Chapter Two: On The Daily

There was no point.

Meg was tired.

She left the kitchen, ignoring the sounds of the laughter following her as she headed for the bathroom. After shutting the door, she turned the sink faucet on, hastily taking off her glasses and splashing her cheeks with cool, clean water, then she grabbed the soap off the shelf and scrubbed her skin, disgusted beyond words.

Not with his actions, but with herself, for trusting him again.

Doing so was stupid, but she couldn't stop herself from trying... and it really, really hurt, every single time, since it always turned out this way in the end. After years of enduring this same situation over and over again, she should have gotten the hint and learned not to trust him... or, to at least not feel the heartache.

But she did.

She did, each time.

She had already known what to expect from the beginning, so it shouldn't have hurt at all.

So, why did it?

Once she was clean, she grabbed her glasses and turned to leave, but saw herself in the mirror.

She instantly winced.

Hazel eyes that were much too large for her face stared back at her, framed by ridiculously long eyelashes... wisps of her messy brown hair framed her lightly freckled cheeks, looking—as always—like an old ragged curtain that had once seen better days. Too thin of an aqueline nose made her face look a bit squashed, and her lips were way too full for someone with such high, angular cheekbones. One of her worst features was her skin, though, without a doubt: she was so pale that she looked like she was sick with some incurable disease, or like she'd never been out in the sun.

Slowly lifting her hands, she took her hat off, ignoring the numb sensation on her forehead. Her bangs fell across her eyes once her hat was off, but she pushed them back and stared at the thin, white scar along her skull. After so many years, it was barely even visible anymore... just a faint discoloration, really, but the reason she was always hiding it wasn't because she thought it made her look ugly, like everyone thought. It was because every time she saw this scar, she remembered how she'd gotten it...

And the words that had been spoken to her that day.

"Shut up, Meg. You were a mistake."

She winced and roughly dragged her hat back on, turning away from the mirror.

She was ugly.

Unwanted.

Unloved.

She walked out of the bathroom and past the kitchen, where her family was still gushing over Peter's typical antagonism.

The wind lifted her hair off her shoulders when she finally left the house, but instead of looking at the ground, she kept her eyes trained on the sky and started walking, taking one step at a time, ignoring the sensation of her hair sweeping back and forth against her shoulders.

Clouds drifted across the sky above her, dreamy and far away, even though they looked close enough to touch.

She sometimes wished she was a cloud.

She was about as invisible as one until she cried, and then everyone avoided her, just like they avoided rain.

Meg sighed, closing her eyes and taking a deep breath as she prepared herself to face the day.

She was in her last year of high school, but it had just started, so there were still months and months of torment left to deal with before she could get away, but she'd been saving up money from jobs here and there since she'd turned fifteen, and with it she planned to leave home on her own.

She wouldn't go to college.

She'd applied, but she already knew there would be no good news, since someone like her didn't have a shot at doing anything for the future.

No... she was going to take all the money she'd earned and get out of the state.

She would go someplace out in the middle of nowhere and live by herself, away from the world that hated her, perhaps somewhere in the Colorado mountains... or perhaps the southern part of Alaska, someplace without a lot of people who would laugh at her and torment her.

Shouldering her backpack, Meg continued the twenty minute walk in total silence, only bothering to lower her eyes when she stepped through the gates of her high school. She stopped, taking a deep breath and closing her eyes as she prepared her mind to deal with the horrors of the day, like usual.

"I can do this," she murmured, making her way towards the entrance. "I can do this... just one more year."

With her head held high, she steeled herself and walked forward. Her sneakers squeaked on the linoleum tile, and the sound of chattering students filled her ears, but it was muted.

Muffled, distant.

People walked and stood close enough for her to touch, but they were still so far away from her, out of reach, closer than ever but impossible to touch.

She was surrounded by a crowd, but she was more alone here than anywhere else.

