My Heart Stopped Beating
Introduction
All my life, there was one thing I was certain of. No, not really. I wish I could follow up the infamous ‘All my life…’ line with a cliché sentence, like other good stories do, but I can’t. I can’t write something like ‘I was certain I would one day make it out of this town and become a somebody’ or ‘I just knew I would die a young, tragic death’, because I’m not really certain of anything. As a matter of fact, I don’t think I’ve ever really been certain of a single thing in my life, unless somebody told me something definite. In Day Care, I wasn’t certain that I wanted cherries instead of peaches. As it turns out, I absolutely hate cherries. In fifth grade, I wasn’t certain if I’d rather play on the jungle gym or the swings during recess. It just so happened that I loved both, except when I fell down. That sucked. And in my Sophomore year, I wasn’t sure if I should go with a cute Senior who asked me to the Prom. If anything, I was certain of what was on the average teenage boy’s mind once Prom was over, if not during. I guess it was a good thing that I ‘came down with a cold’ and chickened out.
I wasn’t an out of the ordinary girl, like in other stories. Nothing made me stand out in a crowd, except maybe my music taste or clothing. I was just an average sixteen-year-old Junior with just-past-the-shoulder dirty blond and black hair, a beat up ’69 BMW, a music taste that varied from Indie to Screamo and Electronica to Punk, a weakness for eyeliner, an obsession with poptarts, and a two-story house with her parents in a small town in Indiana, constantly referred to as Hell with cornfields. I got average grades, had average looks (with maybe a tad bit more black than most), an average family, and an average life. My sidekicks were Jordan and Lacey, two average girls with similar tastes. Everything was so average and normal, I was never certain of anything weird happening to me. Nope, sorry to disappoint, but I never felt the need to leave town and become famous. I never got the feeling I’d die a tragic death. Nothing odd ever happened to me, I was just average Natalie Sid Walker, with a middle name result of the cool hippie era I was created in. So average, the word average was often overused. So average, nothing exciting or strange happened in my presence. Or so I thought.
As it turns out, on the outside looking in, I was far from average. As it turns out, wearing black and listening to hard rock made me a freak. As it turns out, very few people at my high school thought I was a nice person. As it turns out, many people called me ‘loser’ and ‘emo’ just because I looked a little different. As it turns out, being on a first name basis with THE Mikey Way made people look at me in a different way.
Okay, now might be a good time to enlighten you on the groups at my stereotypical high school. There’s the preps/cheerleaders, who aren’t as bad as depicted in most high school movies, but some of them are pretty fake and backstabbing. The jocks, which aren’t all assholes, but are all pretty cocky. The druggies, who don’t all do drugs, but often come to school with hangovers. My friends the shredders, who are all ridiculously good looking and can shred on just about anything, even the U-Haul trailers behind the town’s skating rink. The people in the middle, who don’t really have a stereotype, but aren’t unpopular. The people at the bottom/the nerds, who aren’t losers or anything, you just don’t notice them. They’re the blips on the radar. There’s my closest friends and I, also known as the emos, and then there’s the Freaks. The Outsiders. The Faggots. The Goths. The Losers. The Anti-Christs. Whatever you called them, they are a small group of seven individuals no lesser than anybody else. But, apparently, for guys to be pale, have black eyeliner, and wear black clothes, they must also be freaks. Outsiders. Faggs, etc. My friends and I simply refer to them as ‘them’. Real original.
‘They’ consist of Bob, with his blond devil lock and noticeable muscles, and his supposed girlfriend Tracie, with her amazing body and flowing thick locks of brunette. Pretty much all the guys thought she was amazingly sexy, but wouldn’t say so out of fear of being called a freak, but you could see it in their eyes. Then there was Ray with the curly ‘fro’ that my friend Jordan has being dying to touch, and his girlfriend Olivia with chin length brunette hair with thick blond highlights and adorable ‘emo’ glasses that framed her face perfectly. Frank, with his black chin length hair, numerous tattoos on his short, skinny body, and a lip ring. Lacey thought he was the most gorgeous thing ever, but his ‘girlfriends’ often didn’t last long, and usually left school after the break, never being heard of again. Then there was Mikey, the sweet, tall, lanky one with an adorably messy fauxhawk thing going on with his hair and cute black and white glasses that he wore at the tip of his nose. Last, but not least, was his brother Gerard, who looked nothing like him. Gerard had a slightly chubbier frame, with messy, yet smooth, thick black hair just past the chin.
