Chapter 2

"That's just the freak crazy chick", Priscilla mumbled to someone behind me back. I buried my face further into my curly hair and pretended I couldn't hear them.

"Yeah, I heard her dad put her in an asylum or something for a year", someone else replied as they giggled among themselves. I pushed my hands into my eyes to stop the tears. You will not cry, I told myself, you will not cry!

"She use to like, talk to herself all through elementary and middle school." Peter said as he let out a deep chortle.

I pushed myself away from the lunch table and picked up my lunch tray. I could see them watching me in my peripheral: they watched as I walked to the trash can and dumped my tray. I had to walk back by them again to exit the cafeteria but as I was doing so a foot slipped out. I saw it with enough time to avoid it, but the action hurt never the less.

"Freak", the tripper replied as I walked by them out the doors.

I walked to my locker with my face covered by my unwashed black hair. Behind it I tried to reason with myself that I couldn't be too much of a freak: there had to be something normal about me.

You did just get called a freak but the nerdiest kids in the school, my inner voice reasoned as I spun the combination to my lock.

"Shut up", I muttered as the locker cracked open to reveal the junk I kept inside. I've never been a tidy person ,my locker deeply reflects this. I push past old test and quizzes, a lunch box that I haven't used in months, gym clothes I keep forgetting to take home and a bear someone bought me before everyone found out I was different.

Different? Don't you mean a freak?

"I'm not a freak", I say to myself as I pull out my Chemistry book and slam the locker closed. I look at the digital watch on my wrist and groan as I notice I still have twenty minutes to kill before class. I lean against my locker and dig in my pocket for change until I have enough to buy a soda.

As I'm walking to the soda machine I see Jazmyn. I smile at her before I remember that she hates me. She looks at me with a mix of hatred and annoyance but doesn't stop to cuss me out like she's been prone to do lately.

I take this as a step up from her previous behavior.

You need a life, inner me says as I shove my dollar into the machine and press the button for a mystic mountain.

"No", I mumble as I bend to get my soda. "I need this incisive voice in my head to go away."

"Freak", someone says as I stand up to face a very impatient an angry potential soda buyer. I smile at them behind my mass of hair and scurry away from the machine before they can contact the counselor and tell them I've been talking to inanimate objects again.

Actually you've been talking to yourself…

I shuffle outside into the student gardens and take a seat under one of the giant oak trees. It isn't particularly the weather for sitting outside, but I enjoy the cold winter air brushing against my skin. I pop open the top to my soda but decide I'm not very thirst after all.

What's so wrong with me? Why does everyone seem to hate me?

I rub my arms up and down across my outstretched legs with a sigh. I feel so incredibly alone that it's sad. I look past the glass of the cafeteria at all my peers: they all seem to happy and carefree.

Why cant I be like that?

You were never normal.