learning to live

two

Ollie took me to a table at the far side of the canteen, the quieter side, chatting away about the weekend away we are going on in October half-term. We are going to the Lakes, we go every year, my grandparents and her grandparents bought a huge holiday Lake House there. But, not even that could draw my mind away from the stares I was feeling from every angle - an animal in a glass box. Every student feasting their eyes upon the latest gossip, the new big thing. Although, that's just what high school is like.
   Today I was the prey, before summer I was the observer, I'm not made to be a predator or a hunter. I just sit back, watch things unfold. I know where my place is and isn't - or at least I thought I did, before that party.

You can't hide from a thousand pairs of eyes. You can't hide from a thousand chattering mouths, a thousand sets of listening ears, a thousand hungry predators, scrounging for gossip among scraps of truth, filling the empty spaces with extravagant, exuberant lies that, if said by the right people, anyone will believe.

Are you curious yet? Do you want to know what everyone is saying about me?

"Ollie..."

"Alex?"

"What have people been saying?"

"You don't want to know Al,"

"Please Ollie... I need to know."

Ollie sighed, chewing her bottom lip and frowning a little. Even like this she was beautiful, the frown lines gently creasing her smooth skin. Her soft hair fell over her face perfectly as  she pondered.

"Ollie. Tell me."

"Fine." She replied with a defeated sigh, "So you know that summer party..."

27th July -
Final Year's Leaving Summer Party:
Ollie and I were invited, to put it nicely (she was invited and I was her plus one). We spent most of the night together, until around 1am - 1:09 to be precise. I got a text from her, telling me she was out with Ellis and not to expect her back till 3ish because they'd gone for a walk and to pick up a takeaway. I vocally groaned in response to this, I was alone at a party full of final years and I didn't know any of them. Then, about 25 minutes into me being alone, Danny Thomas came over. I am assuming he was obliged to since it was his house and his party and he had absolutely no clue who the fuck I was. I had no clue how to react to this sudden approach - other than consuming a year's recommended alcohol consumption in the space of 2 hours of course. And from that moment onward? Nothing. I remember nothing.

"Apparently, Danny invited you in, so you weren't outside alone, you basically had some sort of panic attack and started to have a fit and nobody knew what to do, Danny's parents had to come take you to hospital and the entire thing got shut down... everyone thinks you faked it for attention and that you're some kind of psycho..."