Mondays

Mondays suck.

Not only was it the first day of another long week, but it had the most days left until the next weekend. Plus, every Monday was school. For Piper Halliwell, Monday was the day to try to fake being ill because the very first lesson of the week was Maths with Cindy.

She walked over to her locker and twisted the pad lock until it opened. Quickly, she surveyed the corridor to check if some evil teenager was standing in the wings, waiting for their prank to unfold. Piper had been the butt of many jokes with the popular kids, for example, when the science department were doing dissections, they had put an already cut-up frog in her locker, or their most favourite one was when Piper had her head buried inside a book, they would run along the corridor and smash their locker door right into her neck (often leaving bruises).

Grabbing her books and swiftly closing her locker door, she headed for her Maths class. Mrs Herman had just started and was writing something on the board. As Piper took her place, Cindy, Megan and Lauren sat down beside her. Piper called them the three blondes. They were the most popular girls in the school (well, next to Prue). Cindy purposely sat behind Piper, just to annoy her.

"Right guys," Mrs Herman called to the class, "Who can tell me what we did last lesson?" Piper felt unsure whether to answer or not. Maths and Home Ec. were the only lessons she excelled at. It wasn't that she was a geek, because she knew a thousand other people who were clever than her, but she always tried her hardest. Carefully, she looked around the class. No one seemed bothered (probably, not even listening), so Piper raised her hand cautiously.

Mrs Herman sighed heavily in relief. "Finally, someone who pays attention in lessons!". The three blondes began to giggle around Piper. She spun around. "Loser," Cindy laughed in Piper's face. Piper pinched her arm. This was a habit of hers. Whenever she felt emotionally hurt, she would hurt herself physically. "Look! Loser's trying to kill herself. Aww… poor loser". The whole class heard this and started to laugh as quiet as they could, but was loud enough for Piper to hear.

Her face went a bright shade of red as she sank into her chair. "Stop it class!" Mrs Herman shouted, but no one was listening. Piper hated everything about herself. Her habits, her looks, even her thoughts made her feel angry.

How Piper dreamed of being the curvy, stunningly beautiful Prue. With her jet black hair and snow-white face, she looked like someone out of a fairy tale. She wasn't afraid to be smart, and that's what made her so looked up to and honoured. And then there was Phoebe, her youngest sister. She might not be as pretty as Prue but Phoebe was a free spirit. Her personality overcame anything wrong with her body. Both of Piper's sisters were gorgeous and popular… "Why am I always the odd one out?" Piper always asked herself just before she went to sleep.

After a few minutes, the class settled down and Mrs Henman carried on. "We are on the subject of Correlation in graphs," she finally stated to the class, "Now, if the graph is going in an upward motion, then its called positive correlation, while if it's going in a downward motion, then it's called negative correlation."

Mrs Herman turned to the board where she tried to show of the graphs she had done earlier. Piper obviously wasn't paying much attention as she had learnt this many years ago. While a normal teenager would go out with their friends to the mall or arcade or cinema, Piper found this hard as she had no friends to do this with. Instead, she would stay home and study subjects she hadn't covered in her lessons yet.

She sat at the back of the room, as usual, trying not to attract attention, but everyone knows that when you try to divert attention to others, you end up gaining more than you had in the start!

Piper stared at the clock, wishing its hands would move more quickly. Soon, she found herself fading into a dream world surrounded by clocks and giant hands, spinning in circles. The grey sky loomed over her as she tried to find her way through a labyrinth of numbers. Finally she gave up and fell to the ground in exhaustion. Then she saws her reflection in a puddle and found herself stunningly beautiful.

Her hair is no longer fizzy and wild but straight and soft. Her skin was spot free, with her complexion as delicate as a Rose. The brace that made her two lips stick out like a donkeys' was gone. But as she felt better about herself, her face began to change and twist until she looked like a horrible, mutated beast.

Piper was suddenly awoken from her daydream by the light hum of people around her. She looked around and saw that a quarter of the class were staring at her. Did she say something out loud? Last year, when in a daydream, she had accidentally yelled out "Don't leave me," which gave the whole class a good reason to make her life hell for a year!

