I'm back! Yes, I did get hit with a sudden sense of motivation andd decided to push myself great lengths. And it paid off, because I actually have my chapter finished. I am, once again, sorry sorry sorry for making you wait so long for a chapter. Well, just waiting to see if there was a chapter at all. But there is, so I'm happy, and hopefully you all don't hate my guts and decide to boycott against my stories, because I love your reviews =)
Disclaimer: I do not own Degrassi. Never did, and probably never will.
These people, the ones who look away and dodge my ever presence, are the same people who used be a natural substance in the recipe that created my everyday life. Jenna Middleton used to teach me how to play guitar in the music room during study hall. She would make fun of my lack of skills, redoing my finger positioning on the strings over and over again, even though I never could get it right. Dave Turner always flirted with Alli and I, although I could never quite ignore the way his dallying turned into something more while talking to her, the way something in his eyes lit up when she would enter the room. Peter Stone would wave a friendly hello to me in the hallways every once in the while, and we would make a slight amount of eye contact that distinguished into a soft smile.
I don't recognize any of these people anymore. I wonder if they recognize me. Or if they remember who I used to be, rather than what I am now.
I sit down in Creative Writing class and begin doodling random squiggly lines inside my writing notebook. Half of the notebook is already used up, due to my demanding need to jot down any inner most thoughts during the summer, when my biggest complaints were that the sun was too strong, the pool was too cold, and my skin was too pale.
Eighty percent of what I wrote down isn't even important. Mostly random story ideas that popped into my mind at thrashing moments, those kinds that stick in your head like glue until you finally peel them off onto a piece of paper. None of the pages link together, either: they're just random drabbles of words and thoughts that are left sifting off during mid sentence.
Under the power of raw curiosity, I find myself flipping through the pages and studying the things that used to overwhelm me so much. What was so important about them anyway? They have no relevance to my actual life. Each one is a different girl, living in a different world that I built up so high then let crumble down.
Around the room, I hear the slight murmurs of other students, although no one is being obnoxiously loud or disruptive. Being in creative writing class means that you're not a total douche bag. I mean, of course there's the occasional jock that just happens to contain a hidden talent, but hides the dying need to express his emotions through words by acting like a complete idiot. But other than that, most of the people here have their heads screwed on straight. For once I actually feel like I'm able to breathe without inhaling the contaminated air of idiocy.
Mrs. Dawes, who is also my Honors English teacher, strolls into the classroom while cleaning her glasses. "Sorry I'm late," she turns to face us and puts her glasses back on, "Meeting ran late."
She strides over towards the window and slightly opens it. Automatically, the slight post-summer breeze enters the classroom and envelope every person in it. I can't help but lean back against the seat and close my eyes, relishing to the feeling that reminds me of a past when things were different. Darcy's face enters my mind, how she used to always open her bedroom window and yell out to Todd, our next-door neighbor, whom she had a crush on. The careful breeze suddenly transforms into a destructive tornado.
My eyes snap open. No one else seems to be phased by the sudden change of atmosphere.
""Having a window open always helps clear my mind. Maybe you'll find something that clears your minds, as well."
Mrs. Dawes wipes her hands together and leans against her desk, which is so neat and organized you'd think it was never even used before. Everyone stops speaking and looks up at her.
"Who here is just taking this class for an easy A?"
The entire class, except me, wanders their eyes to each and every person, waiting for one unlucky victim to be chosen. No one raises their hand or speaks up, so everyone loses interest and looks back at the teacher.
"If you are," Mrs. Dawes goes on, "I would suggest you transfer out now. This class is not easy. Now," she spins on her heels and begins shuffling through piles of papers on her desk, which are tied together by different colored rubber bands, "This class will contain all types of creative writing. I know you're not all good at poetry and writing short stories, so therefore I would like to be notified of your strongest point. That way, if you hand in a poetry assignment that isn't so great, I can look at this sheet and realize poetry isn't your calling."
She unravels the rubber band and passes a few papers to the students in the front row. Since I'm in the far back, I'm the last one to get handed a sheet.
WHAT'S YOUR CALLING?
-Fiction (short stories, novels, etc.)
-Screen Writing
-Drama
-Journaling
-Poetry
Please check off 1 or more of your most valuable talents. If yours is not on here, please talk to me after class.
