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25th October 2014

For most people, high school is a fresh start: you've left middle school and all the drama and awkwardness of that, and are finally ready to be a new person. You've left behind the dumb mistakes you made and things you said - you're starting fresh, on a clean state, or how many other metaphors you'd like to use to say it.

However, when you live in a small town like Bishop, that doesn't really happen. When there's only 3 high schools in the whole town, and only 2 of those worth going to - it's not very easy to escape from your middle school reputation. In fact, it's impossible. The other middle school in Bishop is on the other side of the town, meaning that the students there are much more likely to go to Parkway Community School, over Bishop Creek (which is located on the northern side of Bishop) and Bishop Union (which is located on the north western side) so in basic terms: you're not forgotten.

This theory made Amelia pull at her light brown locks on various occasions: she wanted to be forgotten after the middle school accident - she wanted to start over. But she couldn't. So here she is now, at the complete bottom of the popularity rankings at school. The only friend she has is her neighbour, Jake, but he goes to Independence Private because his dad is some big time businessman in Independance. This means that Amelia's time at school is pretty lonely: full of trips to the library to scroll Tumblr in the back corner of it, whilst nibbling on a white bread sandwich or lonely car lunches, where she eats her food in her red Convertible with the soft sounds of the radio in the background.

Today was unlike any other day of the week, so we find Amelia; sat in her car; eating Doritos, an apple and a bar of chocolate from a white plastic bag. In one hand, she holds her old iPhone 4 and wedged between her legs: a packet of red Doritos. She munches on the spicy potato chips as she scrolls through her Instagram feed - bored. After checking the time and realizing that there is still a whole 30 minutes left of lunch, and lacking social communications - she comes across a phone number on an Instagram account called Daniel Hayes, where there is an image of an attractive shirtless boy and is captioned Bored, hmu? followed by the phone number that is probably his.

Amelia finishes her pack of Doritos and scrunches the bag up, popping the apple inside it and them both back in the plastic bag she brought them in. Whilst wiping her fingers on her black jeans, she contemplates whether or not to talk to his very attractive stranger. On the one hand, she thought, she can't lost anything from it. Which of course Amelia was very wrong to think. Nevertheless, her naïve mind wandered on to smartly thinking that it could be in fact an old, pedophillic man pretending to be a hot boy with light blonde hair.

After much thought, and several sips out of her water bottle later, Amelia decides to talk to this boy, Daniel. However, as she doesn't know who he may actually be: she decides to use a fake name and fake profile. Her argument including the phrase: C'mon, what's the worst that can happen? to herself, to which she would reply: nothing I guess.

So she did it. Amelia made up a fake profile for herself; found some girl's Facebook that happened to be on public, (for some dumb reason); took pictures from there and added Daniel's number to her phone.

She would be texting Daniel as Macy Greene, a 5'6, blonde girl. She didn't want to be so far from herself, so she kept all other details of herself, true. She wouldn't ever exchange addresses with him anyway, so why bother making a new one? Amelia felt content after making this profile up, like she's achieved something. She takes a long gulp from her water bottle and piece of Juicy Fruit chewing gum before getting the courage up to text Daniel.

She hadn't quite thought out what to say to Daniel except a hi or hey. So, that's exactly what she did:

me: hey

For some reason, the little message that she sent made her feel very giddy and happy. It's not like she was texting a celebrity that she had found the number of on Twitter somehow, or texting her crush back after he had said Hi. This was some random boy, who oddly enough, only had one picture on Instagram which was the shirtless one with the phone number caption. Amelia doesn't find this odd at all, which it most certainly is, and continues to grin at the text she sent to him.

Caught up in the excitement of Daniel, Amelia realizes that it is now 2:30pm and her English class is well underway. She gasps, dropping her phone and water bottle on the car floor in the process. Her parents were not going to be happy with the news of her skipping lessons, so she scrambles to get her things together whilst thinking of how to excuse arriving almost an hour late to English. As she leaves her car, completely disregarding the state she has left it in, she weighs up the doctor appointment excuse and the sick excuse.

Arriving outside her classroom, she takes a deep breath in and pushes the door to the English room open. "Uh, hi sir. Sorry I'm late, I, uh, was feeling sick and just, um, hung out in the restrooms, so, sorry" Her teacher sighs, obviously having heard of this excuse many times before, and beckons for her to sit down. Amelia saunters through the aisles of wooden desks, watching her black boots and the brown flooring, in order to not make eye contact with any of her judgmental  classmates. She finds her seat near the back and places here backpack on the floor next to her desk, sighing in relief that she actually made it without her parents being called in.

Before she should applaud herself further, she heard somebody behind her say "so the frigid bitch learnt how to cut", Amelia automatically turned around to be met with fierce green eyes on a pale white face. "You did a shit job, well done", he spits his words directing them to Amelia this time. All she could do was shy away and turn her head back to her teacher. She blinks the tears forming in her eyes. Being called a frigid bitch and being told they did something badly were not things that Amelia enjoyed hearing. She knew people said it, but not anymore.

It seemed that the theory of smalltown reputation was still alight for poor Amelia Grace, as she remembered the boy behind her from her middle school. Even though she had done nothing but keep her head down for the past 3 years, it seemed that the event from the 8th grade was still blocking her reputation from the sun.

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A/N
quick update bc you guys all comment such lovely things + make me so happy so thank you! :-)

I'll come back + edit tomorrow bc I'm tiiiiired now! Its 1am so its okay but I had a show today so I'm pretty wrecked :-((

okay but anyway, love you lots + goodnight xox