Not Alone

Eyes narrowed to a nick, her slick palm encloses around the metallic pen and she begins to write. The hard plastic is uncomfortable under her but she doesn’t care, because she’s in her element. She doesn’t necessarily think she’s good at what she does, but as the electrical pulses in her brain transfer emotion from head through arm, fingers and pen to paper, she can feel a weight lift from her shoulders. She momentarily forgets that she’s surrounded by people; she forgets that she’s leaning on ink-stained wood, the visitor book for bored students, and she forgets that her teacher is curiously watching her every move with her beady cerulean eyes. All she sees is the pen in her hand and the lines on the page, begging her to write on them until the book runs out of fresh therapy for her to deface with ink.

She disregards the prying glances from a hook-nosed neighbour. Sweat is beading on her forehead as her pen darts across the page frantically, desperate to get the verbs and adjectives from her thoughts and into the book. She’s almost unaware of the lump pushing at her oesophagus and people around her frowning, some sniggering at the hair that falls over her face. A shaky hand shakes out the cramp that is beginning to seize it, impatiently flicking dark tresses as it does so. Who knew that one simple task in her English class could set her off like this? The students around her are gossiping loudly to themselves and writing at a fifth of her speed – they certainly didn’t know, and the fact seems to amuse them.

She reaches the bottom of her fourth page and looks down at her mutilated book, shining with black feelings, and realises that she’s gone way off track. There is more black than white on the page and most of it is rambling, the exercise given to her by her tutor lost in the melancholy scrawl. She sighs, entangling a clump of hair between her fingers as she balls up her fist, before violently tearing three of the pages from their bindings. The paper is scrunched into a lazy sphere and off she goes again, trying to focus her mind on the task in hand as people giggle behind their hands at her determination to do the task properly and the frustration shown on her face. She sighs as an unpleasant throbbing starts up in her temples, and tries her best not to focus on the people sitting next to her – her friends, who are glancing at her with mystified and slightly freaked out expressions.

And my mind is growing weak, every step I take.
It's uncontrollable, now they think I'm fake…

Again and again she scratches out words, sentences and even whole paragraphs, until her book is a tattered mess, the pads of her fingers are flattened and her breathing is irregular. She can’t find the right words to sew into the piece of writing, and it’s like there’s a wall built in between her mind and her pen. What frustrates her most is that nobody else seems to care – they’re all chatting away lazily, doodling in their books, while she sits there, scribbling away to fulfil one task to the best of her ability:

‘Describe something that inspires you and explain why it does so.’

A shrill bell sounds in her ears and she jumps, ink rolling off the ball point in a wild line as her head jerks up. Someone laughs as they grab her book, glancing with a raised eyebrow at the pages and pages of uncoordinated black scrawl before closing it and putting it on the pile at the front. Her heart starts to race - oh God, no. There were things in there she’d have liked to have kept private, now she thinks back to what she put… and how she hates other people reading her writing. Especially her innermost emotions, losses and dilemmas. Her frantic eyes stare up at the plump woman dressed in azure, begging her for her work through the scraping of chair legs against linoleum and loud chatter – but no such luck. The teacher turns away to collect more essays, and the girl’s heart grows cold.

Slowly she stands, grabbing her bag with the hand that has cramp from gripping her pen too tight. Mindlessly, she zips up her pencil case and pushes it into her satchel, when a sharp elbow jabs her spine from behind as her friends push past her. The redhead and the blonde exit the room without a glance back or a goodbye, giggling helplessly at a joke between the both of them. Something tugs at her heart and she closes her bag violently, shoving someone out of the way as she throws her coat on and strides out of the room. She hears sniggers and whispers behind her, but she keeps walking down the clinical hallway, too polished to represent a school’s.

The sun beats down on her head, making her hot and uncomfortable in her tight sweater. Her brain is still racing – thoughts about what she wrote in her English book, about her friends as they stride to the bus ahead of her. People push by her as the first bus starts to leave, surrounding her, engulfing her – but she feels lonely despite the crowd, cold despite the weather and sad despite the backdrop of laughter. She manages to keep putting one foot in front of the other, at least, looking at the ground so that the rays bouncing off the grubby, white buses don’t blind her. Her fingers fidget nervously as she climbs onto the second vehicle, passing him as he reclines in one of the front seats. She manages a smile, a quick smile only for him – but he’s staring out of the dusty window pane and doesn’t see the first positive gesture she’s made all day.

