Always and Forever

“Hey girls, I got the message, why are we in here for?” I asked walking into an empty classroom during lunch the next day.

“Holly” Anna said sternly “We need to talk.”

I sat down on a free chair “There is a method we go through in our group when we don’t like the way things are going. It’s called an intervention, and you Holly are in the middle of one.”

I nervously glanced around the room as the whole group stared at me “This is about Saturday.” Anna spoke up.

“What about it?” I asked innocently, they had no idea about the party.

“Don’t act dumb with up Holly” she snapped “Your mom called us last night inviting us all to the party, we were all happy to come.”

I nodded, knowing what was coming next. I could’ve killed my mom for being such an interfering person, there was a reason I didn’t invite them. It’s not that I hated the group but it’s not like they were my true friends either. Either way I knew that it was better to be “friends” if that’s what they could even call it with these girls rather than enemies.

“Until we found out that a certain someone else was coming along.”

I opened my mouth to reply but was quickly cut off by Jessica “I don’t know what else we have to say to you” Jessica hissed “What don’t you get? We don’t talk about him, we are in completely different universes from him, it’s like we’re human and he’s an alien, we don’t associate and now you think its okay to invite him to one of your parties! ”

“I didn’t think it would be that big of a deal” I said quietly.

“Not that big of a deal do you realise who you are! Who we are?” She cried.

“That’s enough Jess” Anna cut in “What she is trying to say is that if Brendon Urie can be seen talking to us everyone can be seen talking to us, and why would we do that to ourselves?”

I sighed “Well I can’t do anything about it now.”
Anna rolled her eyes “Holly, stop acting like a dumb shit okay, you know what you have to do, call us when you’ve made things right.” And with that she abruptly stood up and left, the rest of the group following behind her.

************************

There was one sentence that stood out during that conversation do you realise who you are? Who was I? Who was I within the school? I took note of it for the rest of the day. I noticed that the whole school cleared the way when I walked through the corridor; I noticed that the football team’s eyes followed me as I walked past them; I noticed that I was one of them.

I wasn’t sure if it was a good or a bad thing maybe a bit of both. I remember hating the girls like me at my old school, they were all fake, plastic and slutty but I was neither. Then again, had I ever taken the chance to get to know the ‘group’ who ruled my old school? No, because no one spoke to me, it was all the way they were perceived. That bugged me for the rest of the day.

“Hey Carla, how do you perceive me?” I asked at work later that day.

“What?” she raised her eyebrows, taking her eyes off of her magazine.

“If you didn’t know me, who would you think I am?”

“Umm, some sort of weird girl with some seriously large insecurity issues.”

“No seriously Carla, what would you think?” I asked, a slight amount of desperation coming out in my voice.

Carla sighed “Why are you asking me this?”

“Can you just answer my question?”

She laughed quietly “The first day you walked in here I thought ‘hmm, she’s cute’”
I rose my eyebrows “That’s all?”

“If you can’t already tell, I’m not exactly the biggest thinker” she said slowly “Hey, don’t you have your little date with Brendon?”

“Oh crap” I said grabbing my bag and keys “And it’s not a date and please don’t stalk me like you did last time.”

She laughed “That was entertaining, fuck that kid is hot. Hun, snap him up before I do.”

I rolled my eyes and left the studio and walked drove down to the cafe.

They always say that when you’re dreading something time seems to go faster. Well I wish to disrepute that, this has been the longest day of my life and all that’s running through my head is the fact that I had to uninvited Brendon from the party.

He was going to kill me.

Brendon was waiting for me inside the cafe; his laptop was on with something about underground trenches in Vietnam up. He gave me a quick smile before jumping up to order some coffee for the both of us.
We started working idle small talk filling up the silence; I was distracted and could barely stay focused on anything.

It reached about six thirty which was the time we would usually pack up and go and I still hadn’t un-invited Brendon.
We had packed up and were walking out to our cars, well in Brendon case motor bike when he yelled out my name.
I turned around “Hey, y’know for the party this weekend, is it like...formal or....”

I sighed “Umm, Brendon about that,” as much as I didn’t want to do it, I still did and as much as I liked Brendon, my friends were more important. “Uh...my-my sister sh-she’s sick th-the p-party’s been c-called off. Sorry.”

Brendon laughed bitterly “Sure it has.”

“N-no Brendon, I-I’m serious” I said. I had always been a terrible liar.

“Really” he said sceptically “So can I come over on Saturday to work on the project?”

I went quiet and stared at the ground.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought. Holly, stop trying to convince me and yourself that you’re different to them. Because you’re not, you’re exactly the same.”