How I Learned to Love Myself{DISCONTINUED}

The Classes

"Ah! You must be Kai!" Said a petite woman from behind the desk of the office. She had chestnut brown hair, with black tips. For the most part she was dressed for fall, very motherly and warm.

"We've been waiting for you to show up. Let me get your planner, schedule, and lock. I'll be right back."

She left me, and went into her office. The room was nice. It was nicely decorated, and had colorful walls. One wall was blue, another orange, the third red, and the last one was white. The floor was carpeted as a greyish blue.

The counselor came back with a packet of papers and a lock. She placed it on the counter and beckoned me closer.

"So, I'm Ms. Herlem. And this, is your schedule and planner. She took a paper and a booklet out of the packet.

"So, you have English with Mr. Bowden first, then you'll have to walk to Spanish, it's downstairs, with Mrs. Tyre. After that you have Art with Ms. Martin. And before Math with Mr. Jensen, you have lunch break. After Mr. Jensen, you have Social Studies with Mrs. Graham. Then, Science, with Mrs. Medeby, and last Physical Education before you go home. You'll find it to meet your last year's schedule, somewhat." She said.

"I'll try to remember it." I responded.

"I'm sure you'll get it. Now, I must walk you to your first class, English."

We walked out of the room, and walked to my class. Right outside, she motioned to my locker.

"You can put your bag in there before you walk in. You'll need a pencil, pen, eraser, and binder with paper." I pulled the things out of my bag, and put my bag in my locker. It was spacious, and had old scratched off stickers. As I closed the locker, the door opened.

"Whoa, Evan," Ms. Herlem said. "What happened?"

The boy who walked out of the class, looked at her. He had black hair and a piercing on his lip. He was fairly lanky and tall. He was in black clothes. A deep gray shirt and black jeans. His bangs covered one side of his face.

"Better not talk about it." He said. "Wouldn't wanna ruin a reputation in front of a new student, would you?" He looked at me. I was glad that my black makeup covered the sudden color in my face.

"I'll see you in my office, Evan." Ms. Herlem said. She then turned to me.

"Let's go, shall we." Evan walked down the hall, and I closed my locker, and followed Ms. Herlem. The room was smaller than other classrooms. Either that, or it was clouded by objects. The seating was tables that fit two people in. Everyone stopped talking and working, to look at me.

"Ah, you must be Kai. We've been waiting for you to come!" A man said. He was obviously the teacher of this class. His gray hair and wrinkled eyes showed it. "I'm Mr. Bowden. I would say that you could sit next to Evan, but he left the room." He gestured towards two empty seats in the back of class. One chair had a backpack on it. "But please! Sit down, I'll have another student guide you through what's going on in this period."

Sure enough, when I sat down, Mr. Bowden went to one of the girls in the class. She got up, and walked to me. She looked like the boy Evan from a few minutes earlier.

"Hey. I'm Lilac." She said. Though she had the same black hair, her tips were magenta. She wore black eyeliner, and a grunge style. Black jeans, a Nirvana tee, and a grey beanie, which was all put together with her combat boots.

"If you did the reading, you would know that we're working on an essay for Don Quixote, but, the look on your face clearly states you don't know what the hell that is, so, I'll send you an audio book link to you later. For now Mr. Bowden should be busy enough to not come up to us. So, where did you come from?"

Of course that was the question she'd ask. It wasn't easy to answer. I was born in Scotland, spent majority of my life in Virginia, came here for middle school and one year at high school. Then I went back to Virginia for therapy, and came back here in the middle of the year. Here was Spokane, Washington.

"Um... Born in Scotland, lived here and in Virginia."

"So... is it what they say? 'The Cutter's Back'? If you ask me, it's a messed up thing to say. My brother and I think so, anyway."

"Wait... Your brother?"

"Yeah, Evan. He's my brother. Fraternal twin."

"Oh." That explained a lot.

The bell rung, dismissing us from English. Lilac was probably someone I wanted on my side. I grabbed my stuff, and walked out of the class. Now I had to go down stairs into Spanish.

When I got down there, Mike's class just got out of the Science room, next door. He smiled and waved at me, I waved back and continued walking. Spanish was a blur of pronunciation and writing down notes. I needed the same thing for just about every class, and I realized this before going into my last class before lunch, art. Ms. Martin was young. She spent some time talking to me about different ways I could express myself in her class. She said that we were working with ballpoint pen on canvas, so I could do multiple things. I told her I was thinking about masks. How we hide, then the bell rang dismissing us. She said she would like to talk more next class, and let me leave. I felt good in her class. Safe.

As I went into the cafeteria, I realized that everyone looked at me. Stared at me. I sat down with my sandwich and flavored water. Alone. Just me and my mask, pretty much. I looked down at my scar on my right wrist.A tear slipped out of my eye, then a voice called out to me.

"You alright?" He asked. I looked up. It was Lilac's brother. Right next to him was Lilac, placing herself down next to him.

"It's ok if your not. Just say so, then be done" Lilac said. It was so blunt, it was simple. Just say how you feel, Kai! Just do it!

"No. I'm not fine. But that's the reason behind a mask isn't it?" I placed a fake smile on myself, with a strained voice.

Evan was the one who spoke. "Don't listen to them. I know it's hard, but shut them out. I've had my fair share of hurt." He rolled up his sleeve to expose scars. Evenly placed, still faintly visible with his pale complexion.

"But I was smarter." Lilac said, and pointed to her leg. "But let's not talk about death wishes. How is coming back?"

"Better than it should."

"Oh." The twins said. "Well... have a good day then, the bell is gonna ring soon."

They left together. I got up, threw away my garbage, and headed to Math. Math was long and boring, so was Social Studies. We talked about the cold war, but nothing much from that. In science we had made sketches of different rocks, though they all looked the same. Last was PE. I had a little bit of struggle from not having the PE Uniform, but I wasn't stared at nearly as much as in math and science. I walked back to my locker where I heard Lilac and Evan laughing at some joke they had heard before I came in. I turned to my locker and did the combo once more to open it and grab my bag. Papers flew out from the locker and rushed to the floor. The twins stopped laughing, and Evan picked up one of the papers. He showed it to me. Suddenly, I was sick. It was a picture of a knife with blood on it. At the top, it said "Just do it!" in red ink. This was on every paper that came from my locker. My heart fell, then I heard laughing behind me. I turned to find a Blonde girl in pink flanked by what appeared to be her posè.

"Oh... Look at the 'Cutter' and her pathetic wannabe friends." She said in a high voice. "By the way, I'm Monica. Consider this your first lesson. Note to you, never mess with the higher power. I'm the leader, your the servant. Glad we could establish that." She spun on her heel walking back down the hall with her posè. Lilac looked at me as another tear slipped from my eyes. This was too hard, and It was the first day.

"Let's start cleaning this up." Lilac suggested. I bent down and started picking up my mess. Forget the core classes, this was the mandatory class high school teaches. It was called Learning Rules from Peers 101, and I flunked the first lesson.