The Georgia Rule

Chapter Thirteen

Having a joint Physical Education class was the most gruesome of all anguish.

I swiped the back of my hand against my forehead, ignoring the droplets of perspiration that it had collected. The changing rooms were designed to be used in two shifts, with the first half of girls changing their clothes in the little cubicles while the other half started their stretches, however with the joint Phys. Ed. Class, the shift system had been long abandoned. The cluster of girls were currently coexisting in a space that was six feet too small to store the rumours, secrets and mindless chatter that was being circulated, trapped in the confining space.

I sighed as I looked at the girls around me, busy within their own circle of friends, effortless laughter ever so often spilling from their lips. Breanna was surrounded by girls from her dance team, as she usually was as of late. They were pointing at a girl with freckles splattered across her face, as if thrown on at a moment's notice.

Jenny.

Jenny ducked her head and went towards her locker, rummaging through her mini camo duffel bag to distract herself from the obvious snickers that were directed towards her. My eyes trailed along her gym shorts that were two sizes to baggy on her petite frame, presumably the target of the whispers and jeers.

My mind reeled; Jenny was someone who had been seemingly untouched by our society. She still possessed the kid-like joy that she used to light up a room when needed, I learnt. I barely knew her, but I felt a spark of possessiveness filter throughout my body, a need to protect her.

Clutching my uniform to my chest, I walked towards my locker to store it, ignoring the pangs of guilt deep within my stomach. I was one of them – I had been one of them. How many times had I cast stones at undeserving fragile appearances?

I furrowed my eyebrows in confusion, was I one of them? Or was I too far excluded?

While caught up in my own personal turmoil, I noticed Serena ushering Jenny out of the changing room, muttering words of encouragement to the girl who had her head hung low, barely supported by her drooping shoulders.

There was nothing I could have done. Nothing I could have said that would have landed me anywhere short of hypocritical. In retrospect, maybe I should have defended Jenny, but who's to say that I hadn't inflicted the exact same level of anguish on her at one point in our lives?

Volleyball wasn't as bad it could have been. I was always able to learn sports and play to the best of my abilities, though I had never excelled in any. They never held my interest long enough aside from wanting to prove a point to the other team, and after I had, I quickly grew bored of the sport.

Lauren had never shown up for class, leaving me mildly uncomfortable as I was forced to plaster on a false smile to converse with others whose facial expression and level of discomfort mirrored my own. Jenny, I noticed had spent the remainder of class avoiding my eyes, or everyone besides Serena's for the matter, keeping her head either plastered to the floor or her eyes gazing off into the distance.

*****

Lunch had gone by as quickly as it came, leaving nothing but an empty Styrofoam cup and a crumpled up sandwich wrapper as its only proof of existence. I spent the entirety of my lunch hour off campus, revisiting the same café that Finn had taken me too, basking in the aroma of freshly brewed coffee. It had been a lot more crowded than when we had first went, leaving me with nothing to do except scroll through social media to avoid looking like the social pariah I had recently become.

I hadn't posted much on my social media besides a few off-handed re-tweets during the last few weeks. I usually updated photos to my Instagram once or twice per week, during the peak hours to maximize the number of likes. Even disregarding this, I managed to always maintain a steady three to four hundred likes per photo. My mind whizzed around the possibility of posting a photo, would the number of likes drop? Or would they remain the same? A sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach formed, gnawing at my self-esteem, making cracks and dents through the already broken and taped together pieces.