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“Bad day at school?” Lane asks.
“It was fine,” I reply and Stanley follows me but keeps a few meters between us.
“You skipped your last two classes.” Sherlock Holmes strikes again.
“Don’t worry about it, it’s my future, not yours.” I close my bedroom door and start stripping out of my uniform. I bathe for the longest time, and when I return to my room, the hamper is empty, my uniform is gone, and the foster blocks leave me alone until dinner.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Lane asks when we sit down to eat.
I shake my head.
Stanley puts in, “It’ll be a better day tomorrow, kid. No more skipping and let me know if you’re not going to be there.”
“No way to call,” I explain, showing him my phone. “My uncle cut it off before L.I.”
“We’ll fix that for you. We also need your number in the meantime. Okay?”
“’Kay,” I breathe and tuck into my dinner. I am starving. Dancing will do that to you.
“Did you make any friends at least?” Stanley asks, brows pulled together with concern.
I think back to my rooftop and smile sarcastically. “Sure did.”
“Oh really? What is their name? Maybe we’ll know their parents.”
“I was kidding, Lane.”
She is so sickeningly optimistic and I just shattered that for her. I finish my meal and they don’t press further.
Coming to school after yesterday was a tough call. I considered skipping again but I just can’t be bothered with the drama and I need to make peace for now until I get enough cash to get myself out of here.
Everybody treats me like a pariah as I’m walking through the halls, nobody even glances my way. The students part like the sea for Moses and I’m left to my own devices. It sucks, to be honest; it would have been nice getting to know a couple of people at least, but nobody wants the drama I bring.
I move to my locker that the receptionist gave me the code for this morning and open it with a click. It’s empty, lacking life and memories, there’s no graffiti inside or pictures. It’s a bit like me, has a past but nothing to show for it but a hollow existence, waiting to be filled by something meaningful.
On that note, I stuff my gym bag inside. I didn’t take it as a class but Lane wants me to join some kind of sport, be it track, baseball, anything. I said we’ll see and she made me bring the bag.
I don’t know what they want from me or why I’m staying there. I thought I knew but I was wrong. I’ve never been wrong about that.
“Is it true you were sent to an insane asylum after fucking your dad?” one of Presley’s crew asks as he passes.
I don’t bite, it’s what they want and it would be so easy to give that to them. When they high-five each other as they go like they’re super proud of their bullying, I burn their image to memory.
Timberfake and his buttlover aren’t with them, but it’s the entire crew of five that swarmed my table yesterday during lunch.
From left to right is a guy with dark skin and hair, the one who made the unfunny comment, to his right is a girl with thick dark hair braided with pink ribbon, to her right is a Hispanic-looking guy with half a shaved head leading to longer hair, he’s the tallest of them, and the next is another guy, this one with blond hair and a skateboard, and finally the shortest of them all but the stockiest. He looks like a football player and has huge cheeks; I can see the roundness of them on either side of his head as he walks away.
I press my back against the lockers, hiding myself behind the open metal door when Presley launches himself onto the back of the guy on the far left. They start wrestling in the hall, screwing around laughing as his brown-haired fuck buddy, aka Carter, tackles them from another angle and they crash into a different row of lockers, still laughing.
Boys… I want to scoff at them and turn my nose up and act like I’d never be so immature, but truth be told, I’m so envious of how easily happy they are. I want a friend to dive on my back and tackle me into the lockers. I want to laugh like that, I don’t think I ever have.
The guy they attacked wriggles free and slings his arm around the girl with the black and pink braid. They kiss right before they turn the corner, still laughing.
“That’s her,” somebody whispers in passing, further solidifying the fact I don’t belong here.
At lunch I sit outside on the steps leading to the drop-off area getting a numb butt from the unforgiving surface beneath me. My scuffed shoes tap gently together as I eat a delicious sandwich that Lane packed for me this morning. I think they knew I’d probably be avoiding my peers today and wouldn’t go to the cafeteria. Although it’s not so much me avoiding them as they are avoiding me.
