Chapter Two

List Of Problems

Lunch. Not that I'd be happy if I had to eat the cafeteria food, but this was the time where school was no longer school. I opened my locker, stuffing my bag into it with a certain type of rage. I had to stay after school for thirty minutes and scrub the desk tops in Ms. Genny's room. I couldn't help but ripping up another peice of paper. Plus, my back was starting to burn with slouching forward. Not that leaning back would fix that pain burdened to me for the rest of my life. And I could feel a headache coming along.

"Hail, you better stop hitting your bag or you'll kill yourself," I heard Kyler say behind me. I slammed the locker door shut and turned to look at my best friend. Her name is actually Kylee Madison, she has no middle name, and her hatred of her name is almost killer. Still, I was the one who started up the nickname Kyler, which though pronounced Ky as in pie- ler, sounds a lot like killer and satisfies her. Everyone basically calls her Kyler Mad. She wore black tripp pants with red laces, without the chains due to school rules, and a sustainable ammount of jewelry without the spikes, due to school rules. Her hair was extremely long, to the bottom of her butt, but very thick and healthy and death black. The ends of her hair were spiked somehow, and even her bangs were rows of spikes across her forehead before crawling down stairlike to her normal length. Her eyes were green, and around them were thick eyeliner that extended into three whisker like spikes on the corner of her eyes. Then she had red eyeshadow on. Kyler was imaginative with her makeup. She put black eyeliner on her lips and followed it with lipgloss so that it was a glossy black. And she branded her face with a nose ring, snake bits, and an eyebrow ring on her left eyebrow. Still, she's not emo, goth, or punk. She's Kyler.

"Whatever, there's something seriously damaged about Ms. Genny. I merely rip the paper so as to not upset her by turning it in instead, and what do I get in return," I asked in annoyance, my headache pulsing more profoundly. "I get to stay after school and go through slave labor in her presence for thirty minutes. Think my back hurts right now? Cuh." Cuh being my scoff/gasp of discust. Kyler started walking with me towards the lunchroom. The nurse's office was on the way.

"Did she say how long you had to do this," Kyler asked calmly.

"Two days."

"She's just a bitch, Hail. Just think: there's only four days left of school after today. And saturday we'll go over to the Soundstage and hear some local bands at the concert," Kyler said optimistically, "Meanwhile, you get to explain to Nurse Richards why you're not following doctor's advice. See you at lunch." Kyler smiled evily and I rolled my eyes as I moved to a door on the left of the hall just before the lunchroom. I walked into the nurse's office, and Nurse Richards stood there. She had extremely short, curly red hair and her golden speckled brown eyes peered at my grim face expectantly.

"If it isn't our own little miss problems," Nurse Richards said. I didn't disagree, I have a lot of problems. "Let's see, which one do you want first? Blood pressure or blood glucose monitor?"

"Glucose first, pressure during the reading," I responded as usual. Nurse Richards pulled out the monitor and I held out my forefinger. She pricked my finger, and I pushed down on the meat just below it to push a drop of blood onto the strip of paper. Then I moved over the the blood pressure monitor and started strapping it to my arm. I could do that myself, even though I didn't much like the electronical ones. I waited as the strap around my arm tightened in a deathening grip that made me feel as though one day my arm would just pop off because of this. Soon it started loosening, and the results weren't looking as though they would satisfy Nurse Richards.

"Well, blood sugar is 95. How's the blood pressure," Nurse Richards asked. I glared at the machine, taking off the strap and pulling out a peice of paper. I was suppose to write down my blood pressure levels everyday to report to my doctor once a month.

"145 over 110," I responded, "Ms. Genny got to me again."

"What have we all been telling you, Hailence?"

"Yeah, yeah, I got it."

Nurse Richards put away the monitors and opened a cabinent. "Let's see," she said and brought a couple of bottles and a box over to the table I was at, "We've got insulin--" She opened the box and I started on that. I wouldn't need too much, just enough to not allow my food today to kill me. "And now for the checkoff... blood pressure..." She put a pill on the table. "... Arthritis..." She put two pills with the first one. ".. and Anemia..." She finished off with a vitamin pill. I injected the insulin, and started swallowing each pill, especially thankful for the two anti-inflammatory pills that would help with my back. "And you're good on air, right?" I nodded. "Then you're good for lunch." And Nurse Richards started putting away the medicines.

