Being Violet

Chapter 4

Bustling corridors, cluttered classrooms, noisy chatter, bright displays, obscure tannoy* announcements, friends arrive, smiles, grins, teacher enters, hush descends, register called, day begins, math, literature, geography, science, homework forgotten, homework lost, homework crumpled in bottom of bag, dog ate homework, baby puked on homework, just kidding, homework in right on time, home time, goodbyes, hurried trot to bus, slide into middle row, not cool enough for back row, daydream, watch world go by.

You'd think that was the reality of my school life. If I may say so, that would be as accurate as history books pretend to be. If anything, my school life can be summed up as...

Head down, dodging bullies, mocks, taunts, jabs, jibes, avoid eye contact, move in hurried scurry, shoulders hunched, stomach lurches, geek, four eyes, smelly, desperate to be inconspicuous, perch at table, wait, another day, another ordeal, six hours will drag by, tick tock, tick tock.

Hearing the sound of my dirty old converse shoes hitting the brown pavement, I kept my head down and pretend to be inconspicuous. Blending in is something that I pride myself on mastering. I have always managed to hide in the background, before the incident happened. Yes-the "incident".  I don't like to call it an accident even if dad and Ricky died accidentally. No-it was not an accident. I was there when they drowned. I was right there hearing their screams but I panicked. I chickened out-and it was a second too late. Hence why I refer to it as an incident. But deep down, I knew it was all my fault. 

Worst is that there's nothing I can do to change that.

A loud noise brought me out of my stupor like someone poured cold water all over my face. "Hey! Hey murderer!" 

"Oooohh, look who we have here! None other than town's very own killer"

"Violet,oh Violet... look at the blood on your hands"

"Bet you killed your mother too hmm?" A few gasps and cackles followed quickly after. 

I sighed internally. The usual. Yeah, school's bad enough. But the people in it were worse. I kept my head down, careful not to make eye contact with anyone of my taunters. God knew what mess another altercation would land me into. And I certainly didn't need my already failing grades to be worse than they were. Oh, I know what everybody thinks of me. They have made that part extremely clear. Contrary to the taunts and mockery I face every other day since the incident, I knew the only reason why I didn't give school up was because I cherished the look on my father's face when he saw reports of my excellent grades. It was one of the moments when I would see dad happy. It always made him light up, knowing he could count on his little girl to make him proud. "My smart Violet," is what he would say as he hugged me tight, the stress, load and pressure of work fading right away. 

I would do anything so that dad would never forget that, not even in Heaven, million miles away from me. I only knew i needed to graduate and then.. 

Well, I'll come to that bridge when I have to. I walked past the taunts and opened the big oak doors of one of the 3 high schools we have in this little town.

Woah, i gasped as I observe teenagers in their own paces, all so uniquely different with various hairstyles, hair colors, body and shapes and sizes.

Yet.. are we totally different? Or are we all so similar in ways we fail to recognize?  I mean, we are all in the same boat technically and the island that we seek beyond shores is out of the same oak doors now stood behind me with an air of finality. 

In a crowd I believe myself to be moving of my own free will, one of many yet still my own person. To an observer I am no more than a part of a moving mass, one with predictable behavior when viewed as a whole. We move like a shoal of fish, one point of departure, many destinations. So perhaps I have indeed become one of the many, feeding off the impulses of those around me to inform my decisions. I wonder what it takes to think like an individual in the heart of a crowd, or even if walking one's own path is possible. I narrowly escaped being bumped into as I expertly navigated down the rows of high school lockers, some girls kissing their partners as a sign of "maturity". Mature ladies don't lock lips with the current playboys of the school. God knows how diseased their lips were in the first place. I sighed distastefully. Gross.