Last Year

“Oh look! It’s Caleb’s girlfriend!”

I looked up to see a group of faces looking up at me. Recognition flickered across some, but most just stared blankly for a reaction.

“He is not my boyfriend,” I responded to the guy who called me out. He smirked, and responded with a “Sure thing” under his breath. I scowled and sat as far away as I could from him on the packed bus.

Carly patted my hand and said, “He says that to every girl he sees.” I had gone to middle school with Carly, and though we weren’t close, we knew each other through mutual friend. She was a kind girl with a tough past and questionable romantic tastes, but a good person in general.

“Well, I don’t like remembering that part of my life when I did date him so please stop saying that,” I said to the group.

The guy in the back turned to me and asked, “Oh, shit, what’s your name?”

“Rosaly,” I said. I watched his expression go from joking to surprised.

“Oh! So you’re the girl with the big tits!”

Anger surged inside me, and I didn’t respond. I sent a thousand curses his and Caleb’s way. I spent the rest of the ride in silence, ignoring the loud talking in the back of the bus. Even if this was what school was going to be like, it’s still be better than my last one.

The bus caught the corner of the parking lot, sending some flying out of our seats onto the floor, like the guy in the back of the bus. I smirked at him, praising karma.

Butterflies in my stomach fluttered as the cafeteria came into view. I quickly texted Alicia, asking her where she was, but as expected, she didn’t respond. She had a way with guys, and I wouldn’t be surprised to find she was too busy with one to check her phone. The school had over 4,000 students, and there was no way I would be able to find her in the cafeteria, where the vast majority of them were seated.

Just when I was about to give up, my phone vibrated with a text from her, which read, “I’m in the cafeteria.” I stared incredulously at the screen. How specific, I thought to myself.
I called her on the phone instead. It rang for so long I thought she wouldn’t answer, but on the last ring she did.

“Hey baby girl. What’s up?” she asked.

“Telling me that you’re in the cafeteria is not very helpful, you know, since the entire school population is there,” I responded with a smile.

“Oh,” she paused. I heard a male voice in the background, making her giggle, the same giggle I’d heard since back in seventh grade when she was about to get her way. No doubt the poor guy was about to get used for something.

“Yeah… so… where are you?” I pressed.

“We’re in the back of the cafeteria,” she said distractedly.

“Where all the windows are?” I eyed the protruding section of the cafeteria closest to the bus loop.

“Yeah,” she answered. More talking and giggling sounded in the background.

I rolled my eyes and muttered, “I’ll see you in a few,” not caring whether she heard me or not.

The bus pulled clumsily up to the stop, and everyone simultaneously reached for their bags. My heart beat faster each step I took toward the school; not because the school was big or there was a large student population, or even because it was the first day. I’d had plenty of those in my lifetime to not mind it anymore.

I was nervous because I was hopeful, and because I was hopeful, I feared being let down. I’d fear that this year would be exactly like the last; that I’d be stuck in the same depressed state, that it wasn’t my surroundings, that there was something actually wrong with me. I had everything planned out for living a better life after feeling better, I knew what to do once I was okay, but I feared remaining the same, because then I had no solution to it.

Several buses were parked and unloading students into the school, so the hot pavement was crowded and bordering on claustrophobic. I felt my feet follow the crowd inside with no sense of direction or control to where I was going. Luckily, the majority of the crowd was going to the cafeteria, and I managed to push myself towards the back end.

I saw Alicia as soon as I rounded the corner. She had her back turned to me, likely taunting the guy in front of her, who would probably be gone in a week or so. My heavy backpack thudded to the floor behind her, causing her to turn. Her face lit up as I’d only seen it do a couple times and we hugged for a long time.

Alicia wasn’t a bad person intentionally. The way she was raised led her to believe that she could get whatever she wanted and that any price was worth it if she truly wanted it. I felt horrible watching her destroy herself getting what she wanted. The people she took advantage oftentimes were kind people who sought a friend, like me. In reality, it was truly scary watching her go through so many people and thinking that I could be replaced next, but the only reason I had stayed this long other than because of time, is because I was one of the few people who could outsmart her in her next move and break down the true reason she did the things she did. If we hadn’t become best friends, then we would have been the best of enemies.

She pulled away first and led me to the booth close by. We talked for a little bit before she lost interest and began talking with the other people at the table. She kept glancing at the guys and flirting with them, letting them hug her close, laying her head on their lap. It bothered me but I said nothing about it. I was just counting down the minutes until I could leave to go find the class.

The bell rang and the entire cafeteria seemed to stand at the same time to leave. The noise quieted down as more and more people left. I grabbed my schedule from my bag, hoping that it would help me find my class. I had to ask several staff members how to get to each of my classes, and each of them gladly helped me when they realized I didn’t have the teenage attitude that seemed to run rampant through the school.

Before classes begin throughout the entire first week of school, we had to attend homeroom, where they would give us all the school forms to fill out and return. The homerooms were sorted by grades, which came as a relief. I’d have to know at least one person there.

