Call Me Crazy

“I don’t know what I did!” I explained into the phone, “Kevin said he would help, but I’m not sure that we’ll get an answer.”

“You need to learn to keep your raging hormones to yourself, love,” Michelle’s comforting voice rang through the earpiece. “I’m sure he’s just got something else going on in his life,”

“But what if he hates me?” I shrieked. Leave it to me to get worked up over nothing.

“But what if he doesn’t?” she contradicted, “You’ll never know if you keep pouting. Honestly, girl, you’ve gotten into more drama in one day than I think I ever could”

I let out a laugh. It was true. I was in so deep; I already had things to sort out. There was Ben, Mike, Ashleigh, and Adam.

“At this point, you shouldn’t complain, just let things play out and lay low for a while,” she stated. I hated it when she was right; which was often.

“Yeah,” I sighed. I heard some noise on the other end; I assumed it was her mom.

“Sorry, Niki,” she said, “I have to go… mum’s calling me. I’ll call you tomorrow or whatever.”

“Mmkay, bye” I said.

“Bye,” I heard her shout over the noise on the other end. I rolled my eyes and lay back on my bed. What was I going to do this year? First things first: put boy dramas behind me. I needed to solve the issue with Ashleigh first. I need to know why she’s changed so much and why it’s so hard for us to get a full conversation in without being disrupted by Mackenzie. And speaking of Mackenzie, she comes next. Revenge. Sweet revenge for all she’d done to me.

I turned off the light and let the darkness swallow up the room. Still dressed in my school clothes, I let my head hit the pillow and drift off to sleep.

“We can be friends!” An eight-year-old version of myself exclaimed to a girl of the same age. She wore a denim skirt and a lavender t-shirt with a puppy on it. Her golden hair rolled down her back in messy waves. She was the new girl. Mackenzie was her name. Like all new kids, they were avoided like the plague, and me, being the freak I was, was always the first to greet them.

“Ok,” Mackenzie had replied with a toothy grin. Grabbing my hand, we had run off to the sand box. A weeks worth of recesses had been spent in that sand box together, before the teasing began. The other kids had realized that Mackenzie wasn’t nearly as big of a freak as I was, but Mackenzie was content being my friend. She wasn’t going to give into the peer pressure and leave me. Yet.

“Why are you hanging out with her,” A girl had accused, jabbing her finger at me.

“Do you want to catch freak disease?” Another asked.

I saw Mackenzie’s face, torn between the decision of staying with me, or leaving me for popularity. After a few more days of the teasing, she had decided. That day I had waited in the sandbox for her, but she never came. She was playing with the ‘cool’ kids. I was not one of them.

“You still all by yourself, four eyes?” She had asked me a few days later, a group of kids congregating behind her, nodding in agreement and urging her on. I had struggled to keep my composure, but I failed. Tears began to stream down my skinny cheeks, fogging up my thick glasses.

It wasn’t that I hadn’t been teased before; it was that I’d never had a friend before, and to have my first friend turn on me scarred me. Her horrific taunts had never stopped, and I often wondered if she ever felt stabs of guilt.

Mike was the new kid at our school two years later. We bonded as two outcasts, teased for our nerdy-ness. I could tell he was never as phased by it as I was. But I always stuck by him. Of course that didn’t help the taunts.

“Mike and Nichole sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G…” They would chime and I would turn my back from them, burying my head in my arms. Mike had walked me to the teacher who was observing the recess and told her I had a headache. Of course I was holding back tears, so my face looked scrunched up in pain. The teacher believed this as a headache, but Mackenzie new different. She knew they were tears, and that only produced different taunts. “Cry baby..."

The scene changed. I was no longer on my elementary school playground. It was sixth grade, inside the middle school. This was not long after I’d befriended Ashleigh, and she had proved to stick up for me, defending me from Mackenzie.

I think Mackenzie was jealous of Ashleigh, and wanted her on her own side. Ashleigh was pretty, smart, and had everything it took to be popular, yet she stuck by me. Why? She said that was what friends were for. But what made her want to be friends with me in the first place? I had always wondered, but never asked. She was there for me and that was all that mattered.

She had coached me through a few things. She gave me a makeover once in seventh grade. Trading in my glasses for contact, applying minimal make up, and going shopping for some new clothes made all the difference. She would walk through the halls, showing off, and claiming the guys mouths were hanging open. I saw it too, but believed there was another reason for their gaping pie holes. There was no way they liked what they saw.

But they must have. Mackenzie noticed this too. She started rumors, saying I was a slut and a whore, explaining that it was all a ploy to get guys to sleep with me. The whole miserable time, Ashleigh stayed by my side, deflecting the flying rumors and shielding me. The only other person who stuck by me was Mike, although this was the period of time that Ashleigh was trying to separate us, claiming it would only be easier for me.

The scene changed once again. I was sobbing in the bathroom stall, eyeliner smudges on my hands from wiping my eyes. Mackenzie’s words were still ringing in my ears, making it hard to hear Ashleigh’s frantic voice calling my name from the school hallway.

“No one would like to date such a slut like her, even a desperate loser like you…” the words had been directed at Mike, but they hurt us both with equal impact. What she had done to me, it seemed she would never realize.

I woke the next morning with angry thoughts. In my dream I had relived the horror she had put upon me, and I was prepared for a fight. My mind was set. Patching up with Ashleigh could wait; dealing with Mackenzie was first priority. My lips curled up into a sneer as I thought out my plan. I would need two days to observe, but after that, action would be taken.