A life in the Dark

• P r o l o g u e •

Invisible.

That's the word I'd give you to describe myself.

Bullied.

An event that occurs daily for me.

Hard.

How I'd describe my younger family life.

Unreal.

My Primary school years.

Pitiful.

My current life. Secondary life. The life no one wants, and are glad they don't have.

Yes, I know. Sad. This is really how I'm summing up my entire fifteen years of existence. Seriously.

I guess the tough part of my life began when my Dad-or ex-dad-abandoned my mother and I right after I was born. He just got up one day and left.

How would I sum him up? Many ways. None of which are particularly flattering. For example:

• fucking asshole.
• dickhead.
• bloody coward.
• shit excuse for a human.
• bitch of a bitch

The list is endless.

Let's just say I have a reasonably large grudge against him.

After he left, I began pre-school and later Primary in my village. My mother works at her own shop. After *he* left, she could do whatever the fuck she wanted, so she opened a healthy cafe/shop where all products were homemade and super healthy. Sometimes I help out, making bath bombs, trying new nutrition-boosting recipes or even take over the register and waitressing while she performs massages or does someone's nails as an extra service. She really believes in natural beauty, which I love.

The shop is the bottom floor of our two-storey house and it's very minimalist with mainly shades of grey, and side rooms shades of blue; our theme was of course the beach. We decorated with seaside pictures and grey pebbles, and faux-plants in glass pots filled with sand.

I loved it.

During Primary, I used to bring my group of friends round and we'd hang out in the shop. Then for my birthday my mum would shut it and treat us to manicures. She's the best!

When it was my first day of Secondary, I remember I couldn't wait to make new friends and invite them round.

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I stepped onto the bus and showed my bus pass to the driver, then took a seat next to my old friend, Harley.

"Looking forward to it?" he grinned, already knowing what my answer would be.

"Of course! I can't wait to make new friends and invite them round to the shop! It'll be great for business if they like it!"

"I know they will." He looked into my eyes as a breeze came through the slightly ajar window and fluttered through his jet black hair. I smiled back. I had no doubt that the day would be amazing.

=======

However, almost as soon as I walked through the door to my form room, I kind of guessed I'd never like any of them. To start, they'd already sorted themselves into friendship groups and none seemed to appeal to me.

There were the sporty boys, who in all honesty were the nicest. They weren't utter dickheads but still liked to wind up the girls, as well as each other.

There were the sporty girls, who became well known throughout the school-let alone the year-after a week for being in all the clubs and fixtures.

There was the popular group, where all the girls rolled up their skirts and hated sports, yet flirted with the sporty guys. And then the popular guys, who were completely obvious players who seemed to change girlfriends more often than I changed socks. True, they also classified as 'sporty' in my books but they didn't fit in with the others, so I gave them their own label. And it wasn't out of generosity.

There was only one of them I ever really tolerated, but I can't think why he was different. About three-quarters of a year in, and I realised: I liked him. Like, like liked him. Since then I focused on ignoring those feelings.

Besides, I had bigger things to worry about: bullies.

As soon as everyone started realising I had no friends, I started getting horrible notes in lessons, whispers and rumours started behind my back, and later, physical violence started. At times, the guys would grab my arm and twist it behind my back, swing their bags at my face 'by accident' and trip me up-even when I was walking down stairs.

But they knew there was nothing I could do about it. They all knew. Once during Lunch, Jadyn grabbed my hand and cut one of my long, well-manicured fingernails beyond repair, not bothering to care whether she cut my actual finger in the process. I told Harley on the bus, between sobs and tears and the next day he punched her on the nose. All it did was help her get attention, and a reason to hurt me more while he got a three-day suspension.

I lived with this for three long years, and during it, I studied a lot more to take my mind off of things. Well, my test scores and grades improved dramatically, but this just caused them to become worse. Why? Like, for real, why is being 'smart' bad nowadays? Is this really what humanity's come to?

Then leading up to year ten, I truly thought I would catch a break; the forms got switched up.

=======

"Hey, don't worry, perhaps we'll be in the same form this time?"

"I hope so," I replied as we searched for our names on the several lists.

It took a minute, but then Harley piped up, "hey I've found you." I fought my way through the crowd that was forming around the tables to where he was pointing. "10A. Your form room is room two-o-nine, the biology room up the stairs and form tutor is Miss Evergreen," he informed me, but I was only half-listening. Instead, my eyes scanned the list of names; the only one that stood out on the first page was Logan Johnson. Then I turned over.

I felt a pang of despair as I realised that I wasn't with Harley. Then my heart stopped as I realised I was stuck with Jadyn for another two years...

I turned to face my friend, and that was when I froze; behind Harley, leaning up against the doorframe (in the most inconvenient place possible-I might add) was none other than the bitch herself. The one and only Jadyn- and, naturally, she was looking at me-no, looking down at me, smirking.

This is gonna be a looooong few years, I thought.