New Skin

Part 1: The Observer

I hope you enjoy my short story. I originally wrote it for a contest with a specific set of guidelines. So what you see is a result of that. Thank you. 

Washington North High School was an extremely cliquey school led by the jocks and the smart kids. There wasn't much room for the quirky B students, like me, Leilani Sutherford. As I sat on what I thought of as "my bench," near the entrance of the school, I watched the privileged patrons of Washington North High School enter the building to begin their day of organized socialization. They always entered in groups, and no one ever seemed to be completely alone, well, except for me, but they would notice me soon enough.

My solitude was self imposed. I considered myself a social anthropologist, and I tried to spend most of my time meticulously studying my classmates. In all of my seventeen years of life, I never really did understand people or social situations. This was a problem because I wanted to be a writer, but writing is about characters, and how would I ever write a convincing character if I didn't even understand real people? If anything, I should be able to understand the shallow, stereotypes of my own high school. Alas, even their generically choreographed movements made no sense to me, so I sat on the bench before school, at my own table in the cafeteria, and even alone at the football games, armed with my trusty notebook, my quill pen, my black fingernails with matching black hair, and my observations about the rituals of Washington North High School students.

Above all, my favorite group to monitor was the Smocks, the smart jocks that ruled the school. Kayla Bell was the Smock prototype. She was head cheerleader, on track for being valedictorian, and the leader of the entire school, but Kayla had been off her game as of late. I couldn't explain it, there was just something different about her. I doubt anyone else noticed it but me.