2. A DAY FROM HELL.
I was having the day from hell. Call it an exaggeration if you must, but it was the truth. First, I started at my new high school in this new town in the middle of fucking nowhere and then that nameless girl in my first period class had to go and pester me. As if moving hadn't been bad enough already, I simply wanted to glide through this last year of high school invisible and without a friend to speak of.
The icing on the cake, however, was turning out to be that I could not, no matter how hard I tried and believe me, I was trying, I couldn't seem to get that previously mentioned nameless girl out of my head.
For now, however, I found myself able to push her to some far corner of my mind as I approached the front door of my house. It was a simple home, one of those white houses with a white picket fence sort of places. Every time I caught sight of the damn place, I felt like I could vomit up all the contents of my stomach at any given moment. I loved my dad. Truly, I did. I owed him my life because he had been the rock to hold me up all these years when I felt myself slipping, but I almost found myself hating him a little for making me leave my favorite city in the universe.
It wasn't his fault, though, and I knew that. It was Ginny's, my step-mother's, fault. Her stupid job had moved us to this stupid town. I liked Ginny well-enough. She tried too hard, I thought, to be my mother, but her heart was in the right place. Not that I ever expressed my gratitude towards her. I was a bitch through and through. I wasn't proud of the fact and it wasn't the real me, but I wasn't sure who the real me was and I played the part well, so I figured, keep on playing.
The sound of a child's laughter greeted me as I opened the front door and when I stepped inside, there was a smile on my face. If there was one person who could brighten my day, even if only for a millisecond, it was my half-sister, Elise. She had our dad's dark hair and her mother's blueblueblue eyes, and yes, I felt the need to call eyes like hers blueblueblue because I could find no other appropriate term for eyes as blue as Elise's.
"Hope, is that you?" Ginny called from somewhere in our three-story home. I pretended that I didn't hear her as I threw my book bag onto the floor in front of the couch and plopped down beside Elise, pulling her onto my lap and starting to braid her hair, a routine I had started when she was two and had started growing out her hair to be the same length as mine almost.
"Oh, it is you," I heard Ginny say and she sounded closer than she had before. I stopped braiding Elise's hair momentarily and turned my head, and yup, there my step-mother was, looking as dolled up as usual in a jean skirt with a hem line that stopped just above her knees, a frilly purple blouse, and her hair all blonde and wavy and perfect.
No, I was not jealous of my step-mother, for Christ's sake. I just didn't understand why she insisted on dressing like a young adult as opposed to a woman with a four-year old daughter, a seventeen-year old step-daughter, and a workaholic for a husband. She looked too well-put together. I hated that about her.
Truthfully, I hated a lot of things about Ginny, the main thing being that she had turned my father into a churchgoing, close-minded Jesus freak just like herself. If half the shit I had heard in school was anything to go by, my dad and Ginny should have no problem fitting into this town and its close-minded belief system.
No offense to anyone who actually believed in God or some higher entity or whatever, but I wasn't exactly religious. I pretended to be because I pretty much had no choice which made me a hypocrite, but whatever, I didn't particularly care. Anyway, as I was saying, religion and I had never really seen eye to eye. This could have to do with me being attracted to the same sex, which was a big no-no in that oh-so-infamous big, bad book known as The Bible.
For obvious reasons, Ginny did not know that I was a lesbian. My father didn't know, either. I had wanted to tell him, but... Nevermind. That was a thought for an entirely different time.
"Hi, Gigi," I greeted her. She insisted that if I wasn't going to call her 'mom', I should at least call her Gigi because she hated her first name. And so I called her Gigi because like hell I was going to refer to her as mom. I had a mom and just because she wasn't here anymore didn't mean I was going to replace her simply because my dad had.
I immediately banished that thought from my mind. I knew my dad hadn't been trying to replace my mom when he'd met and fallen in love with the blonde who was now seating herself in the armchair beside the couch. He loved Gigi, as much as I didn't like thinking about it, and even though I hated admitting it, I loved Gigi, too sometimes. Sometimes being the operative word.
"How was school?" Like right now, I didn't like her because she was trying to pry into my life. Maybe that wasn't exactly what she was trying to do, it was merely an innocent question and I knew that she truly did care, but I never claimed to be the rational type.
In fact, irrational had been a term used to describe me often in the past. It had mostly been said by counselors. Most of which I had not listened to.
