Fabricated Reality

I’d never known that moving from my home in Japan would ruin my childhood so much that I would rather not have one.

For years they had tormented me, laughed at me and made me feel as though I was nothing. I tried everything to get them to stop. Shout at them, tell on them, beg them and I even stopped going to school at one point. But they always found me. Always.

And if there was ever anything that could have made it worse it was the fact that I had a crush on one of them. Even though my life was a personal hell and it was his doing I still found myself smiling every time I heard him laugh, only when it wasn’t at me of course, and when he ever bothered to turn up to school I would daze off in a daydream thinking that one day maybe he’d be nice to me. I hated myself of course for thinking such things about the ring leader of my torment, it was a false sense of hope that I kept weakening myself with.

The cause of these torments? I was ugly. I was overweight, clumsy, I had thick-rimmed glasses which barley covered my enormous bug eyes, had braces and my hair was always wild and frizzy. It’s true, I was not a pretty kid but I would have appreciated it if they hadn’t spent every minute of our school lives reminding me of it.

I would walk down the corridor trying not to make a sound hoping that, just once, I’d be able to sneak past unnoticed and then I would trip or cough and every ounce of their evil attention would be on me again. It was a never ending nightmare.

Like I said, even when I stayed off school they tormented me and not in the sense that I couldn’t stop thinking about them or hating them. No, they quite literally came looking for me so they could bully me. There was this one time…

~Memory Lane~

I was in the tenth grade and had skipped school and gone to Huntington Beach central park in hope of hiding from them and possibly getting at least one day of peace. But unfortunately my prayers went unanswered and as I sat on the grass next to a bunch of trees writing in my diary I heard a couple of voices coming in my direction. I knew those voices anywhere, it was them.

I quickly pushed my diary into my bag before standing up and pulling the bag onto my back. I stood for a few seconds, thinking about where I should try to escape to when I heard the voices stop. It was too late, they’d seen me. I turned around slowly and faced the four out of five of them that stood there. Matt, Brian, Zacky and Johnny. Jimmy was nowhere to be seen.

“Look who is! Mister Krista Leih!” laughed the short one. His name was Johnny and he used to be okay, meaning that he didn’t talk to me at all. But now he hung out with the other four and enjoyed toying with me just as much as they did.

“Yeah she does look pretty male, doesn’t she?” roared one of the bigger one’s, Brian. I looked down and bit my lip, no matter how much they played jokes on me I never got used to it, each one hurt just as much as the last.

“Aw what’s wrong Leih? Someone steal your candy bar?” that comment came from the biggest of the group, Matt. His comments were always the worst, mostly because he always said something about my weight even though what he said wasn‘t true. In fact I didn’t eat a lot of candy, anyone from their group probably ate ten times more than me easily. I had once ate a lot of junk food but I’d stopped ages ago, the weight just never seemed to shift, no matter how many diets I went on.

“Stop it.” I whispered. But no one heard me and just kept throwing insults my way “Stop it.” I said a little louder but not much.

“Guys I think Krista has something to say.” a voice said from behind me, I didn’t have time to turn around because the person that the voice belonged to pushed me onto the ground and I hit my head off of a piece of glass some kids had left there from their stolen bottles of liquor. I rolled over onto my back and held my forehead in pain. I pulled my hand away from my head to see it lightly coated in blood.

“Shit guys she’s bleeding.” I heard Zacky say before foot steps were heard walking over to me.

“Krista, you alright?” asked Jimmy, the one that had pushed me and the one I’d had a crush on since I first saw him. What the fuck? I thought. Was it national bipolar day or something?

“Fuck off.” I hissed and they all looked at each other confused. That was the first I’d ever swore at them. “All of you, get the fuck away from me you fucking assholes!” I shouted and slowly they each turned around and began walking away from me.

~End~

That day in the park they had taken things to a new level. That had been the first time they’d actually physically hurt me more than just pushing me or throwing something at me. That was the first time they’d actually drew blood and I thought it might be enough to make them back off. But I was wrong.

Over the next few months they managed to break my arm, give me whiplash and bruise my back severely after pushing me down the stairs. It was like this for an entire year and nothing was ever done about it until I decided I‘d had enough and ran away from home. I found my way to Florida and I never went back. There were investigations and everything but by that time I had changed everything about myself and was staying with a friend that had moved three years earlier.

I’d spent my entire childhood being humiliated by them and now it was their turn. Or more specifically it was his turn. I was going to get back at the one boy I’d had a crush on in school, the one boy who’d made my life hell.

I smirked at my thoughts as I copied the address from the internet onto the envelope which contained my video application for ‘Plagued By Love ’ the new reality TV show on which none other than The Reverend Tholomew Plague, or Jimmy - the boy from school, was looking for love.

I stood up from where I was sitting at my desk and walked over to the door, glancing at my appearance in the mirror as I passed the only thing that remained from my past was the small but noticeable scar on m forehead which I’d received that day in the park.

Damn, had I changed a lot.