By the time I read through the paper five times, most of the class has already handed theirs in to the teacher. But I don't do anything. I used to write everything- short stories, attempted novels, the occasional poetry- but none of them ever seemed to really stick. I got bored with same repetitive motions of my character's lives, or the cyclical rhyming of poetry that contained no real meaning. None of it meant- none of it means- anything.
Whatever. I check off what seems slightly appealing at the moment and hand the sheet to Mrs. Dawes. She scans over my choices for a few moments, and I sweat there's a suspecting look swimming in her eyes as she does so.
"Thank you, Clare," she says, and puts it down with the rest of the papers.
I walk through the aisle and somehow manage to catch my foot on someone's backpack. Before I have time to register what's happening, let alone save myself, I'm on the floor with my head pressed up against somebody's boot.
People's eyes, once again, smolder through my skin. I blush until my face is the color of a cherry and stand up cautiously, afraid that another force is waiting for the right moment to push me back down.
A few people chuckle. I want to hit them.
"Clare, are you alright?"
Mrs. Dawe's voice is worried, as though she actually wants to know if I'm alright. I turn to face her, anything to get away from those blistering eyes, and fix my hair. "I'm okay."
"You're knee looks a little swollen. Why don't you go to the nurse and get some ice, okay?"
I nod my head, happy to escape the wrath of this prison disguised as a classroom. Mrs. Dawes hands me a pass on my way out.
As I'm walking out the door, I hear a quiet, feminine, voice whisper, "Is that her? Darcy Edward's sister?"
I stop in my tracks. The air in the room grows cold, slithering along the fabrics of my clothes like the ghost of a reminder that was forced down into its grave with all might and force. For a moment I contemplate turning around, facing that person square in the face and demand them to say it again, just for the sake of knowing it was actually real. The temptation fades away, however, when it becomes overshadowed by the hardening rock in my chest.
The voice sticks with me the whole walk to the nurse's office. There's an evident churning growing in my gut with each and every footstep, and I clutch onto my stomach for dear life.
When I open the door, Nurse What's Her Name is busy talking, or rather, arguing, with another student, whose face is bursting with fury. I vaguely recognize him. He wasn't in school much last year, left about mid-December, and usually kept quiet whenever he did attend.
"Please," he begs, clasping his hands together desperately, "I really do have a migraine."
The nurse sighs and puts the thermometer down. "Adam, you have no fever, and you look completely healthy. I'm sorry, but you just have to stick it out today."
"But I can't!" He practically yells, and the agony in his voice makes me flinch, "Do you want me to pass out?"
"Adam-"
"I'm sick, okay!" He jumps down from the bed and waggles a shaking finger in his own face, "Does this look like a healthy face to you?"
The nurse groans and puts a hand on Adam's forehead, deciphering his temperature for a moment before pulling away. "You feel fine," she says tiredly, "I can't allow a student to go home unless they actually are ill."
"Is that all that matters to you people? A fever?" Adam laughs like the matter is anything but funny, "You can be sick without actually having a fever, you know."
"Yes, I am well aware-"
"Then let me go home!"
The Nurse shakes her head and closes her eyes tiredly. "Why don't you lie down for a few minutes, calm down, and then go back go class?"
"You know what, just forget. But when I puke my guts out, just remember it's all your fault." Adam steps back from her and throws a backpack over his shoulder.
He runs towards the door and almost knocks me down when his shoulder clashes with mine. I stumble back and grasp the wall to keep from falling again.
The door slams shut, and I suddenly feel claustrophobic with the aftermath air of an argument.
The Nurse finally notices me. "What do you need, dear?" She says uncomfortably, trying to push away what just happened.
I look back and forth between her and the door, not able to recall my reason for coming. "I- uh, I-"
"You need a band-aid?" She motions her head towards my knee, which is now a pale shade of white.
I nod. "Yeah."
She swipes a large band-aid, the kind that is circular and not oval, from the medicine cabinet and hands it to me. I take it and sit down on a cold chair by the window, removing the wrapper.
Adam. I really should know who he is. His name came up in conversation before. His name alone had been a conversation. I fiddle with the band-aid, fixing the parts that folded into the sticky side, and replay the movements of his face over and over again.
Adam Terry?
No.
Adam Tommy?
That's not it either.
I prop my elbow onto my injured knee once the band-aid is successfully on and stare off into space. God damn it. Who is he?
Forget it. I stand up and thank the nurse, who waves her hand dismissively, and walk out of the office. But even though I told myself I wouldn't think about it, the image of his face keeps nagging in my mind.