She took one step at a time, numb, lost in her head where nothingness drowned out the impersonal voices and clanging lockers all around her, looking at the numbers above the doors until she found her classroom and paused, staring at the students inside with a blank expression.

I can do this, Meg silently murmured, observing all ofthe faces in the room. This shouldn't be too hard... at the very least, not as bad as last week.

Swallowing, she lifted her hands and was about to go inside the room, but someone bumped into her arm and her bag instantly dropped to the floor.

"Oh, I'm sorry!" a skinny black-haired boy sighed, bending down and picking the bag up. "That was my... fault..."

When he looked up and glanced at her face, his expression changed. Wide eyed, all he did was stare at her with an open mouth... but then he snapped his jaw shut and looked away.

Meg lowered her eyes.

So many people reacted the same way, all the time, and blatantly said it was because she was ugly.

They'd called her fat.

They'd called her disgusting.

Everyone did.

So, it had to be true.

Unwanted.

Unloved.

Normal.

Numb yet again, she slowly took the bag from him.

"Thanks," she droned. "I appreciate it."

He rapidly started blinking with frightened brown eyes; looking nervous, he glanced around and hastily walked into the classroom without responding to her gratitude.

His quick departure and lack of response made her feel a bit relieved, since she didn't want to talk to him just as much as he didn't want to talk to her.

Swallowing, she walked inside the classroom behind the boy, ignoring the weight of her backpack, ignoring the stares, ignoring the way the world was hazed off all around her.

There had once been a time where she'd have tried to put her belongings in her locker, but ever since the day someone had gotten her combination number and ruined some of her favorite things during her Sophomore year, she'd taken her backpack with her to each class. In comparison to other stuff, that had actually been pretty mild.

She wished she could go back to that time.

"Wow!" a surprised voice exclaimed. "You're already back in class? So soon?!"

Meg slowly turned around and looked at the girl who'd spoken, already knowing what was coming.

Connie DiMico was the most popular girl at James Woods Regional High School, but honestly, it wasn't really hard for anyone to see why. Unlike Meg, who was freckled, somewhat mousy, and didn't know the first thing about putting on make-up, Connie was blonde, had gorgeous husky blue eyes, and she always looked fabulous.

And in an almost stereotypical manner, she happened to be the captain of the cheerleaders, had outstanding grades, coordinated every major event that went on at school, and her charms were above level nine thousand, so to speak.

Unfortunately, despite having everything she could have ever wanted... she was mean, and spoiled, and she actually hated Meg so much that she'd orchestrated countless events to humiliate and publically destroy her self esteem in an ongoing attempt to stop her from coming to school.

After a few seconds of staring at the blonde girl's sly sneer, she decided to remain aloof: she was so used to the treatment she got each day that brushing it off and acting like it was nothing came without any trouble to her at all.

Instead of being rude, Meg politely inclined her head.

"Hi, Connie," she murmured, forcing a tired smile. "Good morning. How was your weekend?"

The blonde's smirk twitched with a faint spark of irritation, and the two girls standing behind her rolled their eyes, but her smile quickly went back to normal.

"Oh, you know... same old, same old," she giggled, tossing her gorgeous blonde hair; she surprised Meg by holding out her hand with an apologetic expression. "Anyway, sorry about what happened last Friday... I went too far with the teasing. I wasn't expecting the others to get that riled up."

Meg winced and lowered her eyes, expression twisting slightly before she smoothed it out.

Faint flashes of being thrown inside the chemistry lab and into the shelf with the chemicals seared behind her eyes.

She hadn't gotten hurt or anything, but the bottles had all broken, releasing toxins into the air, and she'd ended up passing out since they'd locked the door from the outside. It was only because a teacher had been passing by that she'd gotten out of that one since based on what she'd been told, she could have died.

Connie had planned the whole thing, but she hadn't gotten in trouble because everyone involved had kept it a secret and three members of the football team had willingly taken the fall for her.

