my drink I sat down at the booth by the window. Victoria and Skylar are already sitting and chatting about Victoria's neighbor Blake. Apparently he is going to be team captain for cross country. I could care less but in order to keep the conversation going I ask;

"How do you know?"

"I was on the school website last night looking for Mrs. Kinder's math homework and on the home page, they were announcing team captains for this season's sports. Oh! And Steph is the co-captain for football too!" Skylar tells us all with enthusiasm.

"Wait, our Steph, our best friend who literally had to fight her way to even be a part of that team is a captain?!" Victoria almost screamed

"That's awesome!" I said but I wasn't completely listening to the conversation and Skylar could tell.

"Tess you seem out of it, you're really quiet this morning, " she said concernedly.

I hadn't told them about what happened on Tuesday night I was too scared to talk about it out loud in fear of someone thinking I was crazy. My friends were normally really understanding and I could tell them anything in the whole world. They all know about my "episodes" as we call them. I told them last summer when we all slept over at my house for a week while my dad was out of town on a business trip. That trip was last summer and it was when I first told Sky and Steph about my episodes.

I've always been pretty independent, in the sixth grade, I used to ride my bike to the grocery store and do the shopping for my dad. By eighth grade, Victoria and I would write stories and enter them into writing contests. I made about six-hundred dollars and had written about 20 short stories.

It was freshman year when we met Skylar and Steph, they had been best friends since the beginning of middle school. The four of us fit together perfectly. We are all completely different Victoria is the super artsy one, Steph is the sporty one, Skylar is the geek/nerd. I love them all.

"Done daydreaming yet Tess? We need to go if we don't want to be late." Victoria told me.

"Oh, yeah sorry," I said.

Victoria grabbed her purple Jansport backpack off of the booth seat, Sky got her coffee for her since she already had her things put together, as always. I put down my cocoa so I can put the straps of my baby blue backpack over my shoulders. Once I grabbed my cup off the table, out the door we walked. As they talked I continued to daydream and constantly stayed a couple paces behind them on the sidewalk. My ear buds played the songs of Broadway musicals.

I was silently singing along to the tunes of Rent when it started. The tears rolled down my face and when they heard me sharply breathe in a sob, Tessa and Victoria turned around to quickly helped me to cover my face. That was when my vision started to blur and I saw the same little brown haired girl. This time, she was in a car parked outside of Grovewood Elementary School. She was sobbing but not a single tear touched her pale skin. I could see the back of the mother's head, this time, she had short, dark, black-brown hair and was yelling again. The boy in the seat next to hers was dressed in a blue striped shirt and was asking the mom to stop yelling because he was embarrassed.

This had never happened during the day before but they still knew exactly what to do. In my fit, I spilled my hot cocoa all down my dress and mascara lines stretched most of the way down my cheeks.We sat at a bus stop bench for twenty or so minutes while they helped me to cover up the chocolate stain and redid my makeup with what they had in their backpacks.

At the bus stop, we watched men and women in suits and skirts pass by and give us sideways glances. A homeless man offered to get help but we politely declined and told him that nothing was wrong. We ended up talking to the homeless man for a while. We learned that he was 39 years old and had chosen to be homeless to make a statement after dropping out of college. He said that he was gathering money to buy himself a house and a computer so that when he does he can write about his experiences with homelessness. That's what he does, he's a writer.

By now we were already late for school so once the episode was over we walked around the downtown for a while so that we could just show up by the second class period.

I reached into my dress's pocket and checked the time it was already 9:45, half way through second period. There was no way our teachers will believe that we all "woke up late" at this time. Crap.

"Guys check the time and please tell me my clock is off" I frantically said to my friends

"Crap, Tess were never going to be able to make it to class on time now and we're going to fail our classes and then we're going to have to retake this entire year and it'll go on our permanant records so colleges won't want us so we'll be unemployed and living with our parents  , this is bad." Sky screeched, earning more than a couple odd looks from passing strangers.

"Calm down you two, there's a simple and logical way through this," Victoria told us.

"What is this 'simple and logical way' you speak of Tori?" I questioned with sarcastic air quotes to add effect.

"We don't go!" Sky said as if she'd had an Ah Ha moment.

"Exactly, that way nobody can be mad at us for being late. Then tomorrow we show up and if anyone asks, we were sick. It'll be great." Victoria explained.

"I don't know you guys that seems kind of risky, what will our parents say? I know my dad, and he would be pissed!" I say

"I wish you weren't right... because you really are right. My parents wouldn't let me out of the house for a month once they get the phone call that says I ditched" Skylar groaned.

"So now what? We go to school, but what is our excuse? That you started crying someone else's tears and we couldn't do a thing about it? There's no way that they would believe the truth." Victoria reasons

~time skip~

So once we showed up at the school's main office we told them that we all slept in. As unbelievable as it was because the three of us are horrible liars. Skylar turns into a tomato, Victoria stutters and I forget how to talk all together, my sentences turn into a word search.