Other Paths

00: Prologue

Wendy

"I'm not coming to school today. Tell Fido."

It was a text from Fred the freshman, in a group chat, asking the other members to tell Fido, the driver.

The group chat consists of 13 high school students. All of us were carpooling to go to school as we were all from the same small section of a county, attending a privileged school, Richmond High School about 3 counties away from us.

Out of the 13 members, 3 were freshmen, 4 sophomores, 2 juniors and the remaining 3 were seniors.

"All the freshman aren't gonna be in school today. So, me, Lily and Felicia aren't following today."  He texted again.

"I know me and Amy aren't going today." Mary-Anne, the sophomore added.

For the sophomores, we have Amy, Mary-Anne, Cheyenne and Hector. Cheyenne rarely carpools with us to go to school but nevertheless, she still takes part in the group chat at times but Hector never participate in any conversation, unless it was an urgent matter.

Then there were Elle and Kayla for juniors. Elle has always been the pretty, smart and cool one. She's quite close with everyone, especially Alan.

"Hector?" This time, the text comes from Alan, the senior, who was in the same batch as me, Wendy who was also a senior. Duh, obviously! Alongside Alan, we also have Simon Lee as the senior. Just like Hector, he never participates in any conversation, unless needed.

There were texts coming from the rest of the people in the group chat, notifying my phone every second of how miserably insecure I am with myself.

What risk could occur from a harmless text of a teenager?

But, lucky me. I was joined by Hector in the unofficial 'NGL but this scene ain't my scene' club, as there were not a single text coming from him.

I'm not exactly the friendliest person in the whole world, let alone in the whole journey from picking me up from my house to dropping off our bratty asses to school. It may not seem too hard to engage a conversation, but what I was actually scared of was the attached feelings.

How will I be able to talk to them again? What will we talk about the next time? Would we be able to laugh, just like the way we did before? Can they withstand the lame and cringe-worthy side of me?

It's a never-ending compilation of questions, reflecting from how needy I could be after a few conversations with acquaintances.

Hence, why I avoided every possible conversations.

There was this one time when Alan tried to start a conversation with me when we were on our way to go to our ride with Fido in school, and I kid you not, I did not say a single legit word that is available in the dictionary. All that came out from my mouth was just some 'oh's and 'K's. Not even a proper 'okay' came out.

I groaned at the thought of it. My greasy hair that was put into a bun had became messy and it reminded me to actually wash my hair, first thing in the morning.

I clicked the home button on my phone to see that it was already almost eleven o'clock at night, but the group chat was still on going and they were talking about some cheesecake.

Irrelevant! This is why I've muted the group chat for a year. At least, I don't have to deal with it next year since I'm not going to school anymore.

Thinking about it makes me sad but happy, I don't know if that is possible. Graduating was the last thing that I thought I would be having, when I was a freshman. Although the seniors before me were around during the times that I was in school, it had never reached my mind that I would walk in their shoes at some points of my life.

Life; always full of surprises.

I was sitting on my bed, that was covered with floral sheets, rubbing my face with some cosmetically-formulae alcohol. This routine is the least I could do to make my face look presentable in school, especially when I am not wearing a single smudge of makeup.

After finishing the routine, I proceeded to prepare the outfit for school tomorrow. I pulled out a pair of jeans that once wore by my mom and a striped black-and-white knitted turtleneck. It was windy, raining season at the time and leaves slowly falling to the ground as their green color had faded to brown.

I checked my phone again to see the time that shows a few minutes left until Monday. I sighed, thinking about how I should've prepared everything earlier, finished all my work during the day and have a full dream cycle in eight hours of sleep.

But, I did not. Instead, I procrastinated and did all my work at the darkest of night.

Ugh, what am I gonna do?

I pulled my soft blanket up to my chest, after I placed my thick-rimmed glasses on the dresser beside my bed and laid down on the bed.

I closed my eyes and thought about what could happen tomorrow. There's nothing much that deviates from the norm.

The day would usually start with me embarrassing myself in Maths class and then slowly zoning out in Biology class. After that, trying too hard in Latin and maybe, showing off how unfit I am in Gym class. Well, not necessarily in that order. All and all, it's going to be just me doing things that I would regret.

But, God got His way. Spinning the Earth in the way that NASA can't even explained why or how it occurred, and turning people's life 360 degrees, in the way that He wants.

And so, the usual procedure of me embarrassing myself in school could be changed, twisted and maybe even improvised or improved.

It had never occurred to me that what would happened tomorrow would be something that I would gladly pick over any other day.