Enigma

The rain dripped silently down the classroom window. I watched it rather than pay attention to the lesson that was occurring around me. I sat by myself, on the left-hand side of the room, closest to the windows that showed the world outside.

Today the view was not the usual entertainment that it provided. The weather had taken a drastic turn overnight and had gone from sunlight to mist. The mist clung around the countryside like a lost dog who had finally found someone to take care of him. Its cold fingers caressed all the buildings and vegetation, providing no view except a bleak greyness.

“Annette!” the teacher called form the front of the room. The usual twitters floated towards my ears as people who despised me laughed at my inattention.

“Sorry miss,” I spoke quietly. This was the way I always spoke at school, hoping to never bring attention to myself. It was a technique that usually worked perfectly. The teachers always stopped asking me questions because they knew they would never be able to hear the answer and the students didn’t talk to me anyway, unless it was to make some snide comment.

“Please pay attention!” she turned back to the rest of the class and continued with what she was saying. It was the last class of the day and I was eager to get home where I could go online and talk to Strider. I always enjoyed our conversations; we could talk about anything and everything. This was something that I had not actually been able to achieve with a person face to face. In fact it was even the first time that I had been able to talk to someone I had met on the internet for an extended period of time. It was almost as if we had known each other our whole lives, as if we were best friends.

But he did not know my secret, and I intended to keep it that way. I longed to be normal and to live life the way other people my age did. The people in my year were forever at parties, drinking and having fun.

I was never invited to these parties because no-one wanted to associate themselves with me. I was the outcast, rejected because of something that I could not change nor control. Life seemed bitterly unfair to me.

The bell rang harshly, and I quickly jumped out of my seat, grabbed my books and fled without running to my locker where I retrieved my bag and headed out to the car-park where I knew my father would be waiting. All the people around me were wearing jumpers and thick coats to ward off the creeping coldness that surrounded them. I wore no jacket or jumper. I didn’t need one.

My father smiled invitingly at me as I slid into the front seat. “Have a nice day?” he asked in his soothing voice.

“Same as always Dad,” I said drily. He gave me a sad smile. My three older sisters appeared slowly, talking with friends and laughing.

“Could you please turn the heater up Dad?” Courtney asked, her voice honey coated as always.

“Sure sweetie,” he adjusted the temperature and then manoeuvred out of the car-park.

I looked at my sisters in the rear-vision mirror. They all looked similar – tall, thin with golden hair. They looked like the perfect family. All three of them were popular and smart. Courtney was in the year above me whilst Sarah and Anne were in their final year.

I looked out of the front window and sighed quietly. I was a reject even in my own family. I was neither as pretty as my sisters nor as smart. Sure I was smart enough to get the marks that I needed to pass well in all my subjects, but it wasn’t what I wanted.

I desperately wanted to be accepted by my peers for who and what I am.