land of misfits

Life is a mixture of pain, happiness, regret and people you never thought you would meet. This mixture is different for each person, some have no regrets, others only find pain, my mixture so far is a large amount of pain and unexpected people with only (surprisingly) little regret and minimal happiness. There are two people in my life today that I never thought I would ever say a word to, admittedly I am probably the exact opposite of someone they would of thought they would ever take a liking to, but accidents happen just to throw us off balance. But this fortunate event happened to give us three that little happiness we deserved more of.

James and Lee are two people in the school no one knew anything about. Everyone knew rumours, but no truth was ever found in what people actually thought they knew about them. I was exactly like them even before I met them. We are bullied, labelled as weird because of our tendency to not talk to anyone, there were some differences though such as the boys would only dress in black with the only colour being on their band shirts, I would try wearing some colour but that was our only separation.

We were judged most on what people could hear from our earphones, the hard, loud music beating from the speakers could be heard from us no matter where we went, even they shouted lyrics would deter people from being near us. Our fellow class mates would never bully us for it though because it scared them too much to say out loud, what we listened to was never spoken from them, and we never said anything about it either.

James and Lee were already friends, but I was alone. No one knew me, no one saw me. I was anonymous. Until I did something that finally pulled me away from the crowd. That’s how everything had its start. The one day the pair hadn’t had their earphones in to block the world out from to be people who actually wanted to be social and talk to one another.

 The boys weren’t listening to their own music for one reason, they heard someone recite the lyrics they know and enjoy, Aero Zeppelin by Nirvana was coming from a female voice that was mine, the singing got quiet. The two slightly upset that someone had interrupted the amazing song went around the corner to see I small girl surrounded by a large group of people staring and whispering, the whispers soon turned into screams pointed at the girl who was stuck in the middle unable to free herself.

I was frozen in the middle unable to see. All I could register was the two break the circle and take me by the arms to safety. We run for another minute to somewhere I couldn’t comprehend that somewhere no one would find us. We stand close to the schools black fence. Their next question came as a shock. They asked me if the song I was singing was my favourite Nirvana song.

I stutter out “uh, um, no? Probably breed is, or aneurysm.” My voice sounds uncertain. They look at each other with smirks plastered on their faces, they look as though they were having a silent convocation. I take this time to observe both of them quickly. James is tall and lanky with slender limbs and a limp in his right leg. Lee is significantly shorter and more of an average weight compared to James but lee is taller than me by half a head with light brown skin. They look back at me before I could make any further progress with my observations.

“Those assholes back there don’t know what good music is even if we slapped them in the face with it. They only enjoy sexist pop and shitty rap music.” One starts off.

“Not us though, but anyways I’ve seen you in class before, I’m Lee and this is James, he’s a year older, and if I’m hopefully not mistaken and my memory hasn’t failed me you are Ella?” I’m surprised he knew that, it’s true he’s in almost all my classes, he’s really smart too. We soon sit down and talk about the event that happened earlier that was the cause of us meeting.  

What happened was I was walking the boundaries of the school (not wanting to go home since school had finished quite a while before.) with my earphones loud in my ears listening to the song and I had focused out everyone else in front of me and I just started singing (badly in my opinion I must admit) when all of a sudden I looked up and saw every one staring at me. I didn’t hear anyone because of the music but I barely even saw the two pull me away from the humiliating scene.

The two listen without a word. After I am done talking James reassures me that everything will be fine and not to care now about what happens tomorrow, but that I should sit with them tomorrow during school to talk. Lee agrees knowing that I had no one to talk to through the day anyways.

We sit in comfortable silence and darkness falls quickly over the dreaded school quickly. Lee breaks the silence without warning. “Oh fuck. Don’t you need to get home?”

I answer calmly that my house is an hour away at least and my parents don’t even know half the time if I’m home or not. Lee looks conflicted for a moment and James tells Lee to take me home even though I argue that I can go by myself.

 Lee stands up and makes me walk with him to the bus stop, he waits with me until the bus arrives in front of us. He pushes me softly onto the bus and we tag on lee walks in front of me as the bus moves to a row of two empty seats and signals for me to slide in first. He sits down next to me.

 After what felt like a forever we halt the bus and get off and the stop. We walk 4 minutes until we reach my street. I turn to Lee startling him making him accidentally bump into me. I ask him why he didn’t just leave me at the stop.

His answer is simple. “I don’t want my new friend to get hurt on her way home.”  He has a grin planted on his face the whole sentence.

I start walking again, Lee not far behind me. We get to my door and I turn to say goodbye but he’s gone. This changing day had a very, very weird ending.