iensumens {Frisian} >> in loneliness, abandonement, solitude
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02.
My life wasn't together.
I am on babysitting duty for the rest of the year, which meant spending afternoons with Chloe as Mom works and Lena goes to cheer practice. I don't mind it one bit, since my punishment could be a lot worse, like not getting any driving privileges this year after Lena failed her driving test last year. Dad had promised to buy us a car this year for our 17th birthday, any car of our choosing, and I really wanted that Range Rover SUV.
It wasn't as bad as my school punishment. Suspension from the cheer team earns gossip rights for the infamous Warburton Gazette. The new senior editor, Jana Pulaski, made sure of that. She has turned her heels on me the second I walked into school, flats clacking on the ground. I tried to avoid her by pushing my earphones harder into my ears, ducking my head in the crowd, and most notably, hiding under my hoodie scrunched in my face. I felt like a loser walking in my dad's old university hoodie he left us, but it's the price I must pay not to be interviewed by her.
Lunch hour caught up during the day. Usually I sat with the cheerleaders in one table in the edge of the cafeteria where they gossip, eat proteins and sip water. I grabbed my packed lunch, making my way to the table where the newly appointed captain, Mireille Ackley, sat with her dark hair glossed back with hairspray, makeup setting prettily on her chestnut skin, with perfectly manicured nails on the table. When I sat next to her, in my hoodie and strewn brown ponytail, the table became unnecessarily quiet. The freshman girls we handpicked for our team were looking at me uneasily, the sophomores were giving me a look of disbelief, and our seniors were looking at me pitifully. On the other hand, Mireille was gazing at me as if I'd grown a head, while Lena, my dutiful wonderful sister eyed her salad as if it was the most interesting thing at the table.
"Ahem," Mireille tapped my shoulder, giving me a fake smile, "you're...out of the squad."
"Yeah, I'm eating with my friends," I told her, biting into my chicken sandwich.
"No honey," she crooned, her smile widening, "you're eating with cheerleaders. Your respect isn't valid anymore since you are suspended."
"For six months," I countered.
One of the seniors, Harley Bridges, looked at me in the eye, quite pitifully. "I'm so sorry Hales, but...six months is a long time. You're not even participating in qualifiers! We can't have you in finals looking out of shape."
"But I'm not out of shape," I told her gently.
"Haley! You can't participate in cheerleading activities anymore!" Mireille insisted. "You're now like sad Lee Sanders with her ragtag band!"
I was still quiet, munching on my sandwich.
"Just because she's mute, it really doesn't mean that she's not intelligent," I shrugged, finally releasing the tension, as I got up from the table. "Have fun with your new tyrant, girls."
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The last time I was in the library eating lunch, I was a freshman with my ex-best friend Sophia Reynolds. Both of us would talk loudly to annoy the librarian, shushing us to tranquillity, only for us to be loud not two seconds later. After being accustomed to cheerleading rights, it became less and less to see her, and our ventures in our high school lives were different from each other. Sure, we share an Advanced English class together, but that's how much we interact as friends these days—awkward silence and miscommunicated stigma.
When I opened the doors of our school library, it was unsurprisingly quiet. I pulled my earphones out of my ears, enjoying the silence. The sun peeked through the floor-to-ceiling windows, casting a yellowish hue on the otherwise brown carpeted floor. It also just so happens my favourite seat in the spacious room was empty, and maybe I could get a head start on my mathematics homework. I made an exact beeline towards the seat, but before I could sit down, a dash of dark hair beat me to it, knocking me off to the ground with the body of a boulder.
"Hey!" I whisper-shouted, twisting my body to fully look at the person. "I was there first!"
The person is a boy. Figures, it feels like my Monday is just getting worse by the second. He was wearing oversized headphones, bobbing his head along to music, trying to open up his backpack to pull out some worksheets. I will not let my day be robbed by this boy.
I stood up on my feet, leaning my hips to the table. He hasn't sensed my presence yet, still mouthing words to a song from his headphones, drumming fingers on the table.
"Hey," I called out again, "you're in my seat!"
Either he purposely ignored me, or the sound in his headphones are too loud.
I dropped my backpack on the empty seat beside him with my lunch on the empty table space, making myself known. He still wouldn't budge. Then an unearthly force compelled me to yank his headphones from his ears, the sound of rock music floating in the air.
"Hey!" he yelled out, clearly shocked or annoyed.
"You shoved me to the ground, you stole my seat, I had a very bad half-day today, and I need to eat my lunch," I blurted out, gripping his headphones tightly in my hands. "So please, let me be petty and let me have this seat!"
He was shocked.
He was absolutely shocked.
And the sound of Radiohead's Creep filled the library.
AUTHOR'S NOTE
to everyone who is currently reading this, i know it's not much. it's totally been a while, and I have been trying to get back into writing. Writing about Haley has always been a little dream of mine, and I've been trying out different writing styles as I mature, but this is something so enjoy this little chapter.
kenisha.
YOU ARE READING
The Scraps
Teen Fiction"So tell me, how does one get suspended from cheerleading?" Haley Winchester got stripped off her title as the Captain of the Cheerleaders, before she even became one. On top of that, she has to deal with the wreck of her family, the loss of her see...