Now, there’s just one little detail I failed to notice. Never have any of the above made friends with anybody outside of the group, with the exception of Frank having his weeklong girlfriends, and me. I never noticed it, but I was the only one that anybody in the group talked to regularly. Apparently, other people thought it was strange that Mikey and I talked and met at each other’s lockers once in a while. Other people had mixed views on the situation; from thinking I was a wannabe to having the idea that I was sleeping with him, none of them were good. And, I suppose it was especially not good that Gerard looked down on the fact, and constantly shot glares my way whenever Mikey was within ten feet of me. I guess being on his bad side, was not good. But I, of course, never noticed anything strange.
I wasn’t an out of the ordinary girl, like in other stories. Nothing made me stand out in a crowd, except maybe my music taste or clothing. I was just an average sixteen-year-old Junior with just-past-the-shoulder dirty blond and black hair, a beat up ’69 BMW, a music taste that varied from Indie to Screamo and Electronica to Punk, a weakness for eyeliner, an obsession with poptarts, and a two-story house with her parents in a small town in Indiana, constantly referred to as Hell with cornfields. I got average grades, had average looks (with maybe a tad bit more black than most), an average family, and an average life. My sidekicks were Jordan and Lacey, two average girls with similar tastes. Everything was so average and normal, I was never certain of anything weird happening to me. Nope, sorry to disappoint, but I never felt the need to leave town and become famous. I never got the feeling I’d die a tragic death. Nothing odd ever happened to me, I was just average Natalie Sid Walker, with a middle name result of the cool hippie era I was created in. So average, the word average was often overused. So average, nothing exciting or strange happened in my presence. Or so I thought.
As it turns out, on the outside looking in, I was far from average. As it turns out, wearing black and listening to hard rock made me a freak. As it turns out, very few people at my high school thought I was a nice person. As it turns out, many people called me ‘loser’ and ‘emo’ just because I looked a little different. As it turns out, being on a first name basis with THE Mikey Way made people look at me in a different way.
Okay, now might be a good time to enlighten you on the groups at my stereotypical high school. There’s the preps/cheerleaders, who aren’t as bad as depicted in most high school movies, but some of them are pretty fake and backstabbing. The jocks, which aren’t all assholes, but are all pretty cocky. The druggies, who don’t all do drugs, but often come to school with hangovers. My friends the shredders, who are all ridiculously good looking and can shred on just about anything, even the U-Haul trailers behind the town’s skating rink. The people in the middle, who don’t really have a stereotype, but aren’t unpopular. The people at the bottom/the nerds, who aren’t losers or anything, you just don’t notice them. They’re the blips on the radar. There’s my closest friends and I, also known as the emos, and then there’s the Freaks. The Outsiders. The Faggots. The Goths. The Losers. The Anti-Christs. Whatever you called them, they are a small group of seven individuals no lesser than anybody else. But, apparently, for guys to be pale, have black eyeliner, and wear black clothes, they must also be freaks. Outsiders. Faggs, etc. My friends and I simply refer to them as ‘them’. Real original.
‘They’ consist of Bob, with his blond devil lock and noticeable muscles, and his supposed girlfriend Tracie, with her amazing body and flowing thick locks of brunette. Pretty much all the guys thought she was amazingly sexy, but wouldn’t say so out of fear of being called a freak, but you could see it in their eyes. Then there was Ray with the curly ‘fro’ that my friend Jordan has being dying to touch, and his girlfriend Olivia with chin length brunette hair with thick blond highlights and adorable ‘emo’ glasses that framed her face perfectly. Frank, with his black chin length hair, numerous tattoos on his short, skinny body, and a lip ring. Lacey thought he was the most gorgeous thing ever, but his ‘girlfriends’ often didn’t last long, and usually left school after the break, never being heard of again. Then there was Mikey, the sweet, tall, lanky one with an adorably messy fauxhawk thing going on with his hair and cute black and white glasses that he wore at the tip of his nose. Last, but not least, was his brother Gerard, who looked nothing like him. Gerard had a slightly chubbier frame, with messy, yet smooth, thick black hair just past the chin.
Now, there’s just one little detail I failed to notice. Never have any of the above made friends with anybody outside of the group, with the exception of Frank having his weeklong girlfriends, and me. I never noticed it, but I was the only one that anybody in the group talked to regularly. Apparently, other people thought it was strange that Mikey and I talked and met at each other’s lockers once in a while. Other people had mixed views on the situation; from thinking I was a wannabe to having the idea that I was sleeping with him, none of them were good. And, I suppose it was especially not good that Gerard looked down on the fact, and constantly shot glares my way whenever Mikey was within ten feet of me. I guess being on his bad side, was not good. But I, of course, never noticed anything strange.