T's Hopeline | ✓

19. Samantha Joan Griggs

19. Samantha Joan Griggs

James' POV

"Success isn't about winning, it's about staying in the game and not quitting, most certainly not letting anyone make you quit."

That's what they said, it's a universal truth to be exact.

People feared nightmares, I feared reality. A bitter and dull reality was the real nightmare for me, one that would be a threat to one's happiness until the day you kicked the bucket. Harsh but true.

I felt like I was a mentally ill psycho because I had been diagnosed with depression. At times, my existence felt like a burden to my whole family, they never fessed up but I'm sure having someone like me as a brother or son wasn't a pleasant experience.

Death is our fate and I am totally aware of that but... I hate being this guy, I hate having people look at me all the time. Literally, I hate being the "guy whose girlfriend died and is falling down the rabbit pit that is depressing" even more than I hate depression itself.

They said it was clinical depression but it felt like a cancerous tumour in my every thought, it made no difference where or what it was. It was lost in my body, running through my veins, swimming in my blood and wasn't able to find its way out.

When we first walked in they gave us everything we needed, including a moleskin notebook. The first thing I wrote down in one of the sessions was "I like to be lost in a small world that my imagination designs. It gives me inner peace and tranquillity. I am supposed to be someone's knight in shining armour one day, I'm supposed to love someone deeply and possibly forever and to make all the pain off her chest, the one that belongs to the hurt damsel. However, life plays too many tricks on you, so for quite some time now I have been the hurt princess, the one who eventually meets her knight in shining armour, instead of someone's knight."

Was that an odd thing to write down? Yes, is this an odd subject to think about while on the school bus next to non-other than Kleenex? Tots obvi, as she would say.

Samatha is the ultimate queen bee at school, at least bitchy and everyone-knows-my-name parts. For some reason 'Queen S' is what she likes being called instead, could it be because she's allergic to bees? I doubt it, that would be a normal thing and she isn't that... People either say that is to mock or because they are scared of her, she ripped a guy's heart out of his chest, stepped on it and throw it out. She broke his heart, ego and reputation, he killed himself in university, three years later. He killed his soul, dignity and everything else that is good about a person. He became a minion for some rich corporate guy, a meaningless and heartless CEO.

All thanks to that mean, popularity-driven girl who thinks she has it all. She doesn't, though, practically nobody does.

"Hey stranger," she not-so-innocently said as she shakes me, taking advantage of the moment to feel my muscle, probably thinking I believed she only doing it to jolt me awake.

"Could you stop?" I ask as I harshly get myself out of her grip, causing her to give me a constipated look. Apparently, that was enough to make her snap, if I didn't know any better I would say she was PMSing.

"You wanna know something?" Why can't that be a freaking rhetorical question, I really don't want to hear her opinion... "You used to be cool, now you're simply a waste of hot stuff. That bitch shouldn't have corrupted your ass!"

By the time she finished that sentence the bus has gone quiet and not two seconds after, my hand met her cheek. Hard. So hard she actually fell, holding on to her now flamingo-pink cheek. She didn't even stand up afterwards, she simply stared at me, wide blue eyes slightly covered by a few strands of her hair and her lips parted.