Veils

I

'Don't look so sad, I know it's over

But life goes on and this whole world will keep on turning

Let's just be glad we had sometime to spend together

There's no need to watch the bridges that we're burning'

The radio plays Johnny Cash as I turned into the parking lot of my high school. I stop and rest my head back and close my eyes just to feel that pseudo euphoric feeling just before the song ends and reality sucks me into its gravity.

The song finally ends and I gather myself up to get outside of the car and enter a completely different world, world filled with rumours and gossips.

'One more year, Ophelia. You'll get through it' I repeat the mantra over and over again in my head.

I walk in and instantly was greeted by Kirsten.

Kirsten was Kirsten. I remember walking into elementary school and sitting beside her, we've been inseparable ever since.

"Bitch. You gotta come to my place tonight, I just downloaded this amazing movie and we've got to watch it together"

I made a disgusted face. I love her but absolutely hate her taste in movies.

"Hey, this is a good one"

I agree because I love her, even though i don't tell her so and I also know how much she hates watching movies with her brother, Nathan.

"Cool then, meet me at 6." She gives a wink. Somebody's got to tell that girl that she cannot wink because lord knows, I tried.

"OK K. I have Biology first period, meet me at the cafeteria later?" I say

"OK O." she winks again and I nod my head and laugh and wave her a bye.

I can hear her screaming 'what? WHAT?!' until I make a turn into another corridor.

I go inside the Biology Lab, I hate the smell of formalin and weirdly, i like it.

I take a seat next to the window and adjust the microscopes and the apparatus already kept on my desk.

"Today we will study the structure of the blastula" Mr. Johnson shouts and no one seems to care.

I've always loved Biology, if I couldn't understand my mind, this subject always reassured me that we are nothing more than flesh and blood and enzymes and cells and that when your head feels heavy it's better to dismiss it as gravity.

Science simplifies complexities. 

It takes you by the head and makes you believe that all of us are not that different after all.

I open my book and pull the specimen attached microscope close to me and looked through the eyepiece, there it was, this is who we are, this is who we were, a product of repeated divisions that made us all that we are today. I feel myself drowning in my own thoughts as Mr. Johnson's voice drowns out.

"OH! Look who decided to grace us with their presence!" Mr. Johnson's exclaims.

I jolt my head up to look to see Luke Davis.

I didn't know him personally but as far as I've heard from people, he had a bad reputation. He was, what people called 'a weirdo' although if I were people I would've chosen the term 'eccentric'.

He walks straight in and past me and sits at the very last bench. Stereotypical.

I look through the microscope to distract myself from my irrational anxiety about people watching me from behind my back. I tell myself over and over again, maybe they aren't looking, maybe he isn't looking.

I turn my head around to reassure myself only to meet his gaze.

'Don't smile. Don't smile' To hell with it.

I give him a smile that could've passed for the most weirdest smile in world history, I could feel it.

He locks his gaze a little longer and looks away.

Without a smile. Without any goddamn expression.

Mental note to self: Do not pass a smile to someone you don't know. 

Ever.