I Fell Anyway

Chapter 3

Onward with the story. Where shall we go next? Freshman year, where he makes his first appearance. I wish I could see his reaction to when he reads this, he hates how he acted as a freshie.

Freshman year also meant I saw my dear sister again. Ally, being 2 years older, already started high school, and was queen bee.

Leaving junior high, I thought that high school would be big enough that not every student and teacher would compare the two of us as they did in junior high. I was wrong.

 Teachers compared the two of us. Girls wanted to be my friend to get to know Ally. Guys wanted me to introduce them to Ally.

Everyone knew her, and those who knew I was her sister tried to kiss up to me to get me to say something nice about them to her. Even Keisha tried to apologize to me so she could get on Ally’s good side.

My teachers found out I was Ally’s sister and started to compare our grades too. I was taking honor classes just as Ally did, but where she was a straight A student, I was between A and B.

During that year I felt like nobody even knew I existed. I just wanted to be me. I didn’t want to be Ally’s sister. I wanted to be Hailey.

Where did I find my solace? Gaming. Not the traditional thing for girls to do, but I didn’t care. Nobody who actually gamed was popular enough to use it against me. That was how I found him. You probably know it’s you now.

He wasn’t even nice, but that was like a breath of fresh air. He asked me why I was even that game. Backyard Monsters was a game that mainly guys played, and that was the game I played. I played other games too, but he only knew of that one. If you don’t know it’s you now, you aren’t as smart as I give you credit for. He was rude, he was crass, and I should’ve hated him and never should’ve spoken to him again. Yes I actually planned to ignore you. Fate had other plans and decided that I needed someone like him, so I kept talking to him, about homework, about how weird it was that I played games, and about how girls had the same right as guys to play games, and it went on like that for about a month.

Then we stopped, or I stopped. I started to like this guy, Joe. He was nice, he had an amazing voice, and he was semi-popular. I guess I thought we were alike. I was wrong. But back then I liked him. Too bad he was one of the people who were completely enthralled by Ally.

I got over it. I refused to let it break me. The walls I took so long to build would not go crumbling down because of a boy. The trust I had for everyone and the bleeding heart I held the year before with innocence was all gone. Frozen. 

Frozen by all that happened to me. I turned cold. I blamed Keisha for making me feel like I was nothing. I blamed Ally for always showing me up. I blamed everyone for the way I was.

Then I realized how broken I truly was.

I hated myself. I was destructive. I was more self-destructive than anything else. By the time I realized how bad I was, the year ended.