Fear is subjective- what scares one person might not necessarily scare another
or
In which the fearless Jodi Sawyer told the scary Henry Bowers off, later becoming a part of the Losers and their twisted clown case.
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Jodi Sawyer let out a sigh of relief as the bell rang, dismissing the class which yelled out an ecstatic 'hooray' due to the fact that summer holiday had officially set in. Jodi, though, sat and slumped in her seat, rolling her eyes at the bunch of seven graders squeezing through the door and pushing each other off. Mrs. Rhodes could only watch while pinching the bridge of her nose, as her words on exiting the classroom in an organized way were completely thrown out of the window.
The dark haired girl sat still, tapping her finger on the surface of her wooden desk in sync with the hand of the clock moving each second. Once each kids had left the classroom, and their ever so loud roars faded into incomprehensible rumbles, Jodi lifted herself off from her seat, and dismissed herself. Well, not before Mrs. Rhodes stopped her on her track.
"Ms. Sawyer? Would you mind to talk just for a minute?" The older woman spoke, tucking a strand of her greying hair behind her ear. She held the stack of books almost too tightly to her chest, a seemingly eerie smile plastered on her face.
Jodi would very much please saying, "Yes, Mrs. Rhodes, I do mind actually," but of course, she refrained from saying so. She wasn't going to be deemed as anything bad anymore other than the "fatherless kid," "daughter of the town's crud," or "sister of the bully." Not one had ever mentioned the other names she was regularly reffered to, but she knew the whispers in the hallways and girls toilets occured a lot.
So instead, she responded, "No, what is it, Mrs. Rhodes?" She turned around, her face holding up a side smile to hide how aggravated she was.
Mrs. Rhodes pursed her lips, lifting her thin rimmed reading glasses with her index finger, "Well, I- We, all teachers, are aware of what happened to you and your family last year, and we are truly sorry. We know it's been a hard year, but however, as I look at your grades, they have... decreased by a lot. So we hope you can come back after this summer break and work on yout grades again. Understand, Ms. Sawyer?"
Jodi bit her lower lip, her hand gripping on the lower cut of her denim jacket. It would be easy to say that she didn't know what she was going through, how bad she had it, but again, enough shame had made their way to the Sawyers, she didn't need a "disobedient brat" title added to the collection.
"Yes, ma'am. Now if you'd excuse me, I should really get going." She nodded regardless, cutting off the conversation short. Before an answer could come out of the woman's mouth, Jodi already fled out of the classroom.
She kept her head up as she walked, even with some middle schoolers eye-ing her in either pity, disgust, fear, or any odd stares in general. Sure, a lot of kids might get the impression that she was an uninterested, spiteful kid, but they already got that impression from her brother. The adults' opinion would be the only opinions worth considering by fellow adults, anyway. Not some loud middle schoolers.
