Finding Me Again

Long Overdue Closure

I woke up in the morning, drenched in sweat from a long night of tossing and turning. I rushed through my normal morning routine- shower, brush teeth, makeup, ignore mess of hair, pack bag. Stop- check yourself in the mirror. For once, I stop for a little longer than usual, and stare myself down in the mirror, pondering what it is that people can call gorgeous about this mess. My hair is constantly in a state of chaos- it’s gotten so bad that all I do is run some frizz control through it without bothering to brush it. I don’t have the fairest skin in the world, although I rarely break out, which is really nice. The one thing I do like about my face is my eyes- they’re a deep brown, but if you look closer they have tons of different colors in them, and although the tiny specks of red freak me out sometimes, it makes my eyes look like they’re sparkling. I decide that I can’t look in the mirror any longer, and head out to my car to drive to school.

Just as the drive home relaxes me, the drive to school prepares me for the day. It’s my last chance to blow off some steam before being completely isolated by a bunch of judgmental teenagers. I speed a little bit on the way there, and I end up arriving at school a little earlier than usual. Normally I try to arrive right before the bell rings, in order to avoid all contact with the twig bitches who attend Riverwood High School, but today, I end up walking into school almost 15 full minutes before the bell rings and first period begins. I debate sitting in my car, but I end up deciding to head to my locker.

I usually try to avoid my locker, because the first time I went to it after the incident, someone had written “bitch” on it with a bright pink nail polish. At the time, it made me run straight to the bathroom crying, but now the complete lack of creativity and originality entertains me. However, I’m fairly certain that if it were still there, I would be upset.

Walking to my locker, I notice people are giving me more odd looks than usual. For the most part, everyone tries to evade making eye contact, and everyone dodges looking at me for more than two seconds. But today, people look eager to see me, just like they use to after drama went down. I felt as if I were queen bee again, and they were waiting to see who I would drag down next. It put a bit of pep in my step, as I regained some of the confidence I used to have. Maybe Alec was right- if I just waited things out, eventually people would get sick of hating me.

But the second I turned the corner to my locker, all those thoughts dissipated . Because there stood Matty. With skinny-bitch. And her mother-flipping tongue was in his mouth.

“Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh.” I began totally flipping out, and I could feel myself losing control of my actions. Matty quickly broke away from skinny-bitch (whose name I never bothered to learn, after she tried trashing me on twitter in the 9th grade), and reached out towards me.

“Ally,” He looked shocked, and I didn’t know whether it was because I had caught him, or whether it was because he was actually speaking to me. “Ally…. I didn’t mean for you to find out like this.” He looked frantically between me and skinny bitch, who rolled back her shoulders and stood up taller.

“Please,” She rolled her eyes at Matty, “Stop pretending with her. It’s obvious it’s over between you guys;  it was over even before she thought it was over. We’ve been dating for almost a year and a half, it’s time she knows about it.” She looked at me with a triumphant gleam in her eye, as if she had won some battle. I knew full well, right then and there, that Matty had been cheating on me with this tramp. We had hardly been broken up for more than a year, which meant that he spent a good 5 or 6 months sneaking around with what’s-her-tramp-stamp. And suddenly I lost the will to care, as Matty looked at me with regret.

I looked at her for a second, giving her an old-style A.J. Hampton stare down, and she shrunk a little dispite herself. “You can have him, honestly. If you think you’ve won some great prize- you haven’t. Don’t expect him to stick around through any hard times. And although your tramp stamp,” because she literally does have an ugly ass butterfly tramp stamp , “greatly lessens your value as a human being, you still deserve a guy who will stick around. So good luck with that.” I pulled my demon glare off of her- now that she looked sufficiently put down- and fastened it onto Matty.

“You haven’t been around. I’ve needed you. You didn’t even have the decency to end things-“

“Ally, you didn’t either,” He interrupts. “You could have broken up with me too.”He looks desperate to try and talk his way out of this one, but I refuse to let him.

“I DIDN’T WANT TOO YOU IDIOT.” I have to take a second to calm myself down, and by the time I look back up at him, I have tears brimming in my eyes. “But thank you, for finally giving me the closure I needed. And now, every time you look at her, I hope you’re reminded of everything we lost that you just won’t get with her.” And with that, I turned on my heel and marched out of the school to my car.

                When I start the car, Matty is running out of the school, through the parking lot, and to my car, but I speed out, and get the hell away from that doomsday school, with the intention of never returning again.

                For once, the ride home does nothing but aggravate me. I want to shake off every single memory of me and my friends, or me and Matty that each different fork in the road brings. I’m tired of being surrounded by the same old stuff. Everything is a painful reminder that I don’t get to forget any of my past, but everyone else gets to erase me from theirs.

                Finally, I arrived home, and I came barreling through the front doors.

“I’m not going back, Mom. There’s nothing in the world you could say to make me go back to that school. Not a single thing. I need out, I can’t do this anymore, it’s fucking ridiculous.” I’m practically screaming at this point, and my mom suddenly snaps back into her old self. Before I know it, she’s holding me on the couch, letting me cry out all the past irritations I’ve kept bottled inside for the past year. By the end of my rant fest, I feel better than I have in months.

“I can’t do it anymore, Mom. I thought it would get better- I kept waiting, and waiting for it to get better. It’s not getting better, nothing is changing. Everyone is moving on, but they won’t let me move on with them. I need out. I don’t want to end up like him.” With that, my mom shudders a little, and I swear I see her wipe away a tear.

“We’re going to work something out. This town just isn’t the right place to keep you anymore.” Her voice sounds like a ghost of what it used to be, but I hold on to her tightly, hoping that she means it, and that I can finally leave this god-forsaken place behind me.