My life is routine and dull, so sometimes I try to alter what seems to be fate. The night before, I had thrown about 30 million combinations of clothing together in an attempt to be stylish. Finally, I had crafted something together that I was proud of. That's when Moment #1 happened.
I like to categorize every day of my dreary and relatively uninteresting life through moments. Something, somehow, always ruins my day and leaves me in tears, and I have created a foolproof outline which roughly details my inevitable slip-ups. With every effort, I seemed to set myself up for failure, and my outline never failed me. Moment #1: The milk. Or the syrup. Really, any food item with preservatives and liquid found its way onto my clothing, and my nice outfit was instantly ruined. However, I was already in a rush; Moment #2. I had no freaking time to coordinate an outfit. Jeans and a sweater handed down from my mother would have to do. Which is when Moment #3 happened. My pristine and elegant mother takes a momentary fall from grace to lecture me about spilling food on my clothes all the time. Moment #4: While my mother PMS's, I try on shoes, but none of them will fit. Although my mother is ranting, she notices that none of them fit, and refuses to let me wear small-sized shoes. She finds a pair that does fit; yellow galoshes.
And that's why I'm wearing a crap outfit. I literally wore an outfit just like this when I was six. But I was arguably prettier at those times. Also, mom sweater. If that doesn't have enough of an effect on you, think of geometric shapes, fifteen off-putting shades of the rainbow, and scratchy wool, plus squeaky boots. I'd say that I've had worse, but honestly, I felt like I was on a downward spiral, my peak being when I hadn't been born yet. Apparently, Marissa felt the exact same way, because she continuously bothered me about my terrible ensembles. Well, Marissa + 16.
These routine acts of fashion-scorning ensued as I walked down the hall. As my luck would have it, because my luck is very greedy you know, the first class was geometry. I sat right in the middle, a decision made by everybody else, so that no set group of people would have the pleasure of humiliating me first. It was almost comedical how I held my hands out and in perfect radii, pieces of lined paper drifted towards me. A note: the center of attention? Not always a plus. Admittedly, I used to take joy in receiving these notes, giggling at the "your stupid"s and other grammatical mistakes which the Others never failed to pass to me. Others. Spelled with a capital O even in the middle of a sentence. It was about this time that I started to employ that term. Simply as a joke, though, like calling a mean teacher the Devil. Unfortunately, I was too amused by their notes, and so the remarks began to hit the bullseye on everything that I was insecure about. On this day in particular, a New One had come into the class. He had been introduced to the class at the beginning as Rod. I thought little of him besides the expectation of a new paper of mockery and a new style of writing on the paper. However, this New One surprised me.
The first sign of his difference was the fact that I received no extra papers. I counted many times over; nobody was missing from class. He simply had not sent me a paper. The next sign was after class. I waited until everybody left, as I always did; otherwise, there was only myself to blame when practically everybody bullied me on my way to class. So I waited until the last person had left. Or at least seemingly so. When I crossed through the portal to the hallway, a head intercepted. It was Rod, the New One. His right eyebrow was cocked and he stared at the papers in my hand, the ones given to me earlier by the Others. "What are those?" he asked in curiosity. I was worried. Was this some trap? I had fallen for these in my early days of this middle school and was not in the mood to let my unfortunate history of gullibility repeat itself. But I remembered that unlike my early days, I was strong and didn't care what these idiots thought of me. Kind of. So I told him precisely what they were;"the reminder of my flaws and the bullets of my ridicule." He stuck out his right cheek with his tongue and said in a muffled voice, "Huh." I stared at him, and he back at me. Jerk. "Would you like an orange with that?" What. "What?" "Well, I have an orange, and this is a really awkward conversation, so may I interest you in this juicy citrus?" He actually pulled out an orange.
.
.
.
"No."
Jerk.