My frustration transforms into apprehension when my hand comes in contact with the classroom door. The churnings have expanded from my stomach to my head to my throat. Everything begins moving fast.
Nothing even happens on the first day. Teachers list their endless trains of expectations, most of which no one reaches anyway. Kids ignore the teachers and talk about their summers, as if the whole world channeled in to hear about how they had sex in a pool and got a really bad tan line, and even though the curriculum is supposed to be stated, every teacher always gets caught up in one subject they're passionate about and go on for the entire period.
That's enough to convince me. I spin on my heels and begin coursing through the empty hallway, trying to ignore the fact that I have absolutely nowhere to go. A colorful poster is planted above a group of lockers, the top left corner sifting in mid-air, as though it were trying desperately to convince the rest of itself to let go as well. When I turn my head to get a better glimpse of it, I realize that it's a motivational poster for the senior class to apply to colleges A.S.A.P.
I feel a pain in my gut. She'll never go to college.
Darcy wasn't what you would call an overachiever. But she wasn't an underachiever as well. She kind of fell somewhere in the middle, tottering from side to side, changing her views on school by the amount of homework she received. Not that it really mattered, anyway, whether or not she wanted to take twenty minutes on an essay or five hours. She somehow always managed to ace every test, blow teachers away with her awesome vocabulary and sentence structure, and get report cards my parents insisted on posting on the refrigerator door. It always bugged me, how things came so easy for her. I was the one who ripped my own hair out studying for an easy Lab Biology quiz, the one who spent hours on homework that only consisted of three questions, the one who loitered on breaking point territory, just to find, that once again, I could never quite reach the astounding grades my sister always got. And even though everything was so damn easy for her, she chose to end it?
I rub my bandaged knee absentmindedly. I'll never, ever, understand the mystery of Darcy Edwards.
I'll never, ever, want to.
The front doors to Degrassi are locked from the inside during school hours. The only way you can open them is with the secretary's consent, and to do that you need an excuse to leave school, which always consists of either your parent coming in or an approved note. This total lockdown act just started this year, due to numerous cases of students playing hooky and leaving school during their least favorite subject. I'm not sure who started it all, who exactly sent Principal Simpson over the edge, but my guess is whoever it was got caught in the act.
After a few moments of standing in the middle of the hallway, I slide down against the lockers and look down at the tile floor. My eyes feel tired all of a sudden; I struggle just to keep them open. All I want to do is go back home and sleep.
Change that. All I want to do is sleep. I'll never want to go back home again.
I pull down my shirt just enough that I can look down at my shoulder. As usual, my birthmark is staring back at me, bold and brown, never moving or washing away. Darcy and I had the exact same mark. Full and dark on the inside, gradually becoming tarnished with each millimeter edging towards the outside, until all it becomes is a speckle of light colored dots tattooed onto our skin.
I trace the pattern of the birthmark, making sure to touch every possible aspect of it, wondering that if by doing so I'm actually touching a piece of Darcy. I wait for a jolt in the exterior of my heart; an electrical shock that sends a wave of chills dancing down my spin. But I soon realize, with an emotion I can't decipher as relief or disappointment, that all I feel is hollow.
Darcy used to tell me that our identical birthmarks were a memento that we were sisters. She would always say that even though we looked nothing alike, and even though at times we hated each other, that those two birthmarks would always remind us that we were linked together. At the time her words made me laugh. I told her she sounded like Oprah. But now, when I look at the birthmark resting on my pale white shoulder, it hits me harder than a brick wall that it's no longer a twin.
"Excuse me!" I jump at the sound of Mr. Simpson's voice, and quickly stand up. "Aren't you supposed to be in class?"
He walks down the hallway, eyes raging with annoyance, but once he sees my face all the anger drains away..
I refuse to meet his eyes. I can't stand to witness the growing expression of sympathy.
"Oh," he says shortly, "Clare. What are you doing here?"
I step back shakily. "I'm sorry, I'll go back to class."
Just when I turn around and start heading back to Creative Writing, Mr. Simpson stops me. "Are you alright, Clare? I mean, how are you doing?"
"I'm fine. Just fine."
I don't bother to look at him when I say the words. I know that if I do, he'll see my eyes and know just how much I'm lying. Not even the best liar in the world could stretch this far from the truth and get away with it.
So this took me a while to write. Lots of deleting, lots editting, and lots of cursing at the computer. Hopefully this satisfied you all =)
-Jenna