Dejected, she walks a little further down the centre of the crowded bus, finding a seat not too far from the front and collapsing wearily into it. Her schoolbag hits the floor with a worrying crack but she forgets it, bringing a scratched mp3 player from her pocket. She holds it in her chapped hands, fumbling with the earphones, before leaning back in the brown, scratchy seat and letting the music take her over. Pressing shuffle, she hopes that a random song will help her relax, but it does quite the opposite. The whining guitar makes her smile, but then the vocalist starts to sing a smooth, sad melody at her and it’s like a blow of reality to her heart as she ponders the song meaning. Her thumb hovers over the skip button, ready to press if there’s any danger of her crying, but she can’t bring herself to do it as the beautiful sounds of the old song fill her mind.

And I, I get on the train on my own, yeah.
My tired radio keeps playing tired songs…

A ray of sunlight peeks over the seat in front, the dust particles caught dancing in it, twirling together in the spotlight. She watches them for a moment in their simplicity, before the bus jerks into life and the dust is lost in the movement of shadows. The speakers in her ears are pulsing with the beat of the music and she’s oblivious to the people behind her who can hear every word the vocalists sing – the very same vocalists she scribbled numerous pages of homage to minutes before. She sighs and watches the back of the head she’s been staring at adoringly for months now, the coffee locks bobbing as the bus goes over a bump in the road and becoming entwined the owner’s slender fingers. He turns his head to smile at someone and images flash up in her mind of her red-headed friend, when he gave her the same smile earlier and she returned it eagerly. Anger burns fiery red in the pit of her stomach – her friend knows her feelings for him, and she doesn’t care. Just like she knows her passion for writing, yet she continues to snigger and look on just like everybody else…

The vehicle stops suddenly at the bottom of the road; the driver has left without someone. She sits up a little just to see the bus door open with a hiss and a whine, and a tousle of crimson borders a flushed, giggling face as the very same girl she’d been thinking about climbs onto the bus. As the wheels jerk forward again, the late arrival tumbles into the front seat next to the very same boy she’d been thinking about, and making him laugh. She hadn’t even given a thought as to why her companion wasn’t sitting next to her when the bus set off, but as she watches the pair a few seats ahead of her, she becomes increasingly annoyed. Jealousy stabs at her insides as they talk, her loud cackling giggle ringing out through the half-empty bus and staying in her head. It’s strange how the other girl’s laugh is funny and infectious when she’s paying attention to her darker friend, but in situations like this, it’s irritating and stupid.

Five minutes pass and the song is being played on repeat, a saddening soundtrack to a sickening scene. She knows it’s stupid but she can’t stop staring; as she’s watching the backs of their heads move closer in conversation, his turns to the side so she can just see his grin through the gap in the seats. She loves the rare occasions she can trigger that grin – but it’s not enough to build on. Those lips, how she’d love to –

Her heart stops as if a cold chisel had been forced through her breastplate and into the pulmonary muscle. Those lips are now quickly on another pair of lips, smirking before pulling away, only leading the second pair towards them. All she sees now is a shock of flaming hair through the gap in the seats, and she flings herself against the window so she can’t see it. Squeezing her eyes shut does nothing to barrage the pathetic tears that leak down her cheeks, the months of hoarding up her feelings showing now as she sits, alone, with only her music for company, She wishes for a pen, a quill and ink, a laptop - just to write it all down on and record this event as it happens, raw and untouched by memory delay, but she can do nothing but sit and try not to let anyone see her crying.

And I know that there's not long to go,
And all I wanna do is just go home…

The bus begins to lose momentum and she picks up her bag, nearly stumbling as it grinds to a halt. She walks down the aisle, the only person to get off at her stop, and her heart starts to race as she draws level with the seat they’re sitting in. The redhead doesn’t even notice her and she tries not to meet his happy, hazel eyes - but he looks up and sees her tear-streaked, pale glare, his smile faltering a little as he stares at her inquisitively. In turn, her scowl neutralises a little and she wishes she could learn what his new expression means, but too late – the bus doors are opening and she’s walking down the steps, shakily landing on the gravel and walking up the path to her house without a second glance back at the bus that’s reversing round the corner.

She fumbles with the key, jamming it in the lock of her front door urgently and rattling it around uncoordinatedly until it finally clicks open. She forces her way inside, dropping her bag in the hallway, before tearing upstairs and switching the computer on. Her hands are still shaking and the song is still blasting against her eardrums as she waits for Messenger and Microsoft Word to start up, the barrage fully burst now, sobs fighting their way out of her throat. She enters her password and presses enter, and for the first time that day, she emits a small smile and starts a conversation with someone who lives at the other end of the country and knows will understand.

‘Cause I'm not alone.