I can feel the ground shaking underneath me, cracking under my weight. I'm scared not afraid, my eyes are filling with water but no tears will fall from these eyes, at least not today. Maybe in some other life where there is some middle. Here there is no middle, no certainty.
The wind is blowing in my face, my hair flying freely with it, I feel free. This is a feeling I have longed for, for so long. I don't know what's driving me to this and I'm sure I don't mean cars. If you wanted you could use that, I used to think of it as those who are popular, materialistic as a sort of sports car, the people in the middle as an old kind of land rover, a large but less fashionable car, then the nerds, the geeks as a bicycle. And that was just simply because I would never see them get to school any other way. The books on global warming stacked up in the front basket; no one ever took any notice to them though. It was just them simply comparing notes with each other. Then there was me, after many attempts to work out what exactly I was I worked out that nothing could really describe me, no form of transport anyway. Sometimes I would think of myself as a feather, as light as dust, just following along, wherever the wind blew, I went and if I was not wanted I was simply gone within a flutter of an eyelid.
It was a while back when I first thought about this, my first year at secondary. No one has ever understood my theory's to things even when I was young, little and so called innocent. I would often daydream unaware of anything else around me with no idea what I was doing, those were the good days when I could find some safe place for my mind to rest without worrying about anyone else just for one second. I have recently wanted that more than ever and I will now be careful for what I wish for because it seems to me now like the world has turned out its lights, just like I wanted. But it's left me in darkness.
As I stand here I am alone left only with the sound of the wind in the trees and the feeling of my hair against my face. Yet I feel the least lonely than ever. My mind is at peace, nature is surrounding me and I don't have to worry what people think just for this brief moment maybe but it feels like a lifetime and for once one worth living.
I haven't always felt like this however, it was a few months into secondary school, it was somewhere new, I found new places interesting at first then it became just like everywhere else. However no one ever really spoke to me which I was happy about. I didn't care how much they would snigger, laugh and whisper; as long as they didn't speak to me I didn't care. I had my space, they had theirs and I was determined to keep it that way. My form was terribly noisy, screaming and shouting that could be heard from down the corridor, I hated it. Then it all changed. A new student came, he had been expelled from his previous school and I wanted to keep my space. Miss had decided that we should give him a "warm welcome", make him feel comfortable so he wouldn't lash out, so she sat him next to me. I was terrified; my mind was pulling me in a million directions, should I try to speak to him? I cannot recall how many times I tried and the words would just got stuck in my mouth, I was just simply sat there with my mouth wide open. Everyone would laugh apart from him, he would just look at me then have a glance at everyone else before returning to look at what miss was writing on the board, watching how every letter joined from one to another. I was amazed by how he didn't seem affected by anything; I would sit there staring into space when he would nudge me, which I hated but there was something about him. Months after he had first arrived he saw me hanging around in my usual spot by the bike shed, he started to walk over, so I pretended I hadn't seen him and walked off into another part of the school grounds where I was sure I was safe.
He was off for days after that, I felt relieved, so I thought. I never really knew what I was feeling, I knew there was a part of me that sort of missed him but no part ever knew why. When he came back into school it was Tuesday, I felt more nervous than ever yet still unaware because of my disbelief that I could feel like that, just like everyone else. That day I was late, everyone just stopped still, I was shaking. I sat down trying to blend in to the background hoping that he wouldn't notice me that he was somehow in a world of his own, I wanted to simply disappear. "Are you okay?" he said to me, I turned my head trying to pretend I didn't hear. "You heard, turn around", I turned stiffly to face him, "Has this always been like this?" he whispered so I nodded afraid of speaking in case nothing came out. "Can you speak?" he asked me, I hesitated and it seemed almost without thinking I replied to him.
"Yes, I'm not very good with words"
"Get some extra English lessons then" he said jokingly, I looked at him sternly and he realised that it had another meaning altogether. "Sorry" he said before looking down at my hands where I was still twiddling my thumbs, calming my nerves. "You can always talk to me, I'm not like the others" I looked at him again in disbelief, he sighed and continued with copying the 'code of conduct' from the whiteboard.
"Th-thankyou" I said shyly, he turned his head as if to look at me, then once again continued with his work.
The following days were strangely normal to me, I began to speak to him more, my stuttering was getting better and I felt someone was there to catch me when I had no one else to rely on to save me from falling. Before then I had felt all the glass had been shattered and no one was there to pick up the pieces, he made me feel safe.
We were going closer as the time passed by taking forever every move of the second hand would be a surprise, amazement when it came. Every so often I would go to his; we would climb up onto the roof and just stare out across the fields. When it was late enough sometimes we would try to find pictures in the stars, we felt at peace there. Sometimes I would stay for dinner; his mum would smile at me often trying to make conversation yet failing miserably. There was something about her,
something she wasn't saying. I just simply wanted the truth.
I had often had a theory about being on the outside, she made me feel this more than ever. I could see it in her eyes, she was hiding something. He who I had discovered was called Harry was always there; he could read me just like a book, like my thoughts were his own, he would tell me. He made me feel like one person in this world understood, knew what was happening, I thought he would be there through thick and thin. But like most things, I was wrong.