Did I forget to mention the reason that I believed myself to be full of problems, or have they been noticed? I guess you can say it all started when I was born. It took about two years to notice the first problems, but by the time I was five, I knew my doctor like I knew my parents. First came the screaming about the stomach pains. My parents got pretty worried about that, so with some blood tests, not only did I learn that I have Congenital (which means 'with birth')Pernicious Anemia, but I learned I was doomed with Type 1 Diabetes for life. For those who aren't doctors, Pernicious Anemia is when my stomach protein decided not to absorb B12 vitamins that well. And B12 vitamins is important for the nuero whatever part of your body. Which means no B12 means ultimate pain and brain damage. Well, it's bad enough that it can screw up your vision. And this Anemia doomed me to a monthly injection of B12 vitamins forever, which was good until I hit puberty and had to take oral vitamins as well. I'll probably have to end up inhaling through the nose vitamins when shots and ingestion stops working. But Type 1 Diabetes, which a lot of people have, is simply when the pancreas decides not to produce insulin. Insulin is used especially in destruction of sugar in your blood, so when it's not there, that sugar gets to grow fatter until it decides to hit your eyes, blinding you, and eventually killing you. So now I get to do a daily injection of insulin that was taken from the pancreas of a pig or horse. Let's just say I'm a needle's best friend.

But that's not all. At some point, I started getting major fever bursts, and wouldn't move in the morning due to pain. I'd say that started around the age of six. It creeped my dad out, seeing as my mom was AWOL. And that was when we learned I was also doomed with Polyarticular Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis. That's when you have adult major arthritis, unbearable pain in the joints, as a kid. So then I've had to take things like hydroxychloroquine, Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (aka NSAIDS), and even corticosteroids to take away that pain because it can't be exactly cured unless Jesus still was here. At least when puberty hit, it stopped being as bad as before. But now I'm doomed for regular Rheumatoid Arthritis as an adult, so yay. And so we stopped being so shocked about having problems and it was reasonably normal to find out that I suffered from Hypertension, which is a fancy word for High Blood Pressure. And if you don't know what that is, it's when your heart starts shoving that blood throughout your body with a rage so full that it'll give out if it doesn't stop. So I'm happy when it's around 130/95 because that's as normal as I'll get in that feild... which is actually prehypertension and not normal or good. Average normality would be around 120/80, which is impossible for me. And to top off the list of problems, I have asthma. But that's easily controlled with an inhalor, which is needed when some other problem with me is acting up and pushing the asthma to do its thing. So not only do I deal with fatigue from diabetes, pain and sensitivity to light from arthritis (ergo my back in flames), a sudden burst of speed of my heart beating from vitamin defienciency, and a sudden loss of breath, dizzyness, and even nosebleeds from blood pressure, but I also get to inhale some sort of battery acid.

I thanked Nurse Richards, who secretly enjoyed my abnormally long list of problems. It actually gave her something to do everyday rather than just looking at sprained ankles and students who have the flu. And I was off to lunch where I hopped the lunch line to obtain my special lunch that I handed to the lunch ladies every morning. I walked over to the mass of metallic, black clothed students in their own corner, and instead of the glares that other normal looking students would get at approaching them, I was greeted warmly and Kyler moved her backpack out of a chair that was saved for myself. I sat down and looked at my sorted tray that held the sugary food to the left, meat in the middle, and vegetables on the right. Due to my actually normal readings I could eat equal ammounts of each, which made me as happy as I'll ever get.

Though this mass of goth/punk/emo teenagers did all indeed stay basically in a massive group, they were split up in their own way. In one section, everyone was drawing doom and handing it to whoever wanted to see it, in another the group was hovered around a mass of mp3 players and taking turns listening to new screamos. Then there was the section I sat with, in which it was just a bunch of us just eating and talking and insulting. And last, there was the section that just sat there, absolutely quiet. Usually the posers hang with that section, so nobody bothers them unless they throw stuff at them or dump food into their backpacks. But only the stupid ones. Some of them were actually cool, so we left them on their own like they clearly were asking.

Kyler was in the middle of a rant with another anime-lover boy named Pheonix, some scrawny little emo boy who creeps everyone out. "...And I told that bitch that if she looked at me that way again, I would shove that little icecream cone of hers up her ass until she became an icecream maker!" And Kyler crossed her arm and leaned back, kicking the table, which made an orange jump out of one person's tray and hit another's milk that spilled all across the table to the drawings, which in turn made everyone jump up to avoid the flood. I stayed seated and took a bite out of my carrot while Kyler started cussing at the drawing section who was cussing at her for screwing up their drawings.

"Oh, draw them again. They weren't that good anyways, stupid dumbasses," Kyler yelled. But everybody used their napkins to clean up the mess and sit down before a teacher could take notice and send anyone to the office. Kyler has always had an anger issue, which is why she's the voice of my inner demon. I continued to start ingesting my food, completely unfazed by the sudden tension. It's a technique that's suppose to help keep my blood pressure as low as possible.

