Surviving Cibseption

Desicions

Annabelle Chastain has never been one to stand out.

She has not once wanted to be popular or talk to someone before they talk to her. She's always been mortified of being publicly humiliated. She wakes up from nightmares of being ridiculed by upper classmen and distant family.

She is timid and afraid of the world and its honest terrors. She's read almost every book or article about conspiracy theories, she takes too many notes and writes too many stories and never completes them.

Annabelle Chastain is a shadow, a wallflower. She chooses to live life in a comfortable base of knowledge. She listens to other people's conversations, she knows more then they think she does.

For example, she knows that Jessica Alberdeen has a crush on Brian O'hare, even though she did the horizontal dance with Oliver Jones last weekend. Annabelle listens in on the conversation taking place outside of her bathroom stall by the mirrors.

Annabelle likes to spend her time at lunch in the rightmost stall on the first floor by her fifth period chemistry class, unless it's not raining out, which is rare, since she lives in cloudy Washington state. If it's nice out, nice meaning overcast, she'll walk to her aunt Renee's house down the street from her school and eat whatever her aunt had cooked up the night before. She always has leftovers for she cooks more then she needs to. Much more. A ridiculous amount.

Back to the bathroom; Annabelle sits and silently eats her grilled cheese sandwhich who's cheese has the consistency of cement glue atop the toilet seat, which is covered in one-ply paper. The blue fluorescents gives a wintery/insane asylum feel and Anaabelle shivers as the echos of nasally voices bounce erratically off of the tile walls.

"Ohmygod, Becky. But he is to. Die. For! Oliver only has the facial looks," Annabelle looks through the space between the door and the lock, watching as Jessica and Becky reaply their lip gloss. Puckering her lips, Becky scoffs.

"Besides," Jessica turns on her heels and closes her lip gloss tube, placing it in her shoulder bag. Annabelle wondered why high school girls carried shoulder bags, when they should have backpacks.

"Brian has a stomach on him."

Annabelle was glad that Jessica liked guys that were anatomically correct. Ones that aren't are nice, too. One in a blue moon Annabelle eats lunch with a lower classmen who spends his time in a wheelchair. He was born without his legs. He's a nice kid.

The girls take their leave, heels clicking and polished lips moving as Annabelle unlocks the stall and tosses her tray in the trash.

She walks over to the mirror and gazes into it.

Her lips have too much of a cupid's bow, she decides. Her eyebrows are too square and her nose is too long. Her face is too thin and her jaw is too square. Her hair is too thick and her teeth are not white enough. Her stomach bulges yet her thighs are thin.

Annabelle Chastain does not like her appearance. Not one bit.

It was there in that unkempt bathroom that she decided she was going to change her appearance for the better.

And change she did.

That was in the tenth grade, and this is now.

One year later...