They were supposed to be suspended for two weeks, and it wasn't right, but that was why she was the queen bee: people liked her enough to protect her, even if it got them in serious trouble.

"It's... okay, I guess," Meg sighed, giving another weak little smile before she tentatively reached out to shake her hand; the moment she clasped Connie's palm, a sharp pain flashed through her hand and she yelped in surprise. "Ouch! Ow, ow, ow! That hurts! What on earth did you just...?"

She got her answer when she pulled her hand away since it was dripping blood.

"Oh, ew! You're bleeding!" Connie gasped in a mocking voice. "Be careful, Fat ass! You don't want to get anyone sick with AIDS, do you?"

She turned to smirk at her friends when they burst into laughter and high-fived each other.

Meg whined inaudibly, looking at her hand and going pale with horror when she realized there was something sticking out of it. With a grimace, she gripped the edges of whatever the hell it was and jerked it out of her palm; fire seared through her nerves, but then it was over and something metal landed on the ground. Swallowing, she bent over to touch it, blinking behind her glasses.

"Is this a... a razor?"

Her heart seized when the blonde stomped on her hand and she bit the inside of her cheek to keep from screaming in pain.

"It's a gift!" Connie giggled, viciously digging her heel into Meg's knuckles. "We all hope you put it to good use, so do us a favor and slit your wrist!"

"Connie..."

"Oh, shut up. You're an eyesore, Meg," Connie sneered, glaring down at her. "Why the hell did you come back, you ugly freak?"

"Because," Meg whispered, trying to detach herself the pain in her hand. "I need to finish High School."

"Ugh, just drop out, bitch. Nobody wants you here!" Connie sweetly told her, then laughed loudly and turned with a nasty expression on her face. "Right everybody? Shouldn't Meg just drop out?!"

She winced when when every single student instantly turned to look at her with a hostile expression.

"I can't... drop out," she said softly. "You're hurting me... please get off of my hand."

Connie's eye twitched and her smile finally shifted into a hateful expression, wrinkling her pretty face in an ugly way.

"I'm going to continue tormenting you until you leave school, Meg," she hissed, walking right past her with her friends. "I hate the 'I'm a good and proper Little Miss Innocent" act more than your disgusting face. Your family is anything but innocent, and you're just like them. Trash."

Meg waited for a moment, then lifted her hand and looked at her palm, watching as the blood welled up from a place far inside herself,

The cut was actually pretty deep, but not wide enough to be of any real danger, and yet she felt nothing now that Connie was gone

She wondered at that.

Closing her eyes, she hefted her shirt and tore a rip into it, making the blonde stop and turn slightly. Her friends kept going, but all she did was stare out of the corner of her eyes as Meg knelt there on the ground, ripping a long, wide strip out of her pale pink T-shirt all the way around. Connie turned a little bit more, eyeing her exposed stomach with her spiteful blue eyes narrowed until she finished tying the strip of cloth around her hand and lowered her arms. When she rose to her feet, the torn hem of the t-shirt dropped back down to her pockets, obscuring her belly.

Clenching her fist to stop the bleeding, Meg looked around the room to see the glares of thirty six hostile teens drilling holes into her face, but she felt next to nothing as they stared at her with malice.

"Move it, lard ass!" a tall blonde boy snapped, shoving her out of the way and sending her stumbling into a desk. She clutched it with no expression, letting out a long sigh.

Why can't this ever be easy? she wondered.

Straightening back up, she turned to head over to her desk but paused when she found herself staring right into yet another boy's condescending brown eyes. Only, she knew this person.

He was a linebacker for the football team, one of the meanest bullies in her class... and worst of all, the boy who'd lived right down the road from her family's house since she'd been a small child.

Jared Alister.

"Why are you still here, Meg?" he asked in a sardonic baby voice. "I'm beginning to think you like being bullied! Is that it? Are you a masochist? Is that what gets you off? Being abused?"

Meg felt an unexpected lump form in her throat when he dropped the tone and laughed with his friends.

