Blameless ✔

Prologue

Prologue

3 years ago...

I swallowed my saliva nervously as my heart continued to pound relentlessly in my chest like a drum, my constricted breathing soon joining the acapella as I glared through my hazy vision.

Standing in front of the large, transparent double doors, I analyzed the crowd of people loitering in the school hallway, wondering if it would be too late for me to turn on my heel and retreat to the warm, comforting blankets of my bed. However, the sound of my mum's car driving off and a quick, "have a good day at school, sweetie" was a pretty clear indication that my only chance at escape had just driven off. I was half-tempted to just drop my school bag and run after the silver car to get away from this hell of a school but coincidentally, a swarm of people barged through the doors, resulting in me falling onto my back and dropping the books I had clutched in my sweaty palms.

A few of them laughed at the state I was in while the others mockingly asked if I was okay but I knew they didn't care about my well being and they knew I knew.

I tried getting up and onto my feet again but the heavy bag on my back aggravatingly prevented me from doing so.

Heh, at least now I know how turtles feel, I thought facetiously.

At school, I was the lonely nerd who ambled through the crowded hallway by herself. It wasn't like I had chosen to be alone but it turned out that my appearance wasn't exactly welcomed at this school. I usually just put my brown hair up into a tight ponytail and allowed my thickly framed glasses to cover my face at all times. I wore simple clothing such as jeans, T-Shirts, and cardigans because I never felt any motivation to impress, unlike those other girls who caked makeup unto their faces each and every day and dressed as if they were going to some high school party.

But then again, I wouldn't know since, embarrassingly, I had never been to a high school party.

Day after wretched day, at least one person would 'accidentally' trip me up or shove me into a nearby locker and if I so happened to drop one of my books, it would automatically turn into a game of 'keep the book away from Evelyn'. Never played? Well, good because I don't advise you to. I even got tortured for being academically smart, which haplessly earned me my first nickname.

Nerd.

Which was then followed by idiot, ugly, waste of life, and retard.

And yes, that was in specific order.

Why I got dubbed as an idiot when my first nickname was nerd would forever remain a mystery to me though.

I wasn't exactly treated as a human being at this school. I didn't fit into the first class area, I didn't fit into the second class area and I didn't even fit into the third class area. There was technically no fourth class area but for me, they would definitely make an exception. Not even my fellow nerds wanted to hang out with me but that was completely understandable because if I were in their shoes, I wouldn't want to hang out with me either.

This was the life I lived but just because I was used to it, didn't mean I had to like it.

I was, at that moment, flailing my arms and legs up in the air while rolling around on the floor, not caring about the number of people shamelessly laughing and pointing at me. There had been worse occurrences and it wasn't like I had a social status to maintain.

What I did care about though were the number of people who had taken out their smartphones to capture pictures and videos of this moment to upload on to the internet. Having memories of embarrassing moments was normal but having people documenting them only to be seen by the entire world was just plain cold.