"I'm just a glitch in the system. I wasn't meant to exist, and the sooner I cease to, the better."
In which a broken, lonely girl crosses paths with a famous, yet isolated, boy-band member.
Read on to follow Lola Hawthorne's journey.
With each number I muttered, the powerful sense of relief washed through my body and out through the red droplets making there way, speedily, towards the tile floor below me.
Six Seven Eight Nine Ten
With each number I muttered, the fear, the pain and the heartbreak flowed through my veins and out through the red droplets as they hit the tiles below, silently splashing against the marble floor, before forming a pool of blood besides my leg.
I know what I am doing is wrong. I am aware that this is the wrong way to find a release. Perhaps even smoking would be better than this, but that's what led my mother to where she is now, so I would never dare do that.
Instead, I stick with this terribly painful form of torture. But that's alright, because I deserve it. So I've been told.
I wanted nothing more than to just end all the pain right now. To turn the blade sideways and make that one final slice up my arm. Unfortunately though, I could not do that. I had my mother to pray for, and I couldn't pray if I was dead. And more importantly, I had Asher, my little brother to look after and protect from all the evils of the world, and boy, were the many.
I sat, staring at my arm, feeling the stinging sensation burning my ripped skin, when the sound of an alarm clock broke the silence.
It was six o'clock. Time to get up for school.
I reached my untouched arm forward to pull a few pieces of toilet paper off of the roll, to clean the mess I had made on both the floor, and my arm.
"Lola, are you up yet?" I heard, quickly rushing out of the bathroom towards the voice.
"Yes Ash, I'm up," I answered the question my little brother had asked me.
He was always excited for school, he enjoyed learning and seeing his friends. I was happy for him of course, but I also couldn't shake the pang of jealousy that I felt. It would be nice to have a friend in the hell house that was high school.
-
"Okay, Ash, do you remember where to meet me after school?" I asked him.
He rolled is eyes, before responding, "Yeah Lola. I remember. Next to the blue pole outside Miss. Penelope's classroom."
"Right, I guess I'll see you here at three p.m. then," I spoke. "Be a good boy alright, don't cause any trouble."
Asher nodded before running off towards his grade one classroom.
"Wait!" I yelled in his direction, causing him to halt in his tracks and turn to face me, once again.
"I love you, Ash," I told him, as I did every morning while dropping him off for school.
"I love you too, Lola."
I smiled as I watched him turn back around and run up to his friends inside the classroom. I felt a rush of fear flow through my chest as I thought about what would happen to us if our mother didn't make it. I dreaded the thought that we would be alone, but after the sound of a ringing bell filled my ears, the only fear I could feel at that very moment, was the fear of having to walk through the flooded hallways of high school, alone.
I suffered from anxiety, of which my mother had explained was heredity, and one of the traits she passed onto me unwillingly. Walking through a public high school filled with cliques I did not fit into always managed to heighten my sense of anxiety. I made my way to my locker, careful to keep my head down as far as possible without knocking into anyone. I thought I had almost made it there without any interruptions this time, however, I was stopped dead in my tracks by a rough hand tugging on my shoulder.
"Well, well, well," a voice spoke," would you look who it is," she muttered.
"All alone again are you? Where are your friends, huh? Oh that's right! You don't have any!" the girl giggled, causing the friends who were surrounding her to burst into fits of laughter.
Fleur Pascale. Despite the fact that I tried my absolute best not to hate any human being in this world, Fleur made that very difficult for me. She was the spitting image of Regina George, from that Mean Girls movie I once watched. Their personalities were so alike, it was horrifying.
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When I first moved to this school, I was assigned a mentor of sorts, someone to guide me as I navigated the public schooling system in France. My mentor was Fleur. At first she did just that, and more, she invited me in, being kind to me, allowing me to sit with her friends during lunches, but eventually she turned on me and got the entire school to turn on me too.
She had used me to gain more popularity than she already had, because "everyone wants to be friends with the new girl" but she dropped me as soon as she was finished using me to rise to the top of the high school ranks.
As the "Regina George" of the school, Fleur had a clique of carbon copies following her every move. Therefore, with her taunting of me, it was always followed by mockery of me by her friends.
"Maybe if you lost some weight, someone would actually want to be your friend, you fat lard."
"Lola the lonely lard," one of them stated, which earned a snicker and a high five from Fleur.
"Get a life Lola- or better yet, get rid of yours entirely!"
"She didn't wear any make up today, I wonder if she realizes how ugly she looks."
I was mostly used the commentary by now. It had been 4 years of me having to tolerate their torment, and whilst I knew they were only being bullies for popularity, the words never hurt any less, unfortunately, the pang of anxiety and pain prominent in my chest, but I had learnt to block out the most part of it. I wouldn't dare prove to them that I was as weak as they saw me, therefore I would never allow myself to look affected by their words.
I hated to say it, but I believed every word that came out of each of their mouths.
I was fat. I was ugly. I was lonely. And I was definitely alone.
I managed to survive the rest of the day, getting by without too many harsh words being shouted in my direction. Unfortunately, my shirt did not make it through the day untouched. At lunch, as I walked through the cafeteria towards my bench in the right hand corner of the room, where I usually sat alone and read whichever novel we were covering in English class at that time, I was tripped by one of Fleur's friends, who quite purposefully managed to spill her boxed, strawberry Vitamin water all over me.
It was frustrating, and left me with a sigh and anxiety bubbling in my chest as I watched the eyes of everyone in the cafeteria turning my way. Yet, it was not the first time something of this kind had happened to me, so I knew what to do regarding cleaning up the mess and keeping myself under the radar. I reminded myself internally that I only had four more days to get through before the weekend arrived.
-
"Hey Lola!" I was brought out of my thoughts, by Asher's voice.
"Hey Ash, how was school?" I asked my little brother.
"It was fun, we learnt how to spell 'apple' today!" he excitedly exclaimed.
"That's so cool Ash," I responded to him, and hesitatingly continued. "Are you ready to go visit mom?"