"Fine." It was the safest answer I could think up because if I said shitty or any of the other profound words that I could think up in description of my first day at my new school, I knew I would be grounded for likely the rest of my life or at least until I graduated.
"Just fine?" she prodded and I could see the frown lines forming on her otherwise perfect complexion.
I lifted my shoulders, shrugging. "Yeah. Fine." She gave me a look that stated 'fine' was not a good enough answer and that she was not going to leave me be until I gave her a more suitable answer. I would have told her that this wasn't fair because no answer I had would be suitable enough for her and why did it have to be suitable anyway because it had been my day, but it would have gone through one ear and out the other.
"It was okay, I guess," I tried again. She was still frowning at me, so I continued, attempting to sound more convincing. "Seriously. It was uneventful, Gigi. I got my books for my classes, I spent most of the day getting lost," I was not joking and it had not been funny so I wasn't amused when Gigi grinned, but I guess I couldn't blame her; I probably would have grinned too if it had happened to anyone but me, "and I scared away a classmate in my first class of the day with that hostility you keep telling me to dial down on."
The expression on Gigi's face was one of disapproval, not amusement. "Not funny, Hope. You need to make friends. That's part of the reason we moved. To give you a fresh start."
I greatly wanted to call her out on how much bullshit she was feeding me, but I remained silent. In these situations, I had learned that silence was the best way to keep myself from getting grounded and to keep me from saying something I might end up regretting later on in my life.
"Look, I know moving isn't something you wanted to do in your last year of high school," she was looking away from me now and her voice was a tad bit more vulnerable; I felt bad, a little, "but keeping my job is important to me. There is nothing your father and I want more than to be able to take care of you two girls because we love you both very much even if you don't believe that-"
"I believe you," I interrupted her even though I knew she honestly hated being interrupted. To make up for being so rude, I added, "I love you, too, Gigi. Really." Those words seemed to soften her a bit, for which I was grateful because I really fucking hated emotional talks with Gigi. They were uncomfortable and I feared that one day I would let my guard down so much that the words 'I am a lesbian' would slip out of my mouth and she would freak the fuck out and kick me out and I would never be allowed to see my family again.
I honestly did not know if this fear was unfounded or not. With my family, especially with Gigi and her uptight ways, it was plausible, at the very least. Better yet, it was possible, but that didn't make it rational simply because it was a possibility. It simply made it more understandable, not that it mattered either way because it wasn't like I was going to be sharing these thoughts with anyone anytime soon. Or ever.
Gigi looked like she wanted to say something. I didn't know why, but her gaze made me shift uncomfortably in my seat. I had a feeling whatever it was she wanted to say wouldn't be something I actually wanted to hear. Then again, when did I ever want to hear anything she had to say about me and my 'life choices'? God forbid she ever found out about my sexuality. She'd have me sent to one of those godawful psychiatrists who were brainwashed into thinking that their brainwashed selves could brainwash homosexuals or anyone even remotely attracted to the same sex into truly believing that they could be 'fixed', like being gay, a lesbian, transsexual, or pretty much everything but 'straight and narrow' was a disease that could be cured by hour-long sessions and popping a couple of pills once in the morning and once at night.
Because, I forgot, filling your body with narcotics that you didn't really need was more preferable than walking around with an incurable disease like being a homosexual.
"Okay, good," was all Gigi said as she clasped her hands in front of her, a nervous twitch of hers I had noticed in the time she had been in my life, and I fought to keep myself from releasing a sigh of relief. I was relieved. I could avoid a meltdown for just another day and that was always a good thing in my book.
Sensing that the conversation had reached its end, I turned my attention back to my four-year old sister once more. I'd rather pay attention to her, anyway. I resumed the task of braiding Elise's hair as she clapped joyfully when the commercial that had come on after the last episode of Spongebob announced that there would be another episode of Spongebob coming up shortly.
I didn't exactly approve of Spongebob. Personally, I thought the spongy dude was kind of really fucking creepy and that watching him fried brain cells, but if it kept my four year old sister from acting out and making a huge mess of the house that would cause my father to explode in anger when he got off work, I figured feeling like less of an intelligent being due to the yellow Sponge for a few hours was not such a bad thing and was totally worth the few fried brain cells that would result in return if it meant avoiding a 'daddy meltdown'.
