The Original Six.

Beginning of Ninth Grade, Mr. Shoemaker

                                                       Outside Point Of View

       Distant. Unknowingly this is what she had become over the last month. Her friends noticed almost immediately and any proper friendship went out of the window when they decided they would no longer want to be friends with someone who just ignored their attempts to talk to her. This was the middle of ninth grade. Her best friend, Sky always reassured her she was being plenty social with her and that unlike Cassidy and Michaela, she saw no difference in Arya's behavior. It was depression. Of course she never knew that back then, she never thought something like that could happen to her. It was a disease, and in her mind she was as happy as could be. But, what is happiness? No 15 year old girl could possibly know a reasonable answer to that impossibly impossible question. No, Harry Styles is NOT happiness, not real genuine happiness.

      Arya was...different to say the least. All parents want their kids to stand out and be unique amongst their peers. Arya, she stood out on her own without any pressure from any parents, mostly due to the lack of them existing altogether in her life. The intentional need to fit in with other kids was never a phase she went through unlike many of her peers and classmates. Contentment was found in the quiet loneliness of her room. No, she wasn't lonely, simply alone and she loved it that way. And no, it wasn't physically quiet, more often than not she had music blaring out from any form of speaker she could find. For the longest time, that was a Walkman. Her music taste was poor and all over the place her freshmen year, like most people her age, pop radio was the easiest to love. So what set her apart from the rest of the teenager population? Her passion to write, role play, and blog. In the quiet of her room, she found a website in which she could perform all three passions in one place. The place was called Quizzazz when she first joined, back when she was nine. It was a cope mechanism. To what she needed to cope with? No idea. Now known as Quotev, she easily spent more time online talking to strangers across the world than she spoke and interacted with her own family, and...friends. Maybe this was the cause of their sudden disengagement in being her friend. No, that made no sense, because they too desired to be away from limelight at school and rather preferred to be alone.

          Her passion for writing came at an early age, seven or eight, but fully formed in eighth grade, when her science teacher read something of hers on accident and pulled her aside after class. "Arya... Never in my many years of teaching have I seen such a young student write as mature as you do. Where do you get your thoughts from?" She became shy and dismissed it as a random idea. He didn't let it go, and soon they would spend every study hall talking about her writing. As with most people, once trust was gained, she told him most everything. That same year her older sister went into her first mental hospital. She was able to talk to her science teacher about it, because he was easiest to talk to . She knew how much it had hurt, and so did he. No one else did. "I'm nearly sixty years old, and this beautiful 14 year old young woman in front of me has seen more pain in a short 14 years than I have in 60," he said to her on the last day of school eighth grade year. Then schedules came out for freshmen year. "Shoemaker, Biology. Rm.431" She swore it was a mistake. Was there another Shoemaker in her school system? A brother maybe. First day of school she walks into the science room, and there before her, her eighth grade miracle would be her teacher again for a second year. She was overcome with happiness, whereas all of her classmates groaned in apparent agony due to his strict grading and harsh sense of humor.

           Tragedy struck early on her freshmen year. A scheduling mishap caused her to be taken out of her Biology class and she rarely had time to speak to him anymore. He was fired less than halfway through the year. Some say it was a medical reason, others said he was a pervert and got caught. She never fed into the hype, because she knew how great of a man he was, an amazing teacher, and an inspiring mentor. Through the year and a half that followed, she was reminded of him in little things, and to this day she thinks of where he is now.

            You know the concept of, 'what happens in your past, affects your future'? It's true. At least for her. She's very impressionable and holding feelings is a bad habit. Put it this way, if you would have asked her a year ago what was wrong, she'd never admit anything to you. Ask her now, well..she just might write a book about it.