You should already expect this to be disturbing.

Feet heavy with reluctance, I compelled myself to follow Clarissa into the nightmarish madhouse otherwise known as high school.

Forcibly pushing myself through the jungle of caffeine-fueled students, I began making my way towards my locker at an infuriatingly slow pace. I valiantly persisted in my struggle until I literally ran into one of my friends.

"M'James," I casually greeted, tipping my hat.

"Alida," he answered, rubbing his head (which had just been slammed against my own rather painfully). "What are you doing swimming against the current?"

I scoffed. "This is not a current." I gestured widely to the hyper, screaming adolescents running rabidly around us. "This, my James, is chaos."

"You're chaos."

"Your mom is chaos."

James looked at me, his mien a satisfying mixture of disgust and horror. (Is it bad that he wears this expression towards me on a daily basis?)

I chuckled, then cursed as someone's weight forcefully jostled into me, sending me sprawling. Before I was able to regain my footing, my left boot made hostile contact with a particularly slippery piece of paper, and I landed on my back. Hard.

My ears rang from the impact, and I released a groan. After taking a brief moment to fathom how deeply I despised life, I began to slowly push myself up from the cheap, imitation marble.

I glanced at James, who seemed inexplicably astounded. Before I could question this, my eyes lowered to where I had just been lying.

That fall was apparently... a bit heavier than I had originally accounted for.

Bewildered, I knelt beside the disturbingly large crater my body had made. The stone was cracked and crumbling, and an enormous indentation was visible. How could I have possibly caused that much damage!? I wasn't even injured! Logically, I should've been broken- not the floor!

Not that I'm complaining...

"Well," stated James, almost objectively, "You seem to have destroyed the floor."

I scoffed again and watched his eyebrows gradually rise as his curiosity grew to outweigh his caustic nature. "How did you-"

"I didn't do anything!"

"You massacred innocent fake marble!"

"That's not my fault!"

"It kind of is."

Exasperated, I inhaled sharply and kicked the nearest locker out of frustration.

It dented.

Then caved.

"Oh my," murmured James, "You do know that destruction of public property is a potential felony, right?"

I was too concerned with reverently staring at the crushed locker to retaliate to his words.

Engulfed in thought, I was oblivious to the ringing of the bell, and James nudged me. "Come on, Clark, let's get to class before anyone realizes that you're Superman," he teased.

In a daze, I unsuccessfully attempted to dispel all the questions forming in my mind and headed to my first class.

Holy cats.

James was right. It wasn't the floor, it was me. What did I do? And the locker...

I examined my hands as the teacher droned on about reflexive pronouns or something. What are these hands capable of? What am I capable of?

What am I?

Still stunned from my earlier experience, I was immersed in thought as my feet carried me to the cafeteria- so immersed, in fact, that I slammed head-first into the principal's only child.

"Oh, sorry Jaina," I gasped, collecting her scattered belongings as she gathered her bearings. "Gosh. Sorry."

"I'm alright, I guess," she squeaked hesitantly in her obnoxiously high-pitched voice. Preoccupied with returning her billion-dollar outfit to its previous state of immaculateness, she failed to notice me offering her books and purse for several seconds. After this, she took them and carried herself off to class. Before I could do the same, a harsh, scornful voice stopped me dead in my tracks. "Alida."

I spun around artistically. "Why, hello, Principal Hall. May I help you?"

"You may not speak to my daughter ever again," she proposed, her dim hazel eyes narrowing at me. "She's above associating with people like you."

Though I feigned perplexity, I was well aware that this insufferable woman had despised me ever since our first meeting, at Clarissa's orientation. Thirteen at the time, I had made a rather unsavory and unfortunately audible comment about her and her daughter's almost-matching, fake, blonde hair.

Well, it was true.

"Whatsoever could you mean?" I drawled.

As her already distasteful frown deepened at my supposed confusion, she attempted mostly unsuccessfully to intimidate me with her iron glare. "Tell me, Alida, where were you this morning when the hallway was vandalized?"

I shrugged violently. "How should I know when the vandals struck?"

She rolled her eyes. "It would have been around 7:45 and :55."

"I was with James," I asserted honestly, "James Allen. Ask him yourself."

"I think I will."

"What of this mystery?" I taunted lightly as she turned around to carry out her interrogation. "Haven't you camera footage? Witnesses?"

Nearly visible hatred radiating around her, she hissed back, "The cameras in English Hall are down. And no one was paying enough attention to notice anything."

Broken security cameras? Well, that's convenient. A bit suspicious, maybe, but convenient all the same...

Lunchtime.

The time of day when, after several hours of grueling study, a group of miserable, suffering children gather together to try to force minuscule portions of synthetic meat down their throats.

My heart cannot contain its joy.