She ignored it at first, hoping it was just a silly joke being told about her, but as it persisted, her confidence in that theory was starting to drown. Finally she turned and asked the girls who were making the loudest laughs, but something stopped her from speaking a word. Cindy was holding a large pair of scissor in one hand with a few familiar chocolate brown strands of hair, hanging loosely off it.

In a panic, Piper ran her fingers through her hair, finding it had stopped a lot quicker than usual. When she dropped her head, she found more locks of her hair randomly fallen all around her seat.

"Opps… I slipped," Cindy sniggered. 'This wasn't happening,' Piper cried inside her head. She jumped from her seat, unable to hold her tears inside her for any longer. She burst out into a million sobs, which made the whole class (including Mrs Herman) stop and stare at her. She could feel their eyes piercing into her soul. She couldn't take it any more!

Out she ran, away from the class, away from Cindy, sprinting down the winding corridors of St. Johns High. Where would she go? What would she do? Nothing made sense any more. Nothing felt real. There were always her sisters though. She couldn't go to Phoebe as she would just get angry and beat up the blondes. Piper would have to go to Prue. There was no way getting around it.

She remembered that Prue was in History since she had been complaining all day about a project that was due in first lesson. Piper went over to the history block of the school and peaked in through all the little windows in the doors to try and spot her sister. Finally, she glimpsed Prue sitting at the front of the class, taking down notes from what was on the board.

She tied up her remaining hair in a pony tail and knocked on the door, waiting for the teacher to acknowledge her before entering. "Can Prudence Halliwell please report to office, there's someone waited to pick her up," She lied to the teacher. It was Mr Wisner, the cutest teacher who probably ever lived. He had playful baby blue eyes but his hair was lazily long (up to his shoulders), with a messy beard that hadn't been given much care.

He taught English Literature and was so funny and sweet; every girl couldn't help but fall for him. This made it harder for Piper to lie. He smiled which made Piper feel she was the only one in the room. She had to try and remember why she was here otherwise she would have spent the whole day drooling at him. She turned back to her sister who wasn't buying her little lie, but grabbed her books, all the same, and left the room with Piper in tow.

As soon as the door was shut, Prue turned to her sister. "Since when did you start monitor duty? And why would anyone want to see me in the office, and why did you drag me out of that lesson with Mr Wisner? First you ate my toast this morning, now you do this… do you HATE me or something?" She spat. Piper just managed to turn her head to avoid the wild spit flying her way but Prue managed to get a glimpse of her hair.

"P-P-Piper… what did you do to your hair?"

Piper looked at her oversized feet. "A girl cut it in class, I didn't know what to do, so I thought you might help."

It took a second for Prue to think about it, "Was it Cindy! I knew she was giving you trouble… if she thinks she can get away with that, she has another thing coming! I'll kill her the minute I see her! She'll know exactly what it feels like!"

"NO!" Piper screamed, "It wasn't Cindy… it was another girl, I don't know her name though." She didn't know why she lied to her sister, because the one and only thing she wanted in the world was for Cindy to feel her pain, but she knew it would get worse if she did something.

Prue on the other hand, knew what was good for Piper and knew that Cindy had done this to her. But a sisters bond was the strongest thing that meant to her and she knew she had to listen to Piper, no matter what.

The two sisters quickly rushed to the toilets. As Piper leaned on the wall tring to grasp the situation, Prue flicked through her bag. "It has to be in here somewhere," she mumbled while throwing books into the sinks. "What are you looking for? Piper queried. Just at that second, Prue pulled out a large pair of silver scissors with a bright blue handle.

"OH NO!" Piper cried, "You can't be thinking… no! You want to fix my hair by cutting more off?"

Prue shook her head, "I just want to even it, so that you won't look more of a freak!"

Piper caught her breath. "What do you mean 'more of a freak'?"

"I'm sorry Pipes, I didn't mean it like that."

"You think I'm a freak?"

Prue turned to hide her face, "Come on, you don't think you are just a little… weird?" she said it so quietly, she was surprised Piper heard her.

"Oh, I always knew I was a freak. I always knew I was weird! But I never, ever expected to hear that from you my sisters!"

There was a long pause before Prue looked back at her sister. "I'm sorry, it's just, I feel I'm always the sister who ends up having to look after you whenever something like this happens. I didn't mean it Pipes, I swear. You're not a freak… you're perfect."