I couldn't get the dream out of my mind. His gaze exposed every secret. His sharp features made me quiver. I couldn't look away.
I tried to shake it off as the chill wind nipped and bit and thick snow grabbed my feet. Surrounded by heavy parkas and backpacks, words clattering in the air, I noticed John, at the front door opening it.
He was a million leagues above my social sphere but I'd crushed on him since kindergarten when he pulled out my chair and gave me two plastic stencils for drawing.
My eyes always found him in a crowd despite having long ago given up the delusion he would ever notice me.
I didn't look that different from the popular pretty girls flooding around him but I didn't giggle and laugh at the world the way they did. Out of place and out of tune with the rest of the world, I hadn't bothered to try and fit in since elementary.
Back then there were more important things going on in my life than learning to dance the dance and play along.
I looked for my best and only friend but Chelle's blond, almost white hair, dark clothes and hunched frame were missing from the rainbow of coats and hats around me. She was both innocent and in pain.
She was the mirror of my soul. I was bold, she was timid, I sought attention, she sought shadows and corners to hide in. Her pain echoed mine and her innocence was like a drug. I wanted to protect her from the world. I could take the mockery of our peers and turned their lashes on myself so the cruelty didn't invade her beautiful world.
I hated not knowing where she was in this nest of vipers who tore the weak apart. I hurried inside hoping to find her.
Debbie, Chelle's friend and my... I wasn't sure what she was to me yet, waffled on her feet in the commons as though confused about where she was going. Debbie was new.
Shifted through the foster care system and dumped into our school. I wanted to like her but I was wary of adding her to our group because we were the freak outcasts. It would be better for her if she found other friends.
If Lachelle's loneliness hadn't been as excruciating as my own when we met I never would have let us be friends.
My last friend Shan couldn't take the ridicule that came from being associated with me and ditched our friendship like it was a rotted fish.
The clay disk she made with the words "Friends are forever if they are true," still took prominence on my dresser in hopes someday I would again be privy to her imaginative quips and bouncy mischief. The absence of it still hurt.
"Debbie," I called, glancing around hoping the vipers wouldn't notice her talking to me, "have you seen Chelle?"
Debbie turned around a two by four grin splitting her face and her amber green cat eyes landing on me. "I was just looking for you," she bellowed.
People turned, people noticed. Crap there was nothing I could do about it now. She had signed her death warrant.
I talked to people and they grudgingly answered me, but no one was allowed to seek me out. I was the devil worshipper, witch, soul stealer, nerd, freak, walking dictionary, the list continued and NO ONE in this little inbred town was allowed to look for me or be happy to see me.
I should have given Debbie a better heads up when we met in the alcove at the dance. Lachelle and I went to together and Debbie was hiding in one of the many nooks Chelle and I haunted.
There, I wasn't worried. No one would see us in the shadows. The music was too loud for our voices to be recognized.
Here, in the middle of the commons, the morning sun streaming through the windows wakened the appetite of sharks hungry for a chance to humiliate. Debbie wasn't safe from the blood of my reputation.
My stomach knotted. I wanted to scream at her to run, but acting like a lunatic would only make things worse for all of us.
If only I'd kept my mouth shut back in third grade it wouldn't be so bad now. That was when the whispers started.
"Murderer," it was my least favorite title. If only that dream, (or was it a nightmare?) hadn't been so vivid I couldn't separate it from reality.
I shake off the thoughts. There's nothing I can do about it now.
The echo of this morning's dream stirs caressing my mind. A scent of smoke tinged with cologne perfumes the air for a moment and is gone. I ache wishing that dream had been as clear. I again try to recall what the man peering into my soul out of darkness said, his name or some significant detail but my mind retained only one word, "Soon."
Nightmares, dreams, reality, high school all of it hurt. Dreams never lasted and only made reality more cruel by comparison. Nightmares sucked the light out of the day as I worried another one would come true. High school was a relief when there were teachers and books filled with all the right answers but then the bell would ring letting the monsters off their leashes.
