Blue Mirth

Awe-inspiring

Ivy Lisa

I pull into school and I know at once that something's wrong. I don't know what it is. Maybe it's the way my car slips when I try to park it. Maybe it's the way it hits the tree trunk in front of it so hard that my head hits the steering wheel. What about the airbags? Oh! This is the cheaper car I take around with me to places as common as school. And, yes, it hasn't been serviced in a while, so, I'm guessing that the airbags are dysfunctional. I double check my rear-view mirror and then back-up. After a while I'm able to park this car, and I open my door. I get out. And slip. My backside hits the ground right where my pelvic bone is, and the back of my head hits the car. This is it. This is the part where they're all going to start laughing. My eyes are still shut from the impact of the fall, so I continue to sit that way, leaning on my car.

I hear a laugh from the car behind mine. I hear giggling somewhere else. I hear a snigger somewhere beside me. I open my eyes and look at what made this happen. There's grease on my hands, where I'd put them down on the ground, and I'm pretty sure now, that it's even on my clothes. I groan in disgust, wondering who could've done such a thing. I get up – with great difficulty, might I add – and inspect my clothes. Yes. There's grease on my pants. Yes, the most amount of it is concentrated on my bum, which makes it look like I pooped myself. But, thankfully, I wasn't wearing white ones, because, well, I don't have any white ones. My books are strewn across the floor, since I don't usually carry and backpack to school. Awe-inspiring. I curse under my breath and pick them all up, moving inside the school.

And that's where I made a mistake. Going inside the school with grease all over your clothes and books, is like being prettier than a bride on her wedding day. It's weird. And senseless. And it attracts too much attention. Duh, dummy. As I do my Walk of Shame into school, all eyes zero-in on me. They've all stopped talking. It's so quiet, you can hear yourself breathe. Or maybe that's just me. And in that moment, one person says, "She didn't even bathe, ew!" and everyone guffaws and roars in laughter. As for me? I brisk-walk to my locker, careful to look down, aware of the tears that are making their way down my face. Once I get to my locker, I'm not surprised to see that it doesn't open to my combination. Extraordinary. People are still laughing, saying stuff like, "Her ugliness is really being brought out right now.", "Now that I see it, her bum is so unproportioned to the rest of her body.", "Did she poo herself? Oh, my goodness, who does that?"

And then it stops. All of it. The laughing, the commenting. It's like they've all been put to sleep. I'm still facing my locker, still teary. I turn my head a little to see just what happened. Why did they all shut up? John Kenneth walks down the hallway, in an outfit that would scare anyone. He's wearing blue jeans, a white t-shirt, and a huge leather jacket. A leather jacket. John's wearing a leather jacket. But that's not what's scary about his whole façade. What's scary is the tattoo that's flashing on his arm. His sleeves only reveal some of it, so all I see are curling, thick, black lines on the skin below his elbow and hands. I don't have time to look closer because I realise that he's coming towards me. I hold on to my books, in case I have to use them for self-defence. He looks like he's going to hit me or something.

One of my books slip, and someone chortles. John looks in that persons direction and gives him a glare I could only call... fatal. The laughing stops and he continues to move towards me. Once he reaches me, he picks up the book that was still lying on the ground. I'm half-expecting him to be repelled by the grease all over it, but no. He even takes my other books from me and, holding them a little away from his clothes, he gestures me to follow him. All this is done without a word from any of us. The bystanders all move to their own classes, and I get in step behind John. He doesn't say anything, until we get to the bathrooms. "Marlowe. Go in and check if anyone's in there.", he says, his voice low, looking at me like in not covered in grease. I do as he says. I gesture 'no'.