Not Another Fairytale

“Hey. It’s great you could come over. I have snacks and stuff in the other room. It’s a good thing you brought your homework. I haven’t yet had a chance to do mine. I’ve been cleaning since I got home.” Tara led the way to the living room as she talked, “Please have a seat.”

Damian chuckled, “Thanks, Tara. It’s cool to have a new friend at a new school already. I don’t feel so lonesome anymore. What about you? How long have you gone to our school?”

“Oh, since Seventh Grade year began. Things weren’t always like they are now. Or, at least I thought they weren’t. I suppose I was wrong,” Tara lightly ran a finger around the edge of a bowl of pretzels.

“What makes you say that? Things can change over time. I mean, I’m sure you had friends.”

“Yeah, ‘had’… Past tense.”

“Well… You can drop that past tense reference because I’m your friend. Or I can be. I’d love to know you more and get the story on what makes all these kids in our school shallow.”

The girl sighed, “It’s a very long story. But the kids have always been shallow and conceded. I used to be the same way, but I don’t feel comfortable with telling you what happened yet. I promise sometime, though.”

Damian nodded in understanding, “So, that one girl. The blonde one in the short skirt? What’s her deal? She was coming onto me today and then I saw her sucking face in the hallways with another guy. Does everyone do that?”

“Oh, Jas? She did that because she thinks you’re hot. She wants to get with you. And yeah, all the kids in the school are like that. That guy she was sucking face with in the hallways? That was her boy toy of two years. She doesn’t get what she wants, she goes to him and him, not being able to get anything else, willingly accepts.”

“That’s disgusting.”

“You have no idea.”

“I also take it that the school is really competitive?”

Tara laughed sourly, “How could you guess? When the guys aren’t out ‘getting some’ or partying, they are playing sports, or watching sports, or hunting. Oh, how they love to kill animals and then leave them somewhere. They don’t take it home with them; they just leave the poor creatures to rot.”

“I’ll have to ask my parents why we even came to this town in the first place.”

“You know… I am tempted to ask them the same question.”

This made Damian laugh loudly as he opened his back pack and took out his Geometry homework, “This makes me feel so stupid. I should be in Pre-Calculus or something. Not this Geometry crap. Unfortunately for me, math is not my strong point.”

“Yeah, it’s not mine either. And we are in the same grade.”

“Hoorah, we suck,” he said to Tara sarcastically.

“I don’t think it’s that bad. We are the oldest in the class and can get away with more. Like, I text my mom in that class all the time. I just have my phone out where everyone can see it and the teacher does nothing. Of course, it could be just because the teacher wants nothing to do with the girl that has a melted face.”

“I’m sure that’s not true at all. I think the teachers are just stupid. I’ve definitely had better teachers than I’ve seen today.”

“Yeah… I just don’t try anymore because I don’t learn anything from them anyway. I’m just barely passing. And I purposefully do that.”

“Why?”

“To prove a point that it’s too easy to fail. Unfortunately, no one pays of a bit of attention to me that is for my smarts. It’s all bad attention that I really can’t avoid… Well, until today. That was the first time I have laughed in school in years. Thank you.”

“Hey, what are friends for, right?”

“Yeah… What are friends for.”