Jared had been picking on her since her second year of middle school, but she'd known him since long before that so she was all too familiar with his tactics and the way he operated. He was a total backstreet kind of guy, the sort of person who skipped school, wore leather biker jackets and wife beaters, and catcalled women on the sidewalk.

But, despite being a total asshole and having such a nasty personality, he was extremely handsome.

With his strong jaw, angular nose, jet black hair, and exotic dark brown eyes, he actually had a very roguish face that might have had potential for big-time modeling if he hadn't been such an asshole.

And somehow, even with that nasty personality of his, he was popular... he was the guy that all the girls wanted to date, the guy that all the other boys wanted to be friends with, and the guy that Connie DiMico herself had a claim to.

After all, it was no secret that the two of them were dating each other. He was one of the hottest boys in school, and a football player, so it was only natural that Connie had pursued him.

"I need to finish my senior year, Jared," she quietly explained, ignoring his scowl. "I have to."

"Don't you feel embarrassed with yourself?" he demanded with a sneer. "It's easy to understand why you get the shit beat out of you... the Griffins are a fucking disgrace to this community. Even after everything that happened with Connie... after everything your family has done to the people around here... you have a lot of fucking nerve to show your ugly face here every single day."

"Sorry," Meg said a little coldly. "I didn't get to choose my parents. Please don't blame me for what they do. I can't stop them."

Everyone in the room instantly turned to look at her with disbelieving eyes, but Jared smirked and merely glanced at a few of his buddies; all four of them began whispering.

"We think you should go," one of the boys snapped, staring at her with narrowed eyes. "We don't like your attitude."

"What...?" Meg asked, feeling a little unnerved when several of them started to converge on her; she started backing up as they advanced. "What are you doing?"

She jumped when her back bumped against the window.

"Aww... isn't that sweet, Meg?" Connie cooed, smirking from her desk as the boys surrounded her. "They're helping you leave!"

"B-but... hey, stop!" Meg cried, flailing when all four of them grabbed her. "Let go of me! RIGHT NOW!"

She gasped when they lifted her into the air.

"Ugh, she's heavy!" one of them muttered. "God damn... she really IS a fat ass!"

"Put me down!" Meg wailed, struggling to get her feet back on the ground. "Let go! What do you think you're doing?!"

"We're helping you leave!" Jared jeered. "Bye bitch!"

With that, all four of them heaved her towards the window at the same time.

Meg's eyes went blank and silence filled her ears, and there was even a moment of pleasant floating where things didn't feel real.

Then she broke through the glass and let out an earsplitting shriek of terror and pain.

She landed roughly on her side and rolled to a stop, glasses flying off her face. For a long moment, she lay still, shoulder stinging badly and body aching from the drop.

"Owww..." she wheezed, shakily pulling herself to her knees and clutching her bleeding arm.

She felt the wind blowing through her dark hair and realized that her beanie had gotten caught on the glass when she'd hit the window; everyone was laughing at her from the classroom and pointing fingers, but she hardly noticed. Squinting at the damage done to her shoulder, she ascertained that it was only a small cut and sighed before lifting her eyes to look at the students pointing fingers.

Brown hair lifted off to the side by the breeze, she gazed up at them with nothing more than a tired expression since all she could see were blurry images without her glasses, anyway.

Meg clutched her arm and held it tightly to staunch the bleeding for a few seconds, then carefully stood up and wobbled her way over to the window, standing up on the tips of her toes to snag her hat.

After putting it back on her head, she stumbled towards the entrance to the school.

It took her roughly ten minutes just to get back to class, and by then, the first warning bell had rung, but when she walked into the room and turned to her move towards desk, she halted because it was no longer where it should be.

She looked around the room in confusion and spotted a few girls glaring at her and snickering with subliminal messages, but she didn't even have the energy to tell them off.

She merely lowered her head and sighed.

Her teacher wasn't back... thankfully.

