Those Things Beautiful.

It seemed like it had been a while since I had gone to school, or even since I had been in such close contact with anyone my own age. I didn’t like the idea of having to return to the homework and projects. I didn’t like the endless sea of hormones that seemed to encompass the students of the school, or how uppity all of the teachers got when they started to remember how they had a certain power over the students. The whole idea of ‘school’ was something that I had never liked.

Dana, on the other hand, loved going to school. She loved the homework, the kids her age, the whole thing. She was really social for her age, and it showed when she brought home new friends every week.

In fact, she loved school so much that she was the one who had taken it upon herself to wake me up for the first day an hour earlier than I needed to be up.

I groaned. “Go back to bed, it’s five o’clock…”

She giggled, sticking her little fingers in my armpit and wiggling them all over the place. She knew me too well: I was so ticklish that when she did that, I couldn’t even help but jump about three feet in the air and let out a big angry laugh.

“Get. Out.”

She took her hand back, smiling with pride due to the fact that she had successfully woken me up and had me out of bed. She took the first day of school really seriously.

“Mom’s making breakfast,” she told me, heading off toward the door. “Pancakes and bacon. She wants to know if you want blueberries in yours or not.”

I rested my head in my hands, trying to wake myself up but failing miserably. My eyes were more tired than anything else, and the fact that Dana was so awake that early in the morning was setting off all of my nerves. I was on-edge and aggravated that I had to go back to high school, because I had this feeling deep down in my gut that nobody was going to like who I was. And that nobody would accept me into their groups. And that I’d have to sit at lunch all by myself like some sort of freak.

But I didn’t want to take all of that out on Dana.

So I just sighed and asked: “Do we have any chocolate chips?”

She smiled wider. “Want me to ask?”

“Yeah, sure.”

She turned right back around and walked out of my bedroom, her little nine-year-old feet pounding hard as she ran down the steps. She made things seem so easy at that time in the morning, like you should just automatically get up and be ready to start the day. But I was just so used to sleeping in late from the summertime and staying up so late that one day turned into the next. One thing was certain, however: I was in desperate need of one big cup of coffee.

I groaned, lifting my legs up over the side of the bed. I just stared at my toes, my eyelids half-shut and my brain hardly even working enough to recall what it was I had to do.

With one big heave, I forced myself up out of bed. My head was a little fuzzy; I was extraordinarily lightheaded. I ran a hand through my messy, just-out-of-bed hair, and sighed long and hard. I didn’t feel like going to school at all.

I stretched my arms wide above my head, my hands painfully reaching as high as they could. A yawn pried itself from my lungs, and I pinched my eyes shut tight.

Walking from my bedroom into the attached bathroom, I shut the door and yanked off my pajamas. The room was cold, allowing an involuntary shiver to rake itself down my spine. It would seem that Mom had cranked up the air conditioner a few degrees too high this morning.

I made sure that the shower water was hotter than hell before I got in; nearly as warm as the water could be heated, I let the showerhead spray temperate steam down on me, as well as the liquid. I bent my head down, watching as the water pooled around my feet, dripping down the backs of my legs and flooding the bathtub. Taking a warm shower lulled me into a sort of drowsiness that I wasn’t able to break on my own. In fact, I didn’t know that I had been in the shower for twenty minutes until I was shaken awake by a loud banging on the bathroom door.

“Get out of there, Mom’s got your pancakes ready!”

It was Dana.

Running a dripping wet hand across my face, I dipped my head back beneath the running stream of water and blinked a few times.

“I’ll be out in a minute,” I shouted.

I could hear her footsteps pounding loud as she stomped out of my room and headed back down the steps. She was still only a little kid, but she sure could be obnoxiously loud when she wanted to be.

Turning the shower off, I ripped back the curtain and grabbed my towel off the counter. The bathroom seemed even colder after having been under hot water for so long. I could feel it, that feeling you get when your spine gets all shaky and your teeth are just about to chatter. My fingers and toes felt numb. My hair was being dried by the air conditioning blasting through the vents in the floor. I wondered what could have possessed my mother to think the house was so hot that she had to turn it into a meat locker.

I wrapped the towel around myself as fast as I could, running it up and down my arms and legs before heading out of the bathroom and straight to my closet.

That was when I had realized something.

I didn’t know what I was going to wear.

For some reason, I had always been horrible at first impressions. And even though I didn’t think I cared too much about what other people thought about me, I kind of did. But just enough so that I could have some friends. I didn’t want to care too much and be friends with everyone, but just a few that I could have close.

Sighing, I realized that I wasn’t making much sense, even to myself.

“Hailey! Hurry up and get down here!”

Mom was getting really pissed, because she’d probably gone and made breakfast all special for me and I was ruining everything.

So, pretending like it didn’t make a difference about the clothes I wore, I pulled on a plain black t-shirt and a pair of jean capri pants.

My tummy was growling really loud when I was finally ready, making my way downstairs after throwing my wet hair into a haphazard turban with my bathroom towel. I was so ready for some chocolate chip pancakes. I was starving.

Walking into the kitchen, I found that Dad had already left (as he had to go to work early nearly every day) and that Dana was nearly finished with her pancakes.

I took a seat beside her at the table and began to whistle, hoping that my mother would take notice of my presence and hand over a big fat, fluffy stack of gooey, chocolaty, syrup-covered pancakes.

But when she handed me my plate of hotcakes, I found out that they weren’t hot at all. They were cold. And they were dry. And there wasn’t even chocolate chips in them-- Mom must have forgotten about them.

And that’s when I knew that the day was going to be awful.