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Sometimes, I liked to walk home. Especially in this weather; when the purple orchids that did fall from the trees were so vibrant against the cool winter colors. Metallic blue was the water on the pavement and a milky grey was infused in the sky. Blues dominated the season, and I was happy to witness these beautiful patterns. I didn't so much mind my galoshes now, I was able to splash in the puddles and dance through the lovely air. But while I skipped in the rain, a visitor disturbed my freedom.
"What are you doing?" he laughed. It was a familiar and horribly annoying voice. It must have been Rod. "I'm enjoying myself, and I honestly don't care what you think or say about it." I refused to look at him, but I had stopped my dancing. I just walked, hoping to exude anger. "I- well, I wasn't trying to be rude. It was... cool. I've never seen anybody act with such confidence." I didn't know him enough to understand what the right response was, so I just said," You didn't pass me a note. Why is that?" He didn't speak at first, so I turned around to look at him. He had a confused expression, and when he noticed that I had turned around, he made eye contact with me and looked understanding. "I think the real question is, why does everybody? I mean, is there a cycle of animosity towards you?" I noticed that his eyes were a deep brown, but I could hardly notice the color. His eyes were cavernous pools that knew far more than I expected anybody could hold. I'm not talking academic knowledge; but it is like his heart was born feeling and caring. He didn't even need to try to love. I wondered how his eyes looked so different from before. "I just realized it when I saw you dancing now. You're different than before. I mean... you're so free right now, that it makes earlier seem like you had these restraints."
And that's when I realized it, too. Sure, I knew that I had been eroded from the person who I once was. I am no longer nearly as confident. But I had no idea that it showed so much. I sighed. Is this really who I've become? Am I just a victim? "It's gorgeous out here," I breathed. I had already turned away from him, but I felt as if he were smiling. "I feel the same, but- I have this theory. That we can see the same things, and feel beauty from them, but feel it in such different ways. So what is it that you like about it?" "I like... my solitude. I get to be with nature, and away from my parents. I'm more accepted in this environment. I get to feel the winter air enveloping me, and I have the choice to be alone. It's like at home- when my parents are working but pretending to have much interest in me- I'm solitary. But here, I have the choice to be alone." I meant every word that I said, and regardless of whether he told everybody about my family problems or weird dancing, I didn't care. I truly was at home. I could feel it in my bones. "It's just the opposite for me, actually." "How so?" I asked, genuinely curious. "The winter means lost things being found again. My parents are biologists, and we would always go on walks. Each time, they told me completely different wisdoms, but I felt like whenever they told me something, I was seeing the world for the first time, over and over." He laughed. "That reminds me! I have got to show you something." I let my guard down for a second, laughing with him in his sudden burst of excitement. He took his necklace from his shirt, and I noticed it for the first time. There was a small vial of red and blue powder. I was confused. What could this be? "As biologists, my parents were always discovering incredible things, and to make them more interesting for me, they would translate them to easy, colorful experiments. So you know pH, how acidic or basic something is? Well, this powder..." he poured some in his hands, "Can change that. And I know, I know that's nothing, but.. just look." He poured a dash of red into a puddle on the ground, and it diffused like fireworks. It was beautiful. I had never seen anything like it before. He did this with the blue powder and gave me some. We poured it into different puddles, and giggled at the colorful displays, regardless of how simple our little science experiment was. Then we splashed in our puddles, until I realized that I had to go. "Oh my gosh, I totally lost track of time! I have to go!" "Wait- before you do- a grapefruit for your troubles?" What? I turned around, and he had a grapefruit. I couldn't help but laugh, and give him a grin which was so unfamiliar that it made me grin even wider. I grabbed it. "You are by far the weirdest person I've ever met!" He winked at me, and I laughed. What a day.
After we walked home together that day, I had no idea what the warmth inside of me was. But I did know that I met somebody who I felt comfortable with. A boy who carried colors, had deep, endless eyes, and an assortment of citruses. At that moment, as I walked down the wet pavement in my bright yellow galoshes, I wasn't sulking, wasn't wearing myself down. Instead, I hoped that I could add another foolproof moment to add to my outline; a sweet surprise, preferably from a boy named Rod.
