He disliked me from the start and the feeling was mutual. He was keen on poking fun of me for being unattractive, wearing ugly clothes, and having zero sexual experience. Everyone knew I never had a boyfriend, which was something Masen liked to remind me all the time.
The students around us started paying attention, and I wanted to disappear into thin air. How many times had I wished to fight back and finally make them stop torturing me?
“What? Cat got your tongue? Now you aren’t so brave like you were the last time, are you?” He hovered over me, his mean eyes boring into mine. “Why don’t you tell me to go to hell too? Hm?” I took a step back, but he followed, and I felt intimidated.
I managed to find my voice. “We’ll be late for class, Masen.”
“We’ll be late for class, Masen!” someone said in a mocking voice and sniggered. “Boo-hoo! Nerdy is afraid she’ll be late for class!”
Masen laughed and winked at me. “We don’t want you to be late for your class, Sars.” He stepped aside, allowing me to leave at last, and I embraced my escape eagerly.
I moved, but I failed to notice Masen’s extended leg, and I crashed to the floor. Masen and the group of students laughed as they walked away, adding to my humiliation.
My body hurt everywhere, but I pretended I was completely okay. Everywhere I looked, I saw prying eyes, and they made my skin prickle. They spoke in hushed whispers, waiting for me to finally lose it, but I refused to satisfy their twisted minds. I picked up my calculus textbook and the notebook from the floor and dashed to the classroom, not shedding a single tear.
I WAS HOPING THERE would be some divine intervention which would enable me to have my classes without Hayden or any of his friends. According to yin and yang, everything was about balance. I endured three shitty years here, so my yang period was way overdue, right?
Unfortunately, as soon as I stepped into the calculus classroom my hope was extinguished because I found Christine Thompson and her best friend, Natalie Shelley, at the back. They noticed me and started talking in hushed whispers. Their evil eyes bore into me, allowing my anxiety to proliferate, and I could sense there was some confrontation ahead of me, but I didn’t know what to do to elude it.
To say Christine and I weren’t friends anymore was an understatement. Soon after Kay died, it became clear to me that she and I had never been friends for real.
It was convenient for her to hang out with me because I was Kay’s best friend, and Kayden and Hayden were the most popular guys in school. This didn’t mean I was a part of the popular students list. Hayden made sure I was excluded from it.
He and the rest of the school kept harassing me, and Kayden wasn’t even aware of that, because I didn’t want to admit to him how much of a loser I actually was or make the relationship between him and Hayden even worse. I pretended everything was okay, hiding the abuse his brother and others put me through every day.
Christine was one of the first people who had turned their backs on me after Kayden’s death. She and Natalie were the most responsible for spreading the rumors about me being a murderer, and soon the whole school started blaming me for it, gung-ho about venting out their frustrations or bearing malice toward the easy prey.
Those months were a living nightmare for me. They hated me so much, bullying me at each corner, and there was even a period when I was so sick that I couldn’t go to school. I was absent for weeks at the time, and I barely managed to end the year with high grades.
Natalie was Kay’s girlfriend, and to this day, I couldn’t understand what he’d seen in her.
Natalie was even meaner than Christine, and that was putting it mildly because I was certain she had no limits to hurting others, showing how truly mentally unstable she was. She went downhill after Kayden’s death, becoming only a shell of the previously spoiled, frivolous girl who had eyes only for Kayden. I had firsthand experience of how far she could go to hurt others, remembering very well her words from the day of Kayden’s funeral.
She made it clear to me that day, just like Hayden, that she would make me pay for Kayden’s death, adamant on making my high school life even worse than it already was. I was terrified of her, and I never knew when to expect her next attack. Christine always made sure to join the abuse.
That was one of the reasons Natalie and Christine got along very well. They had same interests, which included gossip, boys, and torturing weak people like me.
Christine had short black hair and olive green eyes with skin so fair that she looked like a porcelain doll. Natalie was pretty, but Christine was mesmerizingly beautiful, so it came as no surprise that she’d caught Hayden’s attention a long time ago.
From the beginning, it was clear to me that Christine and I were complete opposites, but I didn’t question our friendship at that time because she was the first person who openly approached me and wished to be my friend. I didn’t want to risk losing her, no matter how foul she was, deluding myself with naïve thinking that she was a real friend.
In the end, when everything came crashing down, I figured out that it was better to be alone than with the wrong people.
I wanted to keep my distance from her, but that wasn’t possible when we shared the same class. I was late for calculus courtesy of Masen, which meant everyone had already taken their seats, and only three seats were unoccupied. I went for the one in the first row—far away from Natalie and Christine.
“Nope.” The girl sitting to my right stood up and put her hand over the vacant desk. “I don’t think so. My friend will come any moment, so you can’t sit here.” A few people around us erupted in giggles, which was followed by the mocking whispers around the classroom.
I tried not to think about my embarrassment and everyone’s eyes on me as I scanned the room for another available seat. I continued to the desk in the third row, which was next to the window, but the same situation happened when another senior prevented me from taking that seat. Another round of laughter coursed through the room, reinforcing my mortification.
Were they going to prevent me from sitting in this classroom? What was the catch now? I’d have to stand during the lesson? There was no way Ms. Roberts would allow that.
There was only one seat left, and I plodded to it with great reluctance because the desk was next to Christine’s. I could feel her watching me like a lion watching its prey.
“Look at her,” Natalie said loudly, drawing my attention to her eye circles. Not even her makeup could hide how tuckered out she was, reminding me of the rumor that she was popping pills for insomnia. Another rumor was that she’d collapsed due to fatigue and anxiety during cheerleading practice last year, but somehow, I couldn’t feel any sympathy for her.
“Look at those horrible clothes. She looks like she lives in a sewer,” she added.
I arrived at my desk, doing my best to ignore the continuous laughter and nosy stares. Just a few more minutes and the class would start. Just a little more and their attention would be directed elsewhere.
I put my things down on the desk and sat.
A second later, I crashed down when the chair gave out beneath me and broke into several pieces. My head landed hard on the floor, which sent an explosion of pain through my skull, and my vision went black for a few moments.
I could hear the laughter through the haze in my head, and it bit at my mind, inducing more shame that intensified the pain. Natalie and a few others even picked up their phones and snapped the pictures of me sprawled out on the floor.