Debbie cleared her throat.
I tried to smile at her while razor bladed tongues began to wag around us. "What did you want?" My throat tight, the words forced out, something in my tone was off and Debbie's eyes flinched with hurt, the last thing I wanted.
If she was smart she'd make up an excuse to be talking to me like she needs my notes from some class we don't have together or something.
"Nothing, I just thought," she trails off. She grins again, "I just wanted to see you."
Debbie needed to get a clue and fast before her social suicide was complete. If she stayed around me her smile would soon disappear.
"Hey Debbie," Lachelle called as she came walking towards us. "Oh Ash, you're here! I didn't see you!" If it seemed like Debbie was here for Chelle then the rabid mongrels wouldn't be so quick to bite.
"Debbie, I have that book for you." Lachelle dug into her bag and pulled out a tattered copy of a smutty paranormal romance we'd read.
Max stares at us as he walks by. Is he curious about the book? Max has never spoken to me. I said "Hi," to him once and he quickly walked the other way. Sometimes though he stares like the rest of them wondering if the rumors are true. Wondering if I really am a killer.
Or maybe he just thinks you're pretty my hormones argue, but I know it's a lie.
No one thinks I'm pretty. "Hey Dog Face," is the most common name I get referred to in these halls. High cheekbones, straight white teeth, and a curse of freckles probably don't make me a dog face but shoving my nose deeper into my books and ignoring the cretins probably does make me resemble a dog sometimes when I walk down the halls. For a moment I wonder if gluing on fake dog ears to a book and markering the bottom of it black into a dog nose should be my new look. It might make people laugh, but it would probably get stolen, played with, destroyed and garbaged just like every other different or unique thing and person in this school.
It'd be better if I had the power to shapeshift and turned into a Saluki. Then I could run away from all of them leaving nothing but a dust cloud in my wake.
Someday, I will shake the dirt of this stupidity obsessed inbred town off my feet and never return.
http://ashrienlives.blogspot.com/2018/01/the-best-bad-boy-chapter-two.html
I tried to shake it off as the chill wind nipped and bit and thick snow grabbed my feet. Surrounded by heavy parkas and backpacks, words clattering in the air, I noticed John, at the front door opening it.
My eyes always found him in a crowd despite having long ago given up the delusion he would ever notice me.
I didn't look that different from the popular pretty girls flooding around him but I didn't giggle and laugh at the world the way they did. Out of place and out of tune with the rest of the world, I hadn't bothered to try and fit in since elementary.
Back then there were more important things going on in my life than learning to dance the dance and play along.
I looked for my best and only friend but Chelle's blond, almost white hair, dark clothes and hunched frame were missing from the rainbow of coats and hats around me. She was both innocent and in pain.
She was the mirror of my soul. I was bold, she was timid, I sought attention, she sought shadows and corners to hide in. Her pain echoed mine and her innocence was like a drug. I wanted to protect her from the world. I could take the mockery of our peers and turned their lashes on myself so the cruelty didn't invade her beautiful world.
I hated not knowing where she was in this nest of vipers who tore the weak apart. I hurried inside hoping to find her.
Debbie, Chelle's friend and my... I wasn't sure what she was to me yet, waffled on her feet in the commons as though confused about where she was going. Debbie was new.
Shifted through the foster care system and dumped into our school. I wanted to like her but I was wary of adding her to our group because we were the freak outcasts. It would be better for her if she found other friends.
If Lachelle's loneliness hadn't been as excruciating as my own when we met I never would have let us be friends.
My last friend Shan couldn't take the ridicule that came from being associated with me and ditched our friendship like it was a rotted fish.
The clay disk she made with the words "Friends are forever if they are true," still took prominence on my dresser in hopes someday I would again be privy to her imaginative quips and bouncy mischief. The absence of it still hurt.