XXX
Dinner had consisted of the usual: a prayer before we ate (I always pretended to pray, but really, I was cruelly mocking Gigi and her words in my head because I didn't honestly believe in the bullshit my step-mom sprouted about our 'holy' food; how holy could food be, anyway?), several failed attempts and a couple of successful attempts at small talk, and Elise's continued protests to eat her veggies which eventually led to her being put in time-out, meaning she was put to bed early.
After the inevitable kicking and screaming fit had ended and Elise had allowed herself to be carried up the stairs by her mother, my father and I were left alone at the table. It was very rare these days that I spent time alone with my dad, which was weird for me because ever since the event that I refused to ever really talk about or even think of, my dad and I had been inseparable. Until he met Gigi and our worlds flipped upside down. Okay, so, maybe his hadn't, but it sure felt like mine had.
I didn't feel as close to my dad as I used to. It was sad, but only if I took the time to think about it, which I never did for the sake of my sanity. Also for the sake of keeping up the facade I had created for myself of this bad ass, strong girl who could handle anything and everything that life threw her way because she didn't see the point in giving a shit.
"I'm going to go upstairs and say goodnight to Elise," my father announced pointlessly. He looked torn for a moment and for a second, I thought maybe he was going to try and have a heart-to-heart, try to get to the root of the problem and really take the time to figure me, his first daughter, out, but in the blink of an eye, he was standing and walking out of the room to go comfort his other daughter.
Don't get me wrong, I loved Elise so very much. I liked that I had a little sister, someone that looked up to me even though I felt like she was making a bad decision in looking up to me. But still, it felt good to be looked up to even if I wasn't the best example of how someone should be.
At least someone in this family cared about me, even if it was only a four-year old. I got jealous of her sometimes, though. Maybe it was pathetic and somewhat childish, but sometimes I wish our dad gave me half of the attention he was constantly giving her.
Realizing that dinner was officially through, I stood up and began cleaning off the table. It was a habit of mine. On the one hand, I felt like saying screw it and being a rebellious teenager, but I was rebellious enough without adding more fuel to the fire. This had been a semi-decent night at the household and I wasn't about to fuck it up.
As I placed the dishes in the left side of the sink and started to fill it up with hot water and dish soap, I felt my mind drifting to that nameless girl that I had met at school. I couldn't deny that I had found her cute, in an annoying kind of way. Maybe it had been the way the overhead light had shined on her head when we had been watching an informative video on safety precautions in the Chemistry lab, making her auburn hair somehow resemble the light orange during a sunset or maybe it had been the cute way that she had rambled, seemingly uncaring that she had sounded like a babbling fool.
Or maybe it had been those eyes; her eyes had been as green as emeralds. It had taken everything in my power to snap at her the way that I had because of how captivated I had been by her. Of course, realizing my captivation had made it easier for me to tack on the second rude statement I had spoken to her. I could not have anyone finding out about my sexuality, not in this town. If I had been terrified of the thought of anyone figuring me out in Manhattan, I was even more terrified at the thought of anyone in this fucking town full of judgmental freaks figuring me out. Being chased down by a parade of torchbearers wasn't my idea of a grand 'ol time.
Maybe I was letting my imagination run away with me or whatever because I doubt they would really come after a homosexual with torches (it wasn't like us lesbians and gays and what-have-yous were on the same page as witches and the like), but my imagination always had been just a teeny bit overactive.
I swore to myself to not think anymore of the nameless girl. Not that swearing to myself did much because even as I headed upstairs and changed into my night clothes with the intent to go to sleep early, the first picture that popped into my head when I closed my eyes was of said nameless girl's face.
I had a feeling I was in big trouble and I had only been in this town for one godawful day. Just my luck.
I hated mornings. Like, I truly hated the fucking mornings. I could hear Gigi whistling a tune downstairs in the kitchen, the childish laughter of my baby sister, and the soothing singing voice of my father as he tried to sing along to the tune Gigi was whistling.
As I sat up in my bed, I closed my eyes and pictured the three of them in the kitchen, without me. Sometimes I got this feeling that they were their own family, separate from me. I almost found myself not wanting to go downstairs. God forbid I broke the mold and intruded in on their nice family moment, right?
I shook the thought from my mind. My dad would probably call my crazy if I ever dared to voice my previous thought aloud to him, which I never would because that would make me an idiot and I generally pride myself on not being too much of an idiot.
"Hope, breakfast!" my dad hollered from downstairs, tearing me from my thoughts. I guessed that was a good thing because sometimes my thoughts made me feel like I really was this super crazy person in this otherwise 'normal' family.
