One Fucked Up World

Chapter One

One

     They were all looking at Kelly. The talking faded into whispers, and the lights in their eyes turned sour. Kelly's boyfriend came to pick her up from school with a shiny motorbike.

     I had a boyfriend once too, and he tried to kill me. It wasn't much of a happy scene. I tried not to be sad about it, and I thought about how Kelly helped me with my maths just now instead.

     The boyfriend put a blue helmet around Kelly's honey coloured hair, and they kissed. Our school skirt was in blue, and that made Kelly look like Smurf. The boyfriend had a lot of colourful skulls over his arms and neck. The old school janitor, who looked like a lazy owl standing near the school gate, crinkled his nose at them though I liked them very much.

     Kelly smiled at Bully Maria who, people said, had kicked her during P.E. today. Kelly didn't like Bully Maria, she told me no one in their right mind would ask her out. Bully Maria's warriors were looking at Kelly with cat-like eyes.

     Everyone wanted to be Kelly, I supposed. Everyone wants to be loved by a boythough most of the time they'd say the blobfish is better looking than them. I like blobfish. It is one of those things that Idon't understand about people. They get jealous then.

     We are all doppelgängers of Iago from that Shakespeare's play about a man killed his wife because he listened and looked too much. Perhaps we are less evil, or we just tend to be less evil and fail without realising.

     Kelly swung her hair backward for many times. Fame – too exaggerated. Reputation, not that either. Well, at least she was being talked with something else other than being locked in the music room.

     I grinned and waved at Kelly. She looked away like she hadn't seen me.

     I started walking home as soon as the engine of the motorbike roared to life. Within seconds, all spotted was the little white shirt of Kelly's uniform and the boyfriend's jeans. 

     "I think she is pregnant," I heard someone say ahead of me. I was too busy counting the bricks on the floor.

     The other girl laughed, and said, "look at her fat stomach!"

     It was sad to remember that being pregnant used to be a good thing. They'd throw a party with cakes and people would come over with Barbies and mini cars. They'd suggest many names and laugh. People in my school cried very hard when they knew they were pregnant, and it wasn't the happy cry.

     Max told me to be home earlier, so I stopped counting the bricks and walked faster. If Max was living without me, he would ask Anne to live with him, and he'd be a famous dessert dresser in Gordon Ramsay's restaurants in London. If Max was working there, I hoped those kitchens weren't hell.

     "You know what? You and I, we're Max and Minnie," my brother used to say when we were playing Be Miss Montana (he'd be Miley and I'd be Hannah), "it's going to be us against the world. We are the best of both worlds."

     I heard dogs barking and the blue buildings with opened windows were surrounding me. Two sides of the road were filled with green brushes and navy benches. The blue painted buildings would match the morning sky, not today.

     I loved this new town!

     We used to have the whole block of building with a front and backyard. There would be two cars parked right next to the house. Max's and dad's. Both of us didn't like living in the cage, so we got out. I loved our new little flat.

     I imagined myself walking among the huts in some Nordic village. Some nice women asked about my day and invited me to their houses for some hot home-made soup. The other woman asked if I wanted a self knitted sock for Christmas.