As I rounded another corner of this labyrinth of a school, I watched Brandon Martin enter a classroom. I counted the rooms to either side and as luck would have it, I was in his same homeroom.

Brandon had asked me out the summer between eighth and ninth grade. I had said no, claiming that we were going to attend different schools and that the distance would be too hard to hide the fact that I wanted to enter high school single. I cringed my way into the classroom hoping that there would be someone else I knew there I could sit with instead of Brandon.

Of course there wasn’t. I recognized a couple of people who I had gone to school with, but I didn’t know them enough to even say hi in the hallways, let alone sit and talk with them. I feigned surprise at seeing Brandon and gave him a big smile, hoping that his broken heart wouldn’t get in the way of his kindness.

“Hey! I thought you go to Academia High!” Brandon exclaimed.

“Yeah! I did, but it just wasn’t for me so I switched to this school,” I explained.

He nodded and smiled, “Come sit down.”

“Thanks,” I said, gladly taking my heavy backpack off and placing it on the floor.

“So what have you been up to?” I asked him. The last thing I wanted was for what happened between us to come up in conversation, so I didn’t mind the small talk.

“Oh, you know nothing much. I’ve got a good group of friends and I’m in a band. What about you?” His phone vibrated violently and both of us looked at it.

“Sorry it’s a group chat and one of the girls is lost. I feel so bad,” he apologized.

“It’s okay, no worries,” I said with a smile.

“But yeah what have you been up to?”

“Just loving this school. It’s huge and I still haven’t figured out how to not get lost,” I laughed.

He laughed too. “Yeah it seems big in the beginning but it all color coordinated so it’s not too hard to get around.”

“Yeah,” I responded distractedly. The teacher began to hand out papers while we sat in silence. The rest of the class was in a buzz; everyone seemed to have friends at each table. The only loners in the class sat at our table, reading books.

The teacher, Ms. Florence, came over to our table.

“Hey, Brandon. Are you doing drama class this year?” she asked.

“Yeah totally. I’m doing it second semester, though,” Brandon responded. Ms. Florence responded a distracted “good” as she realized she didn’t have enough forms for the entire class.

I looked at Brandon who was smiling at his phone and typing urgently. His headphones were still connected to the phone, lazily scatted across the table.

“What kind of music do you listen to?” I asked Brandon.

He looked up. “Huh? Oh I like alternative rock.”

“Oh cool!” I exclaimed. “I’m trying to get into the Arctic Monkeys lately. I wanted to tone it down from the metal rock.”

That made him look up excitedly. “The Arctic Monkeys? That’s my favorite band! I know almost all of their songs. Look!”

He quickly exited the chat on his phone and opened his music app. We talked about music the entire time, stopping occasionally when the teacher needed to inform us of something. We liked a lot of the same music, and before I knew it, it was time to leave. It was strange how at ease and happy I felt around him, and I was glad I had decided to dress up a little bit. He would periodically text quickly on his phone, but other than that, he kept up conversation pretty well.

By the end of homeroom, I was dying to see him again. Despite it being the first day and having a lot of things on my mind, I thought about him the most. All of my classes seemed incredibly easy, even my chemistry class, which I had many doubts over. I let myself feel hopeful that things would make a turn for the better.

When the dismissal bell rang, I found I had a buzzing and pounding headache that no amount of ibuprofen would fix. I grabbed my things and rushed to the bus to get a good seat. Since my last period class, chorus, was the closest classroom to the bus loop, I managed to be the first one on the us and had my pick on the seat.

I sat next to Sarah, who had come from Academia High to Westley. Feeling disappointed by how little it had to offer, we both decided that it would be best to leave the school and come to the bigger one. For her, the change of school didn’t matter too much, nor did she see it like I did. I felt embarrassed by what people may think. They would think that I wasn’t good enough to stay in a school like that and that that is the reason for coming to Westley. I was terrified it may be true.

The bus ride was uneventful, and consisted of us finding a happy solitude in each other’s company she listened to her music and I listened to mine. Though we had the same taste in music and lots to talk about, we both had had enough social interaction today and just needed to be alone for a little while.

We both got off the same stop and headed our separate ways with a small waving gestures in each other’s general direction. We lived down the street from each other and could really enjoy each other’s company if we felt like it. We could be best of friends and we could have long, deep discussions if we wanted to. We could do so many things together, but what I loved about her was that we could carry on our lives without having to see each other every day. I knew very little about Sarah, and she knew next to nothing about me. If we spoke once a month, I’d consider it a lot. We were each other’s last resort, and I could live with that.

When I got home, I trudged up the steps painfully. My backpack was heavy and I never ceased to hate having climb two sets of stairs in the blazing South Carolina sun in August. The heat just made my headache worse, now a throbbing pain in my head.

That night was a calm one, with my brother gushing about his day at school and all of us quietly listening. My mother would occasionally ask a couple questions and he would answer, but other than that, we sat silently eating dinner, watching bits and pieces of whatever was playing on the TV.

That night I had trouble falling asleep. My thoughts and fears of another year exactly the same worried me, yet their repetition never lulled me to sleep, and it never eased. I knew that I'd be exhausted the next morning.