"Be down in a minute!" I shouted in reply before forcing myself out of my bed and slipping into my pajama shorts, which I had taken off before going to sleep because it had gotten severely hot. It had been nearly two weeks and my dad had yet to talk to the electrical company about the fucking air conditioner; that was so typical of him, he liked to put things off. Guess that was where I got it from, when I took the time to actually think about it.
After brushing through the tangles in my hair with my fingers, I practically sprinted downstairs. There was a delicious breakfast waiting for me at the dining room table. It was a fancy table, like something you would see in a rich person's house. We weren't rich by any means, but we weren't poor either. Gigi liked nice things, I had learned in the time that she had been in my life.
One would say that she was materialistic. I had almost referred to her as such a few times during the arguments that had once been a frequent occurrence between us. I had generally started them. Okay, I had started them all, admittedly, and I wasn't proud of it, but Gigi's holier-than-thou attitude had a way of getting to me like nothing else ever had. I had a zero tolerance policy for anyone who thoughts themselves to be better than I was just because they believed in some greater being who lived in the sky.
Sorry, but no fucking way was I putting all of my faith into someone I couldn't even see. I didn't have enough faith to be able to force myself to even try and believe that he was real. Life sucked and then you died. That was the sick cycle of the world and the sooner the universe started accepting it, everyone would probably be a lot happier. Well, maybe they wouldn't be a lot happier, but at least all the disappointment would stop because when you set yourself up for disappointment and you're proved right, then there's no room left to be disappointed.
It was a pessimistic outlook on life, sure, but I had never claimed to be the kind of girl who thought the glass to be half-full as opposed to half-empty.
"Before we eat, let us bow our heads in prayer," Gigi said once all of us were seated. I hid my distaste well as I bowed my head and clasped my hands together in front of me. I could hear Gigi speaking, but her voice sounded far away as I blocked out whatever it was that she was saying, as I did every morning, and I tuned in just in time to mutter an 'Amen' in unison with all three of them. It was like I had been listening the whole time. I was almost positive Gigi and my dad would throw a fit if they found out I never actually listened to Gigi.
"So, are you looking forward to another day of school?" Gigi asked me as I was placing a pancake onto Elise's plate. The four-year-old immediately dug in and mumbled her thanks in between her first and second bite. I simply ruffled her hair in response before begrudgingly focusing my attention on my stepmother.
"I'm a teenager, Gigi," I tried to keep the bitterness out of my tone, but I could hear it despite my efforts to keep it concealed which meant that Gigi could definitely hear it too if her bemused expression were anything to go by, "so not really, but it's whatever. I'm sure it'll be another day just like yesterday."
"Be nice, young lady," my dad reprimanded me, looking up from his morning paper momentarily. The words 'fuck off' were on the tip of my tongue, but I bit my tongue, hard enough to cause me to wince, in an attempt to stay silent. It worked. It hurt, yeah, but if it would keep me from being grounded, I'd bite my tongue a million more times until it bled.
I crinkled my nose. I vowed to let that be my one and only disturbingly melodramatic thought for the day.
"Sorry." The apology was halfhearted, but it was good enough for Gigi and my dad to drop the subject and the rest of my breakfast was eaten in semi-comfortable silence.
XXX
I had a scowl on my face when I walked into the AP Chemistry lab. I wore the expression on purpose. Scowling wasn't a way to make new friends, I knew that, but if I were trying to make friends, I'd smile. I clearly wasn't trying to make friends, hence the scowl. I had no desire for any because it wasn't like I could ever be honest with them anyway. I would rather be friendless than be forced to be a fake friend by lying to my so-called 'friends' every day about who I was underneath the mask.
The scowl slipped for a few seconds when I saw her standing outside of the door to the classroom. The bell had yet to ring. I was early because I had nothing better to do and no friends to speak to before class like it seemed she did. She was laughing and talking to some boy with a lot of fucking metal on his face.
I tried not to make it obvious that I had been staring when the boy walked away and she entered the classroom, starting her walk towards our lab table. I busied myself with writing furiously in my notebook, like I had yesterday morning.
Unlike yesterday, the nameless girl did not utter a 'hi' or speak a single syllable to me. I tried to ignore the disappointment that washed over me. It was what I had wanted, to be left alone and she was simply granting me my silent wish. Still, despite reminding myself of my behavior that had led to her ignoring me, I couldn't fully push aside the disappointment.
