12AN: This is my first attempt at writing anything. I would love some feedback on how to make my writing better. Even if all you want to do is tell me the story sucks, please review so I have some idea of how I'm doing. Also, please note that none of the chapters are beta-ed, and I haven't reread any of this so far so all mistakes are my own. I'm making this up as I go along so don't expect too much XD!
Prologue
I was always a loner, even in my elementary school years. I would sit alone on the swings during recess, I would color by myself, and I would walk home from school in my own little world. The other kids had tried to befriend me at first, but I always managed to scare them away. That was my goal. Lots of kids with no friends hate it, but not me. Solitude was exactly what I wanted. I would interact with the other kids during class when the situation required it but other than that I was always on my own.
By the time middle school rolled around, the other kids had given up on trying to be friends with me and I was finally free from their pestering. I don't know what it was, but something about having to be around and interact with other people always made me uncomfortable.
Finally being exiled by the other kids was like heaven for me. I would spend my mornings before school alone in the back corner of the library. The library was my favorite place to be when it came to being inside. I had always loved to read and you could always find me with my headphones in my ears and a good book in my lap. I also loved to be outside. I would eat my lunch outside in the grass behind the senior parking lot. No one ever went there, and it was a great place to just enjoy the outdoors. I would eat there when the weather was good, but when the rain forced me inside, I would eat lunch in the lobby of the school auditorium. It was so far out of the way that the only time people were ever in that part of the school was when they were either rehearsing or performing within the auditorium.
At one point at the beginning of my freshman year in high school, my mom became convinced that I was depressed and that was why I never wanted to hang out with my fellow students. I had tried to convince her that I wasn't ever sad about being alone. That in fact the only times I was ever happy was when I was left to my own devices, but she simply wouldn't hear of it. It didn't help my cause that I was never a girly girl either. I didn't enjoy shopping, or wearing makeup, or spending hours deciding what I was going to wear to school. My mom had been a girly girl and one of the popular cheerleaders back in high school, so having a daughter like me was a real shock to her. Naturally, she didn't think it was possible for her to have a daughter who was so completely different from herself, so she sent me to a psychologist to try to figure out what was wrong with me. After all, if there was something wrong with my head, then the doctors could fix it and I would be the daughter she had always wanted.
When the first doctor my mom sent me to told her that there was nothing wrong with me, that I was a well adjusted teenager who simply liked being alone, she declared him a quack and sent me to another. When this one said the same thing, my mom had started to get the idea, but still held out hope that maybe she had just chosen two really bad psychologists and sent me to a third. The third one told my mom that there was nothing wrong with me and that if she continued to try to project her ideas of what I should be onto me that it would likely cause severe damage to my self esteem. My mom gave up on trying to 'fix' me at that point, but I still think she was very disappointed at having a daughter that wouldn't enjoying going shopping and talking about boys with her.
Once my mom gave up I was left on my own not only at school but at home as well and life had never been better. I would walk to school every morning and sit in the library, I would eat my lunch outside whenever possible, and after school was done I would head over to the local park and either wander around on the playground, or sit by the trees and do my homework until it got dark and it was time to head home. My routine was wonderful. It was relaxing, and even though I was taking advanced classes, I was never that stressed out. I loved my routine and as much as it could I think it loved me back. There would be the occasional rumor about me. We were a bunch of teenagers after all, but they were never really that malicious, and I never had a problem with bullies. For the most part I was simply invisible to the rest of the student body. I was the quiet girl in the corner who never talked to anyone and seemed to have a weird fascination with grass.
My quiet anonymity lasted all the way through middle school and the first two years of high school. My nice, quiet, invisible routine, would however meet a disastrous end during the middle of my junior year. It was my own fault really that the whole thing started. I should have just kept to the shadows like I always had. I should have just kept on walking. I shouldn't have interfered that night outside the restaurant. In all honesty, I'm not even sure why I decided to intervene, but I never thought for a moment that doing so would thrust me into the spotlight like it did.