While everyone was distracted by the sudden mess, D.J. of the Music section had traveled over to our section and pulled up a seat on the right side of me, placing me in between him and Kyler. His name is actually the funniest of the whole group, though only known by a few who can keep a secret; he knows, his best friend knows by him, I know because D.J. told me, and Kyler knows because I told her. And so though everyone just figures his name is D.J. Jets, his name is actually Darwin Einstein Jets. His parents had high hopes for him, but he broke them, becoming a skateboarding, hard rock, black loving emo boy named D.J. And while Kyler's hair is dyed, like most of the people in the group, D.J.'s is naturally black, seeing as he has a black father and a white mother. He took after his dad in the body tone and height section, but in nothing else. He didn't wear eyeliner, his eyes were black enough, and nothing on his face was peirced unless you counted the tongue ring. Still, I had known him for a year now, so when he sat next to me, I ignored it and turned to Kyler.

"So there's a concert saturday," I asked, popping a skittle into my mouth and offering some to Kyler and D.J. Kyler dropped her rage at the world and switched to joy in a blink of an eye, almost as though she were bipolar.. which I believe she could be. She took a couple of skittles.

"Oh, yeah, and everyone's going to be there. Apparently a vampire band called 'Death Reign' is suppose to be playing, and they're actually really good. Suppose to be getting an offer anytime. And there's gonna be a bunch of creeps like us dressing up like vamps. It's going to be cool, seeing so many freaks there," Kyler said, cackling.

"Are you going," D.J. asked, placing himself into the conversation. I turned my head to look at him, switching my status from humorous fun in Kyler's presence to shy speaker in his. It's a self-esteem issue.

"I guess. Are you," I asked quietly.

"Sure. It should be interesting," he responded, and I glanced at Kyler to see that she cheerfully had removed herself from the conversation to Pheonix so that I couldn't get out of talking to him. So I clutched my guts inside and turned back to D.J. I've known him a year and he still makes me nervous. And I don't even like him that much. It's just that he looked at me, and it made me feel like I was having a blood pressure episode. Indeed, my headache was still there, but it was just as bad as before.

"Yeah, a bunch of people pretending to be vampires. Interesting," I said.

"Here, wanna listen," D.J. asked, holding out an earmic to his mp3 player, and jumping on the opportunity of not having to think of something to say, I took it and put it in my ear, placing my elbow on the table and leaning my ear on my hand so that it wouldn't fall out. My ears somehow defied the nature of ear headphones, so that if I were to just stick them in there, they'd just pop out in a second. I just prefer normal headphones, but beggars can't be choosers. And D.J. and I spent the rest of lunch listening to songs by Rammstein, Marilyn Manson, Godsmack, Drowning Pool, Nirvana, and Disturbed. Sometimes he'd switch the song halfway through, but I didn't care because I knew all of them anyways.

After lunch, my headache had subsided, which told me my blood pressure was probably back to the normal top line of prehypertension, and my back didn't hurt as bad. So I took out my backpack, which was more of an over-the-shoulder thing because normal backpacks were killer, with ease. Thirty minutes of scrubbing isn't much to get worked up over. But Kyler didn't just say she'd see me later and left. Instead, she stood there with a smirk on her face.

"What," I finally asked after staring at her.

"So, you and Darwin gonna tie the knot anytime soon," Kyler asked with humor. I punched her arm.

"First of all, it's D.J. I told you that in trust that you'd keep it to yourself. Someone could overhear you," I responded in fake annoyance. If someone overheard, they'd have no idea who Darwin was anyways. "And second, it's not even like that."

Kyler scoffed. "Yeah, right. And you stumbling over your words in front of him and him leaving his friends to hang out with you isn't 'like that' at all. Sure. Whatever. Just make sure that I'm the bridesmaid. And I want to choose the dresses. I know some awesome black dresses that I could get special ordered. They're cool. They got these spikes and chains instead of straps. And the wedding dress is wicked..." I rolled my eyes and started walking down the hall towards my Chemistry class.

"I don't even think I like him. It's not stumbling over words because I think he's hot... though... nevermind, it's self-esteem issues. You know that," I explained as she followed along side me. We had the same Chemistry class together. "And he probably just gets bored of listening to music in the same spot... everyday... so he... moves over... like..." I was realizing how stupid that sounded and I turned around to face Kyler. "You think he really likes me?"

Kyler nodded with confidence. "What's not to like? You're a little, cute misfit among the misfits. And everyone knows a bad boy likes good girls."

"Why?"

Kyler switched from her omniscent personality to a sudden loofy, wondering one, "I don't know. I think it has something to do with destruction of innocence or something..." She shrugged.

Great. A bad boy. There's another thing to add to my abnormally long list of problems. I should be on Ripley's Believe It Or Not. Both Kyler and I entered Chemistry to listen to the slightly dull but easy talk on the formulas of chemicals in Chemistry.