Love, Scarlett | WATQ WINNER

05 | those stares

HIGH SCHOOL HALLS are the most dangerous of all places. Reputations are created, statuses are formed and people are defined. The popular people walk the middle like it's their life's runway. The others stay on the sides, close to the walls, watching on like spectators.

Scarlett had always been near the walls, but she didn't mind it. To her, it contained some kind of anonymity - where she could blend into the shadows and get through these four hellish years. She had never been a fan of high school or parties, for that matter. No, she did not consider herself a nerd. She was far too lacking in her grades to give herself that privilege. But she did study. Boy, she studied hard, not just to escape high school, but so that she could escape her home to. She had made herself a promise that she will get out of this place as soon she could.

Rumours spread like wildfire in this world. Scarlett believed there was a certain exhilaration that people got while pushing forward mindless gossip. It made them feel better about themselves, that maybe they are not the only who suffer in this world. The people are eager to spread the word, about anything and everything that makes them feel elated. Especially in high school. In this place, Scarlett felt, it was as though her peers lived and breathed rumours. It was their oxygen, and you needed oxygen for survival, didn't you?

That's how everyone got to know about Scarlett. How she was supposedly involved with two boys, and how she didn't give a damn about it. But here's the thing about rumours. They are false ninety-nine percent of the time. Made up only to bring people down. But no one gives a damn about that. All they do is revel in it. Scarlett was pulled out of the shadows and made a spectacle out of, and suddenly she missed it. Scarlett missed the shadows so much, where no one minded her, where she was just existing.

But no one ever got what they wanted always, did they?

Everyday at school became a hell for her. Her shoulders drooped a little more, her lips went down a little more, the pit in her stomach grew a little more each time the words were thrown at her. People do not realise what effect a simple word can have on a human. They toss them around like they are nothing whereas it's the very essence of our existence. Kingdoms are built and torn apart through those twenty six letters only.

Her classmates didn't know this and killed her a little more each day, every day as flung out the words like 'slut', and 'whore' without thinking about the consequences.

Scarlett tried. Really, she did, to discard those words as easily as a used napkin; tried to tell herself that just a few months, weeks more and she would be out of here. But she couldn't. She couldn't get them out of her head.

Every syllable hurt her more, until she was nothing but a hologram of mass and bones scouring the halls everyday, targeted by everyone and helped by none.