Finding Me

You know, I find people so interesting to ponder about. I mean, think about it. How each and every human being is different, not one person is the exact, exact same. I am one of those people.

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"MUUUM, I'm going!" I yelled as I closed the front door behind me. Walking to school, I always thought was very relaxing, watching women with young kids walking out their front doors and shushing them into their beaten up cars. I loved going up and down the hills and feeling the slight burn in my legs, while blasting my music in my ears and watching everything go by.
As I neared Raven Down high, I had to stop as I got this wave of nausea, a feeling of dread. Every day in and out, it's the same. The quiet girl in the back with good grades, over and over, nothing changes. Sometimes I feel like I'm not living, like I've wasted 17 years of my life doing the same thing. Waking up, going to school, getting tired from all the school work, coming home, talking to mum and dad and being praised. Sometimes I find myself in that state right before you go to bed, thinking, wishing that I did something different every day, did something new. I wish every day was a surprise... but it's not. So taking a deep breathe to break free myself of the nausea, I started to walk up the gum splattered concrete.
"What's up bro?" One of my friends, Alia asked.
"Nothing much" I said and quirked a quick smile. One thing my friends and I discovered is that I'm not much of a morning person. Some people might wake up and see it as a brand new day, but I'm just too tired and worn to function, always feeling like I've aged 50 years over night. Which I then regret later because I then see it as a day wasted trying to function. But while I say all this, I don't change anything about it and that's what makes it sad.
"I, uhm, talked to mum over the weekend, I can't make the 'Rave', she wouldn't let me go." I said, trying to make conversation, but probably bumming out the whole table. The 'Rave' is the local show that we nicknamed after Raven Down show. It's the show that's held every year that we all usually go to because they have massive rides that go up and down and rides that make people dizzy. The massive slides and the stalls that make you want to stuff your face full of doughnuts and fairy floss, knowing that you're going to regret it later, knowing that if mum found out you would be killed. It's the show that your whole town and school go to, so as you're walking along you find yourself waving at different people. But this year mum was mad at me, at the world and so was dad. So I told them that mum said we were busy, which would most likely end up being true and that I would try to go to the show that's held in the next town over. By the time the conversation finished the bell for form and first period sounded and so I trudged to math.
Sitting in math, I found myself unconditionally bored. Where I was forced to sit quiet and just listen to Mr Verona; a short, stubby man, who was putting up algebraic equations. Math is one of the many subjects I do not share with my friends, making the class drag on for longer. As I was taking the notes, from the teacher, I found my eyes wondering around the classroom, and landing on one in particular boy. I had always wondered what it would be like to be in his shoes for a day. No one expecting anything from him, just doing what he thought was living, not caring what other people thought, like my brother... Ashton Williams, the one sat in front of me, the one and only. Sitting there watching him one row ahead of me leaning so far back in his chair that he was flirting with the floor, on his phone, and every now and then shushing his long brown- blonde hair out of his dark green eyes.
"Mr Williams! What the heck do you think you're doing? Sit up and off your phone now!" spat Mr Verona, spraying the front row with a shower of saliva and making me jump at the sudden change of voice.
"And you! Miss Freedman, stop bloody staring at Mr Williams and get back to work and don't tell me you weren't staring, I saw you!"
Shit! How embarrassing! I could feel my cheeks heat up as everyone turns to look at me and giggle. All of a sudden I went from wishing to wanting to bury my head in the sand like an ostrich. Ashton probably thinks I was drooling over him or worse; thinks I'm an absolute nutter like everyone else most probably does now.
The rest of the lesson I kept my eyes on the book full of math equations and never looked up because if someone caught me just glancing in that direction now, they might as well send me to a mental asylum from embarrassment. And then in no time the bell had rung for lunch.
As I made my way to our table, I ran into both of my best friends; Neena and Harriot, Harry for short. It was then that I broke down after they sore the dread on my face and told both girls what had just happened which they laughed so hard at, they cried.
I think that class was as interesting as it has gotten for me in a long, long time.
So after the rest of the uneventful day, I walked to the cemetery.
As I stood in front of the gates, I got a stab of unease. Then I walked through the black worn gates, which had a stone carved crow sitting on top. Walking the rows and rows, I decided I needed to change something in the way I live. What if I died tomorrow, and as I lay there I knew that the one life I got, I did nothing, that I could or wanted to be proud of, I didn't live the way I wanted to. My thoughts vanished when I saw the headstone I was looking for; Payson Freedman, my younger baby brother. Though he was only 13, he was the most ambitious, outgoing person I've ever met. He enjoyed life. If he grew up to be 17, I bet he would've been the Ashton Williams of his grade. Though he was this way, he was the natural smart, the kind that don't have to work for the knowledge but loved to explore with it. His devilish smile was still etched in my memory, as he came into my room one afternoon after school. That's when I knew something bad was coming my way. He ran up and leaped onto my bed smothering me with his body that was already taller than mine. I loved those times because it was after that he'd tell me the devilish things he did at school that day or even the heroic.
"Today at school Jake brought a frog and when we were in third he somehow lost it, then we had to go look for it all around the classroom, cause like where else would it have gone? And soon we had found it after we had heard a squeal from in the hall. Guess where it was! Just guess! In another girls locker for god's sake! How it got in there I have no idea. But I got it out and I ran to get my water bottle so it wouldn't get hurt..."
"At school today, I hid the whiteboard rubber, so that when Mrs Carlile filled the board with writing she couldn't find the rubber for ages."
Listening to him ramble for hours was the most comforting thing I had in my life and once I lost him to a car a year and a half ago, it was like I had died to. Soon after I realised how much I hadn't lived; the way Payes did, and it was now I made a promise to myself; I'd change that.

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Authors note -

Thank you so much for reading!
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