Young Writers Society

Be forewarned- some of the sentences are long, and I used a lot of paretheses. The grammar is as if the narrator was speaking, not writing. I expect you to be brutal, and brutally honest.

You know in the movies, or cheesy teen novels, when the girl (it’s always the girl), screws up her life royally (that phrase brings to mind a certain series that should have stopped ten books earlier) and “falls in love” with the wrong guy, but in the end, the right guy, the guy that has been there the whole time, secretly in love with her and ever-so-supportive of her many, many screw-ups, saves her ass and they live happily ever after (or at least until prom)? That’s my life- except he didn’t save my ass, and while I was busy reconciling with my friends, he was getting over me- and falling in love with her. So now, I’ve gotta watch them suck face at lunch every day, and act happy. I can’t tell anybody about it, because they won’t understand. They’ll say that it was my fault. It is. I know that. How does telling me that help me? I see what I did wrong, now I want to fix it. But it’s easier said than done.

What did I do to fall from grace? It’s cliché, but don’t laugh- I got sucked in by the popular crowd. The queen bee grew tired of her new pet/toy/minion, and the Crowd spit me back out. And he stuck by me the entire time. Who does that? I was a bitch, and he was there. Is here.

When I told my plan to Angela, she laughed. And then she swore hard enough that if her parents had walked in that moment, she would be worse than dead. If that makes no sense, I should mention she was drinking school milk at the time.

“You’re kidding,” she said when she had gotten all the milk out of her nose. “This is reverse déjà vu. All those years he wanted you, and you saw him as a brother. Now you want him? My life has come to a complete circle. That’s the meaning of life right there, folks.” She put her hands up as if she was pleading to a higher authority.

“Shush. They’re coming this way.” My group is basically seven people- me, Angela, Sean, Gabby, Derek, him, and her. This year, by sheer luck, in an act of nature that never happens in real life, a record, never to be repeated, we all have the same lunch. Yeah, we have it seventh period, so it’s so late the hydrochloric acid in our stomachs has worn through the mucus and is tearing at the lining, giving us ulcers (I’m sorry, I can’t help it, I had health last period), but we have it together for the first time in years. Angie and I have our sixth periods close, while everyone else is across the universe, so we hit the table first. I had hoped to talk about the plan in detail, but that was thwarted. I’d have to wait until later.

My friends are an obnoxious group, the kind that doesn’t really care what you think. We have each other, what need have we for anything else? That’s what made the betrayal even worse. I left without notice- I wasn’t a drifter who shuts the door quietly after a long time; so long, we don’t hear it close. I was a slammer- quick and anything but painless. They filled my spot with her. Now I want it back. You can’t fit seven at this table.