Beautiful/Terrible

I walked into the school, during my second period. I had unintentionally skipped first but I didn’t care. It was a boring class anyway.
I pressed my hand against the cool glass of the front entrance of the school. A rectangular plane of separation, the segregation of prisoner and free man. Nothing was greater than the feeling of entrapment when in school. There was nowhere to go, no place to flee, and so I pressed my palm firmly against that plane of clear minerals and felt its energy flow through my arm. It felt like poison.
I was finally buzzed in and I walk through the hallways. Green linoleum flooring wrote the scripture of our pasts while tan walls proof-read, fluorescent lights publishing our lives to the faculty and administration. We were just hundreds of stories for onlookers to read, and so I ripped out the pages by ripping apart my mind and watching as that colossal mess crashed back together.
I found myself in my second period class.
I looked up from my desk and found a pair of brown eyes perfectly level with my own. They were perfectly ordinary and perfectly familiar, and they were partially shrouded by plain brown hair, flowing in waves to the bottom of her square jaw. That jaw led to large chapped lips. Those lips belonged to Lexi, my best friend.
“Hey, whore,” she said while pulling those chapped lips into a smirk. Those lips reveal slightly crooked teeth, barely noticeable. It was interesting. I liked to look for the irregularities in people’s faces. They were beautiful. They were works of art. It’s very terrifying when everything is beautiful but that’s how it was. It hurt.
“Hey,” I said in response.
“What’s up,” she asked me.
“Nothing much, slept at Allen’s last night.”
“Ooh…” she said with an arched eyebrow and smirk.
“No, not like that,” I quickly said, “I kept having dreams.”
“Oh,” she said. Then, she sat down in the seat next to me and we talked for the rest of the period. Lexi and I had been friends for about a year now, nothing crazy, and yet I loved her from the bottom of my heart. She had that kind of energy that pulled you in and made you stay for the ride, and I was completely okay with that.
We met in group therapy, actually. The first time I ever went I recognized her from school. I immediately began talking to her as soon as the session as over- not because I wanted her to be my friend, but because I wanted to keep her from telling the whole school I went to therapy. I didn’t know her well back then. So, in my selfish attempt to save face, I met the best girl in the entire world. And they say karma exists.
I went through next period in a blur of equations and boring notes on math that I didn’t care about.
Lunch came. I wove my way through the crowded cafeteria and sat at our table. It was weird, this sort of unspoken agreement. After the first few days of school that was it, those were your seats. Sure, a person could sit with other people for a day, but an entire table couldn’t just up and move. It was an unspoken assigned seating. I sat at my own table.
There were already some people sitting there- Lexi, Drew, and Courtney- but there were a few left to come. We sat chatting about nothing for a while until we all looked up at the newcomers. Allen, Grace, and James were here. I loved my group.
James and Grace were dating, but I didn’t know Grace that well. She had only been introduced to us a few weeks ago, but she seemed nice enough. There were a ton of rumors floating around about her and I felt bad. James was a funny guy, he liked to joke around a lot with everyone as a way to shift whatever tension was in the group. Being a teenager, emotions were high, and James was always there to distract you from them. He was great. I only wished that there was someone else to do the same for him.
Courtney was my other best friend. She, Lexi, and I would have sleepovers at her house every Friday night. She lived in this totally sick and sickening house that was empty and pristine and huge and sad. And I loved it there. There was something very poetic about having a sleepover in a sad place that nobody liked. I liked the idea. I hated the house. She had straight black hair that fell down her back and it was one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen. And she had dark chocolate eyes that were cold and unforgiving. I liked that about her.
Drew was this guy that had this totally generic face but a totally unique personality. It was unexpected and it was amazing. He was tan and blonde and looked like a typical football playing asshole from the movies but in actuality he was this super cool singer that had a band and everything and on the weekends we would sometimes go to his shows that only had like 20 people watching, waiting for the next band to start, but it was beautiful anyway. I was kind of uncomfortable at first because he and Lexi fuck sometimes and he totally loves her but she doesn’t love him back. I feel bad for both of them. Now everyone just kind of accepts it.
It was kind of sad looking at all of us but that was what being a teenager meant. And that was what life meant to us. That was what life was to us. What it is.
I sat back in my chair and observed as James threw a French fry at Allen, and Drew looked at Lexi, and I just looked at everyone. I wanted to throw up.
The rest of the day passed quietly and I honestly don’t remember much of it beyond that point.
When the final bell rang it was like a fist in my ear and I wanted more, but instead all I got was trampling feet rush by me and a few backpacks hit me in the head. I finally got up when everyone had passed and I was safe again. Teenagers.
I made my way through the school parking lot until I found Allen’s car in the crowd of perfectly formed metal. I got in. It was already unlocked. Allen was already inside.
“How was your day?” he asked me as soon as I sat shotgun. I didn’t feel like having some scratched up set of eyes staring at me today.
“Fucked,” I said simply.
“I so feel you,” He said, “Do you ever just have those days where your head feels like it’s exploding and the world feels like it’s imploding and crushing it at the same time?”
“Oddly specific, and yet I can’t disagree. I feel that every day.”
“Let’s just drown in the ocean, Leda.”
“Perfect,” I said finally.
We pulled up in front of my house and I left. I kissed him on the cheek and traveled against the autumn wind to the front door. I pulled out my keys and stuck them in the lock on the front door. This fucking white door. I hated it. Why would you have a white door and a blue house? Possibly the tackiest combination I could think of.
I turned the key and stepped inside. I was immediately met with an angry brunette waving her arms in frustration.
“You have to fix the Wi-Fi!” she screamed at me. I’m sure it was torturing her.
As she continued, I found myself staring at the space in between her eyebrows. The way it scrunched up when she was mad. She had those Lily Collins kind of eyebrows and a small heart shaped face. She was incredibly pale and I felt like reaching out, just to see if my arm could pass through her. I didn’t though.
She kept staring at to me with those pale green eyes and I figured she must have just said something and was expecting me to say something.
“You’re beautiful, but I hate you. I don’t usually hate beautiful things. I guess that makes you special,” I told her honestly.
She rolled her eyes at my backhanded compliment and stormed back up the stairs to her room. Meanwhile, I went into the basement and replugged all the wires into their corresponding slots.
A few minutes later I heard Justin Bieber blaring through the house and I smiled.
This was my reality, school and home, friends and family, dull yet lethal. And I hated it because it was beautiful and terrible.