"Debbie," I called, glancing around hoping the vipers wouldn't notice her talking to me, "have you seen Chelle?"
Debbie turned around a two by four grin splitting her face and her amber green cat eyes landing on me. "I was just looking for you," she bellowed.
People turned, people noticed. Crap there was nothing I could do about it now. She had signed her death warrant.
I talked to people and they grudgingly answered me, but no one was allowed to seek me out. I was the devil worshipper, witch, soul stealer, nerd, freak, walking dictionary, the list continued and NO ONE in this little inbred town was allowed to look for me or be happy to see me.
I should have given Debbie a better heads up when we met in the alcove at the dance. Lachelle and I went to together and Debbie was hiding in one of the many nooks Chelle and I haunted.
There, I wasn't worried. No one would see us in the shadows. The music was too loud for our voices to be recognized.
Here, in the middle of the commons, the morning sun streaming through the windows wakened the appetite of sharks hungry for a chance to humiliate. Debbie wasn't safe from the blood of my reputation.
My stomach knotted. I wanted to scream at her to run, but acting like a lunatic would only make things worse for all of us.
If only I'd kept my mouth shut back in third grade it wouldn't be so bad now. That was when the whispers started.
"Murderer," it was my least favorite title. If only that dream, (or was it a nightmare?) hadn't been so vivid I couldn't separate it from reality.
I shake off the thoughts. There's nothing I can do about it now.
The echo of this morning's dream stirs caressing my mind. A scent of smoke tinged with cologne perfumes the air for a moment and is gone. I ache wishing that dream had been as clear. I again try to recall what the man peering into my soul out of darkness said, his name or some significant detail but my mind retained only one word, "Soon."
Nightmares, dreams, reality, high school all of it hurt. Dreams never lasted and only made reality more cruel by comparison. Nightmares sucked the light out of the day as I worried another one would come true. High school was a relief when there were teachers and books filled with all the right answers but then the bell would ring letting the monsters off their leashes.
Debbie cleared her throat.
I tried to smile at her while razor bladed tongues began to wag around us. "What did you want?" My throat tight, the words forced out, something in my tone was off and Debbie's eyes flinched with hurt, the last thing I wanted.
If she was smart she'd make up an excuse to be talking to me like she needs my notes from some class we don't have together or something.
"Nothing, I just thought," she trails off. She grins again, "I just wanted to see you."
Debbie needed to get a clue and fast before her social suicide was complete. If she stayed around me her smile would soon disappear.
"Hey Debbie," Lachelle called as she came walking towards us. "Oh Ash, you're here! I didn't see you!" If it seemed like Debbie was here for Chelle then the rabid mongrels wouldn't be so quick to bite.
"Debbie, I have that book for you." Lachelle dug into her bag and pulled out a tattered copy of a smutty paranormal romance we'd read.
Max stares at us as he walks by. Is he curious about the book? Max has never spoken to me. I said "Hi," to him once and he quickly walked the other way. Sometimes though he stares like the rest of them wondering if the rumors are true. Wondering if I really am a killer.
Or maybe he just thinks you're pretty my hormones argue, but I know it's a lie.
No one thinks I'm pretty. "Hey Dog Face," is the most common name I get referred to in these halls. High cheekbones, straight white teeth, and a curse of freckles probably don't make me a dog face but shoving my nose deeper into my books and ignoring the cretins probably does make me resemble a dog sometimes when I walk down the halls. For a moment I wonder if gluing on fake dog ears to a book and markering the bottom of it black into a dog nose should be my new look. It might make people laugh, but it would probably get stolen, played with, destroyed and garbaged just like every other different or unique thing and person in this school.
It'd be better if I had the power to shapeshift and turned into a Saluki. Then I could run away from all of them leaving nothing but a dust cloud in my wake.
Someday, I will shake the dirt of this stupidity obsessed inbred town off my feet and never return.
http://ashrienlives.blogspot.com/2018/01/the-best-bad-boy-chapter-two.html
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