Lost love

Chapter one

"If you surround yourself with the good and righteous, they can only raise you up. If you surround yourself with the others, they will drag you down into the doldrums of mediocrity, and they will keep you there, but only as long as you permit it." – Mark Glamack

It's early Monday morning, when I drive the car to school. Surprisingly, the sun is shining, which never happens in Rivervale. I take my black sunglasses on while singing quietly to 'monster' by Meg Myers as she howls the words with raw anguish. After a few minutes and a couple of songs later, I reach the schools filled out parking lot. Killing the engine, I take my bag and keys and go inside to the loudness, which is crowded with happy students. The long hallway is painted white and the lockers black. The contrasting colors make it look like a stranded asylum and I totally have had nightmares about this school more times than I can count. The bathroom doesn't make it any better. It's like they took the bathroom from Rest Stop and placed it here, which I think is disturbingly terrifying considering how that movie crept me out for days. It still does. The students that I should know by now, or recognize, are talking and laughing in groups, and here I'm standing in the middle of everything not knowing where to place myself. Corey, my only friend, skips school a lot, which results to me spending lunchtime in one of the empty classrooms and observing people during class. It's not that I want to. No, that's not my intention at all. The thing is I have no one to talk to. The words awkward and shy define me, and that leads to a great deal of irrelevant thinking and a lot of observing. I know people may think I'm creepy, weird or whatever they think, but I can't help myself. It's intriguing to me.

I open my locker to grab my three hundred-page math book; instead one of my chocolate bars falls to the ground. I have a couple lying in there because well chocolate is indubitably the best pleasures a person can experience, in my opinion. I grab the bar off of the floor, toss it back in the locker and grab my book, which is really heavy and unnecessary in my opinion. As I make a right to the classroom I can already see too many people sitting at their desks small talking. I take a deep breath as my sweaty hand twists the doorknob. My pale skin gets paler and the lump in my throat gets even bigger. I sit in my usual spot, which is very far behind. After a few minutes my heart rate turns to normal and my hands gets less shaky and again I wonder why it's such a big deal when I'm invisible to everyone apparently. The teacher comes in and he immediately begins to talk about a trip coming up next month. His mouth is moving but I can't make out what he is saying. I don't even know his name. He looks old, his head bald and wrinkles are covering his face but his energy in the classroom is unavoidable. It is young and thriving, unfortunately the class isn't paying much attention to him. At least he cares to try.

I always try to be optimistic before math but as soon as the lecture begins it quickly feathers away and instead I try my best not to close my eyes because I know for a fact that I will fall asleep. The thing about math is that it requires a lot of concentration and effort and those qualities do not represent me at all. My mind is always drifting somewhere unintentionally and before I know of it the class would be over and I was still clueless about what the rules of logarithm were. I'm the complete polar opposite of my dad. He works in finance and I remember when I was little he would help me with my math homework, especially when I had a test coming up. But that was a long time ago. Now I barely remember what his face looks like. I only remember his dark brown eyes because mine are the exact same color. In the last couple of days before he left, his eyes were unrecognizable. Sure, his dark brown eyes stayed the same but his under eyes were a deeper shade than the rest of his face and the skin around it were hanging more loosely than it did a couple of months prior to when everything happened. I hope he is doing fine, I think to myself. A well-known pain rises to my chest but I quickly dismiss it. This is not the time.