Said disappointment quickly vanished when I heard a whispered, "Hey." My first instinct was to snap, like I had yesterday, but then I realized this was what I had wanted and honestly, what harm could it do to say hi? It was one word, so it wasn't like it was a big fucking deal so I didn't understand why I was treating it like one.
"Hi." The word came out sharp and kind of mean-sounding, but hey, I tried and I could see that she appreciated the effort, to some extent. Or at least I would assume so because she was smiling instead of frowning and looking awkwardly away from me. Maybe I hadn't sounded as unfriendly as I had thought.
"Hope, right?" I gulped. She knew my name. Duh, she did, because I had been forced to introduce myself in English, another class that I shared with the nameless girl.
All I could manage in response was a nod. I eyed her warily as she stuck out her hand and said, "Nice to meet ya, Hope. I'm Kaia, Kaia Rhodes, but you can just call me Kai. Or Kaia, whichever."
She was blushing and it was... cute. I quickly took back that thought. I was not allowed to go there. Ever. If I ignored the pet names and the thoughts that came along with having a crush on someone, I could almost forget that I was a lesbian. Almost forgetting didn't make it easier to pretend, exactly, but it made it less hard.
"Riiiight," I drawled, attempting to appear disinterested though I was anything but. The thought scared me and I did not take kindly to being scared. That was the thing I prided myself on being, that I was not afraid; never afraid. And yes, I was pretty sure it was the biggest lie I had ever told myself because I was terrified every single day of my life. My two fears were not being able to be myself and being myself. They contradicted each other, sure, but that was what happened when you were forced to hide your true self from the world; you tended to contradict yourself a lot.
"Nice to meet you, too, I guess," I eventually responded, trying to make myself sound as nice as I wanted to make myself sound, but it didn't exactly work out that way, to my not-so-surprise (not shaking her hand probably hadn't helped matters much). Nothing tended to work out the way that I wanted it to. "Look, I, uh," I started up again, only to pause briefly. I knew what I wanted to say but I was having a hard time forcing the words out. Apologizing had never been easy for me. I hated admitting when I was wrong, which was all the time because I was hardly right these days. "I wanted to say sorry for uh," I began again, "talking to you the way I did yesterday. That was out of line, so we cool?"
Kaia looked amused. After another few seconds of silence, I was starting to lose my patience. "Look, if you're just going to fucking stare at me like an idiot then you can forget I said anything," I snapped harshly, regretting the words before I had even spoken them.
To my relief and confusion, she didn't look bothered by my harsh words. I was honestly confused and slightly curious because why the hell wasn't she like, slapping me across the face right now? If I were in her shoes, I would be doing that to me, though I supposed I should be thankful that I wasn't getting bitch slapped instead of questioning it like I wanted to get bitch slapped because I so did not even if the action would have been deemed justifiable.
"Why do you do that?" The question was spoken with an air of innocence and wonderment and it momentarily rendered me speechless. I didn't like to be caught off guard because I had made a habit of staying on guard. It was the only way to keep my guard up so that no one could ever find their way in.
"Do what?" I shouldn't have been continuing our conversation. I had gotten what I wanted when she had told me her name and that should have been the end of it, but the way she had worded the question had me curious as to what she meant. Yeah, yeah, I was aware that curiosity killed the cat, but I felt that metaphor was overused and chose to ignore it.
"Project your anger at me. Is it like, a defense mechanism or something?" I stared at her in disbelief. I wasn't even going to bother to hide it. She could not be serious. Who had the audacity to ask someone if they did something because it was a defensive mechanism? That took some serious balls.
I was glaring. I didn't want to, but I was because I didn't like to be called out, especially not by strangers. "I'm not projecting anything at you, Kai." I tried to say her name venomously so as to freak her out, but I failed because I liked the taste of her name on my tongue and -
Dyke. My thought was cut short when I heard that word. I froze on instinct. Had someone figured me out? That was ridiculous, I had not even been at this school for a whole two days, it wasn't possible that someone was able to see through me that quickly. It was when this thought crossed my mind that I took note of how Kaia had also frozen at the word and then it clicked. The insult hadn't been directed at me. It had been directed at Kaia.
Was Kaia a lesbian or did people merely think she was? I studied her expression, which betrayed nothing that would answer my unspoken question. "Was she talking about you?" I asked, once again going against my better judgment. I did not need to be getting to know this girl, but the way she had tensed up and the almost crushed look on her face had me feeling the need to know and also feeling extremely awful for her.
