Ashley – Melt
I have always been the kind of girl who's small, the one in the middle of the classroom, so that maybe I can melt away like a lemon drop. I will myself to be ice cream on a hot day, candle wax, frost on a windshield. Something that when met with heat, it ceases to exist. I live in LA now, perhaps my time has finally come.
Freshmen year and Jessica sits next to me in English class, without an ounce of doubt.
The teacher tells us to get into groups, so she turns her desk towards mine and tells me I'm pretty, like it's the most normal thing in the world to say.
Of course, I don't believe her but we do our assignment, and she asks if I have a group of friends to sit with at lunch, which I don't but I lie anyway.
She says, "Well, if you're ever in need just come sit with me, my friends are awesome."
And although her words hang in the air the way a song ends without a final note, I say nothing.
She can't possibly know that this is my fourth day in the state, and know only my parents and sisters, one of which is currently living on a college campus.
Which is as sad as it sounds, but when you're a middle child, and want to melt away you live and breathe you're stereotype.
Anyway, three periods later I find Jessica at lunch, sitting with upper classmen and she doesn't even bat an eyelash as she scoots over to let me sit beside her.
I am almost in awe of the way she so effortlessly introduces me from that shitty assignment in English just a few hours ago.
And when I go home to cry that day, it isn't because I miss Minnesota and my best friend Charlie.
It's because Hannah gave me her number in seconds, Matt asked me if I knew my way around campus, and Sam called me beautiful.
"You're red hair, is that natural?"
"Um… Yeah it is." I said trying to keep my voice easy.
"It's so pretty." The others began to heckle her, as if she'd never seen a red head before and I laughed with them.
They make it seem so easy, life I mean, breathing and laughing like this is how everything should be.
At dinner, Nicky tells us all about how it's too hot in California to play on the playground at lunch time.
Our mother talks about Sarah's phone call before asking me, "Did you make any friends, Ashy?"
Part of me wants to vomit at that stupid nickname Sarah gave me back when our parents brought me home for the first time, and she couldn't say my name.
The other part of me remembers meeting Emily in guitar after lunch, and the way she talked to me like I was an old friend, not some random new girl.
My eyes tear up again as I nod, "Yeah, I think I did." And for the first time in my life I want to stay somewhere.