Sighing, I let my filth-laden tray hit the table with a clang and then proceeded to lower myself into a chair. My friend Kaos greeted me, pushing her white-blonde hair behind her ear and poking her fork into an unidentifiable green substance. Before I could say a word, I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned to discover its source.

I filled with disdain as my eyes landed upon a pale girl with shoulder-length auburn hair and putrid brown eyes that were filled with a despicable mixture of pity and hatred.

"Elizabeth," I directed at the trash bag, my tone daring.

"Alida," she shot back with equal ferocity. I watched her expression change, her thin lips upturning into a smirk. "I heard that the lockdown this morning was caused by some property damage near your locker. You wouldn't happen to know anything about that, would you?"

I felt an urge to plunge the spoon in my hand through her cold, black heart. I disregarded this.

"I heard that every football player on the team scored last Friday night. You wouldn't happen to know anything about that," I mocked, allowing malice to fill my eyes, "would you?"

I heard Kaos choke on her food behind me.

Elizabeth's countenance filled with utter disgust. "I feel sorry for you."

"Oh? Do tell."

That sickly sweet smile came across her ugly little face again. I thought of how much better it would look if it was being slammed through the windshield of a car. "It must feel awful to know that you're so much of a freak that your own parents gave you away," she whined in faux sympathy, sap dripping from her sticky, syrupy voice.

I closed my eyes.

She isn't worth it. She isn't worth it. SHE ISN'T WORTH IT.

My eyes opened, and a genuine smile lit up my face. I looked at the pile of garbage in front of me, feeling rather placid. "The decision of my parents to give me up was their loss, Elizabeth. It is a shame almost as devastating as your parents' decision to keep you."

Entirely pacific, I turned around and stood with my tray. As I calmly walked away, Kaos trailing behind me, I basked in the glow of the insults Elizabeth and her worshipers hurled at my back, because I knew that I had won. I knew that her parents considered her a disappointment, that she was never as perfect as her older brother. I knew that she cried herself to sleep every night because of it.

"That tramp," began Kaos as we sat out of earshot of Elizabeth and her clique, "just got rek't."

I nodded, feeling refined and dignified in comparison to that little spawn of satan.

Though I had lost my appetite and despised everything on my tray anyway, I picked at the "food" in front of me simply out of ennui. Kaos penetrated the ensuing silence with a question: "Why does Elizabeth even have such a vendetta against you? I remember that you guys used to be friends."

"'Friends'," I repeated, stretching the word around in my mouth. "No, we weren't that. Maybe I thought so at the time, but I was young, and stupid."

"I can hardly imagine you being stupid, Alida," quipped Kaos. I brushed her comment aside with a simple smile.

"She decided to stop using me around four years ago," I mused, digging deep into my archives of memory for such an insignificant story. Where would I file such a thing? Under "Pollution", perhaps? "I am inclined to believe that the disturbance was caused by something as simple as a math test."

"A math test."

"Well, that was only the beginning, I suppose," I clarified mistily, tracing one finger along the accursed tray in front of me. "I stood up to her in the beginning, acting easily as detestable as she, you know. Of course, I began to comprehend the immorality of treating someone in such a way because of things one cannot control."

"And she did not," speculated my intelligent friend.

"Indeed. Her harassment seemed to intensify as mine ceased," I recalled. "She would set me up for her idiotic stunts, and I would take the blame like the peacemaker I was. I was forced into doing her homework for an eternity-"

"Ha! I knew she was no honors student," interjected Kaos.

"-she blackmailed, mocked, and threatened me. And as if that wasn't enough, she's got half the school shunning me for necrophilia."

"Oh," coughed Kaos, her face twisting intriguingly. "That's pleasant." Leaning forward, she began to twist her fork into the table like an incredibly slow power drill. "So what's the current situation?"

"Well," I began, folding my fingers, "I've had an epiphany."

"Naturally."

"It's alright for me to act disdainfully towards Elizabeth. She deserves it. So here we are: Neither of us are being 'bullied'." (What a disgustingly generic and overused term.) "She is despicable to me on a whim, and I am despicable in return because she has brought it upon herself."

Something seemed to spark in Kaos's above-average brain. "So you're like Karma."

"I... suppose?" I offered, not having made such a connection in the past.

A hole opened in the conversation, allowing the mildly irritating roar of crazed high school students to flood into the forefront of our minds. On a whim, I ingested a bit of what was allegedly some form of potato- a decision which I immediately regretted.

I glanced at Kaos, who seemed to be mapping some strategy out on the table in invisible fork strokes. I find her company quite pleasant, as it lends contrast to the primal dialogue anyone else has to offer. She is outstandingly bright, and I know she'll accomplish momentous things someday.

After lunch, I had band (in which a trumpet player accidentally blew up something important), which was followed by Chem II (in which James intentionally blew up something important). Then it was finally time to go home and indulge in Battlefront 2 while subjecting myself to the incessant torment of the sadistic seven-year-old with whom I am forced to abide...