The Girl with Cherry Earrings | ✔

1

Same and different.

Those were the only words at school that mattered.

They're the only adjectives powerful enough to allow you to either rise to popularity or leave you as an outcast, or what Celvire Collegiate Institute liked to call, a "shadow".

Of course no one wanted to be different. Different calls for bullying, constant teasing, brutal nicknames, and all the unwanted attention all high schoolers would have nightmares about. And for those undesired situations, everyone wanted to be part of the same, including me.

All of us at Celvire dressed the same, acted the same. It only took one wrong move, whether it was coming to school on a bad hair day, or simply wearing a ridiculously patterned t-shirt, to mess your entire life up and leave you as someone who was different, and you did not want to become different.

There were only two labels that you can wear, and that was that. Well, at least that was what we believed there be.

But during the third period in Mr.Woodworth's chemistry class of my freshman year, there she was, the "in-between" that we never knew to have existed, sitting at the desk just beside me.

From my point of view she seemed pretty ordinary; hazel eyes, golden brown hair plaited into a short braid, a thin knitted beige sweater tucked messily into navy blue jeans. The only thing that stood out from her were the bright red cherry earrings that contrasted greatly against the earthly tone of her outfit, dangling freely from her ear lobes. But I guess looks can be deceiving.

At first she was different, weird even. She ate lunch by herself, she loved walking through the rain, and people soon found out that she didn't own a phone, which to them meant that she was an automatic loser. But within two weeks' time she became well-known around the school, and not at all in a bad way. Initially, it came off as a shock. The loner girl sitting with the cheerleaders? It was uncalled-for. Jealousy swept through the school, and with the jealousy came the rumors.

Some said she bribed them.

Others said she threatened them.

There were even some that said that she just clung to them because she was a clingy and stubborn person who would never take "no" for an answer.

But as her popularity in the school increased, those rumors disappeared within no time, quickly being replaced by things such as "she's really nice" and "she's so pretty." However, despite all that, she still managed to stay herself.

She still preferred to eat lunch alone.

She still came to class completely soaked on purpose.

She still didn't own a phone.

Yet in everyone's eyes, she was still an essence of the same.

But the oddest thing about this was that no one knew her name. Although it seemed impossible, it was true. During roll call teachers didn't bother to call out your name unless they noticed that you were absent, and she was never absent, nor did anyone want her to be. Wishing that she would be absent was like wishing for a year without rain. She was important to us, serving as a reminder that there is an in-between. So instead of praying that she wouldn't come to school just so we could learn her name, we simply referred to her as "her" or "she".

Personally, I could've cared less for her popularity, or rather her. I was simply trying to survive high school as an invisible boy living peacefully in the shadows, not as a shadow.

Little did I know that it would be suddenly during the end of last period in the sixth week of school that all of that would change.