Loser

Chapter 2 - Fire

I think that I expected the next day to be different. It wasn't. I woke up, I got dressed (in the clothes that I had worn the least) and then I brushed my teeth. Looking at myself in the mirror I looked for some sign that my physical appearence had changed. It hadn't. My mouth was the same medium size it had always been, the same plain shape. My nose was just as straight, My eyes the same almond shape, the same muddy brown color.

Frustrated I took my shirt off and looked in the mirror. I wasn't buff. I still had no muscles and my ribs still showed slightly at my side as a result of malnutrition. I don't know what I was expecting to see but I couldn't help but be disappointed by the results. My body was still thin and lanky, but defiantly   still not attractive.

Sighing in resignation I picked up my shirt from the floor and pulled it back over my head. I packed my backpack for the classes that I had today but it was still bulging full. I scrunched up my face as I realized that I was still going to be lugging the same stupid backpack around school, I was still going to be wearing the same dirty clothes, and I would still be avoided as much as possible.

And just as I was beginning to think that everything was exactly the same, something flashed out of the corner of my eye. I turned my head and saw that the morning sunlight had finally made it's little patch all the way to the middle of my room. There, it caught the side of Jane's body and made her shine. A wave of admiration and awe swept through me as I looked at my guitar. She really did had an almost living feeling to her. The lines of her wood and the soul and hard times scratched into her sides.

She still needed alot of work done and I still had no idea how I was going to raise the money to do it. She needed new wood because the old stuff was rotting and she needed probably a new coat of paint. I wanted to save as many pieces as I could from her old figure. The thingy's on the side that turned the strings and made them sound funny could be salvaged. I just had to find three more just like them. The black bar at the bottom and all the white pieces that held the strings to the bottom half of the guitar. I'm sure I could get the cracks in her neck repaired so maybe that could be salvaged.

Knitting my eyebrows together I walked over to my closet and felt onto the top shelf until I found the old spider-man wallet I got when I was kid. Undoing the velcrow I found three measly dollars that I had saved up inside. Barely enough to get a few apple pies from McDonalds. Sighing again I closed the wallet and tucked it into the front pocket of my backpack.

--------Later---------

The city bus pulled up to my stop fifteen minutes late. I hurried off as quickly as I could while pulling my backpack handle out so that it could skid and skip behind me as I ran to school. I was out of breath and sweating as I finally made it to school but the bell rang as soon as I stopped in the parking lot, bent in half, panting heavily.

My first period of the day was P.E. (because the world hates me) and the locker room was already half empty by the time I reached it. The people who remained sighed, rolled their eyes or handed over bet money as they realized that I was in fact not truent today, despite their deepest wishes. I undid my locker and then dashed into the bathroom to change. I had learned that changing in front of all the other guys was okay only if you were buff or had a body that you were unashamed of. I was neither. Also, I didn't have to feel awkward about checking my cup for hot sauce when there was no one to snicker at me.

After I got dressed I came back into the locker room to find mostly everyone gone already. The only people left were a goth kid and an idie rock girl.... wait what? I tried not to gape at the girl. She wore a floor length skirt and a tank top that showed a flat strip of stomach. Her brown hair was shiny and soft looking and pulled into a messy bun at the back of her neck. She wore large glasses and her nose was pierced like a bull. About ten thousand earings ran up the sides one of her ears and a large bar went through the other.