"Are you okay?" I voiced my concern. It was so unlike me, but I felt it necessary.
A smile was on her face instantly and she shrugged. The reaction baffled me. "I'm fine, thanks. I'm used to it. One of the downsides of being open about being a lesbian is that I get called crude names every once in a while. I see it as a small price to pay for being myself. It used to bother me, but it doesn't anymore."
I gaped at her. There was nothing else I could do, really. I wished I could have hidden my shock, but there was just no way that was happening because her reaction had honestly baffled me that fucking much. How was she so okay with that? She had been called a dyke, for Christ's sake. It was a derogatory term aimed directly towards people like me and her, girls who were attracted to other girls. The word had never been directly aimed at me and though I liked to think of myself as strong, I was almost certain this girl was stronger than me because my reaction would have been utter devastation. I would have broken; shattered. But not her. She was still standing and all the pieces seemed to be in place.
A new feeling bubbled up inside of me then: envy. I envied her for being courageous enough to be open, for not being afraid of who she was. It made me want to hate her, but I didn't hate her. I barely knew her so I didn't know if liked her, but I could tell she was the type of person that was impossible to hate.
Not that I would be sharing those thoughts with her. "Oh, cool, whatever." I mentally smacked myself. God, could I have sounded more like an idiot? I didn't know why I cared. Okay, I knew why I cared, the girl was cute and she was a lesbian and I was speaking like I didn't know more than three or four words of the English language.
Still, it wasn't like it mattered if I liked her or if she liked me because I would never be able to do anything about it. I could never be like her, so open about who I really was. I had only opened myself up to one person and that person was gone. My secret had died with her and when I died, it would be buried with me and no one would ever know because I had chosen for it to be that way.
XXX
It was lunchtime. Just like yesterday, I had decided to eat outside. Eating outside had made more sense in my mind because outside, I would not be forced to deal with the extremely awkward and embarrassing task of finding someone to sit with or worse, forced to sit at a table and eat alone. Outside, eating alone wasn't that big of a deal because everyone who ate outside, I would assume, was choosing to spend their lunch period alone anyway or at the very least, trying to find some solace from the craziness that was the hundreds of high school students residing in the cafeteria during lunch hour.
And just like yesterday, Kaia and who I would assume to be her three friends were the only other people eating outside aside from the few teachers that were forced to sit outside to watch us. I assumed they had to keep their eyes on the students outdoors because they had to make sure none of us would try to leave the property during school hours. Then again, I had a feeling all the students that would skip were inside, not outside, so it didn't make any logical sense to me, but whatever.
I hadn't even been sitting down for like, three minutes before a shadow cast itself over the pages of my book. I frowned and looked up. There was a girl standing in front of me, looking down at me. I recognized her as one of Kaia's friends.
"May I help you?" My signature scowl returned to my face. It wasn't like I wanted to be rude, it was just that I had to be if I wanted to make it out of my last year of high school with some of my sanity in tact.
The redhead didn't appear to be offended by my coldness. "I'm Isabella," she introduced herself. I gave her a look that was supposed to have said, 'I care why?', but she remained unfazed by my attitude. I could see why she and Kaia were friends; they were alike in the sense that rude people didn't get under their skin too much. "Look, you don't seem too pleased to have someone speaking to you, but if you don't want to spend the lunch period alone, you're way more than welcome to join me and my friends. We don't bite, honest."
Isabella did not give me a chance to respond. Instead, she turned on her heels and returned to her friends. I assumed that she was trying to tell me that it was okay to follow her if I wanted to.
I contemplated momentarily. What would it hurt? It wasn't like I had to make friends with these people or even like I had to make nice with them. I could simply sit there and listen to their conversations so that I didn't have nothing but silence to listen to every single lunch period.
Having made my decision, I grabbed my things and stood up from my spot, hoping I wouldn't regret Isabella's generous offer in the long run.
author's note: sorry to leave it that way at the end. there will be more dialogue next chapter, i promise. the first two chapters were meant to introduce readers to the characters and their mindsets. the next chapter will be in kaia's point of view and it will start where this one left off.
i apologize for all the profanity and for the use of the Lord's name in vain, but like i said, hope's point of view will be offensive and it will probably will be for a good majority of the story.
i don't own Spongebob or anything else you might recognize that is obviously not owned by moi.
:)
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