"Hey, if you're looking for your desk," Connie sweetly called, making her look up. "It should be somewhere around the school."

Meg took a deep breath before she deflated; then, without saying a word, she stumbled out of the room again, jogging lightly as she went down the halls, looking for her desk with tired eyes.

She had a feeling that they'd most likely done something outrageous to it, but she would soon see regardless. After running up a flight of stairs with her hair bouncing around, she found her desk.

It was being stared at by two confused freshmen.

"Who's desk is it?" one of the boys asked. "Is there anything inside with a name?"

"Let's just throw it outside," the other boy replied. "Teachers can take care of it."

"Wait!" Meg called, panting heavily as she skidded to a halt; she looked up at them with calm eyes. "That's... mine."

"No way!" the first boy laughed, sneering at her in surprise. "It belongs to Megan Griffin?"

"The idiot's daughter?" the second boy asked in surprise, glancing at her face with raised eyebrows. "Damn... who would have thought an ugly couple like him and his wife could have a daughter who looks so- "

The first boy smacked a hand against his mouth, face going bone white.

"Yeah, right?!" he laughed, voice coming out high and shrill. "I mean seriously, isn't she an ugly fat ass?"

Meg lowered her eyes, heart squeezing, and picked up her desk before hesitantly befoing away, but when just as she was about to turn and go, she bumped into someone and froze.

Her dark hair spun with her due to its partial confinement as she whirled around, but when she found herself staring into the frigid amber eyes of Mike Pulaski, the very boy who'd once challenged her to a fight in her sophomore year, she froze up like a marble statue.

During that fight, she'd gone somewhere inside her head.

She'd given herself an imagined victory, something outrageous... disgusting... to keep from feeling it. Inside her head, she'd envisioned kissing him to disgust him, and had then imagined popping a zit on his face before lifting her shirt. She had pictured watching him spontaneously combust into a puddle of human remains... and then had imagined everyone cheering for her.

In her head, everything had finally turned around.

But in truth, outside of it, she'd been beaten black and blue by a boy roughly twice her size.

And for weeks after, she had been in pain.

His eyes narrowed and he glared down at her with disgust on his face; she shrank back a little and fearfully averted her eyes, recognizing the look as the one he'd given her on the day she'd been tripped at lunch and had subsequently spilled her tray of food on him.

"Move," he commanded in a low voice. "Before I rearrange that ugly face of yours."

She flinched and hastily shuffled to the side, struggling to keep a grip on her desk and chair despite her shaking arms. She watched as the blonde lumbered inside his classroom, but when she turned to walk away, the freshman who'd covered his friend's mouth tripped her.

Meg let out a surprised cry when she lost her balance, struggling to keep a hold on her desk even though it was a futile attempt.

The muffled boy jumped with large eyes when she landed hard on her stomach and bashed her kneecap on when floor, but she managed to keep a straight face despite her watering eyes even when the first boy started laughing at her.

She didn't even notice it when Mike turned to look back at her through the door.

With shaking limbs and a throbbing knee, Meg picked up her chair and desk, carrying them down the stairs towards her classroom, but by the time she arrived the third bell had already rung.

Everyone looked at her when she limped inside.

The teacher glared daggers from behind his pinched little glasses.

"What are you doing?" he demanded harshly. "Not only are you late, I was just informed that you've vandalized school property! That's a serious code of misconduct."

"I'm sorry," Meg murmured weakly, staring at the man with tired eyes. "I didn't..."

She trailed off.

Her shoulders sagged.

Giving in would require less effort than defending herself.

"Office! Now!" the man snapped. "You should have known better, Miss Griffin."

"Yes, sir," Meg said in a raspy monotone. "Sorry for interrupting."

Turning around, she walked out of the room.

Her hands were shaking, but she made her way down to Principal Sheppard's office as bravely as she could.

She was in trouble.

They thought she'd broken the window, which meant her parents would have to spend money.

Hell would be waiting back home.