Acting Out

Chapter One

I was in a dreamless sleep when I was awoken by the alarm on my phone. “Gold” by Britt Nicole was blaring out of my phone and it was so loud that it caused me to gasp and fall out of the bed. I didn’t feel like getting up so I just laid there. School wasn’t important enough for me to get up.

“Heather, are you up?” my mom said as she walked in my room. She saw me facedown on the floor and stopped at the doorway. “Honey, I know you’re tired but you have to get up. You don’t want to miss your first day of being a Junior do you?” I moaned into the floor. Actually, I really wanted to miss it. I couldn’t stand school. I just always sat in the back of the room. I was never called on and no one ever acknowledged me. It was gonna be a whole new year of being shy and ridiculed and I wasn’t really looking forward to it. Unfortunately, my mom was still trying to get me up. “Okay, you’ve left me with no choice,” My mom suddenly started singing loudly and totally off-key. She sounded like a drowning cat. I groaned again and quickly scrambled up and made my way to the bathroom to get ready.

I quickly brushed my teeth and straightened my hair. I was having a hard time trying to find out what to wear for my first day. I need something that shouts ‘awesome,’ I thought to myself. Unfortunately, my wardrobe only shouted ‘pathetic’ and ‘ugly.’ I finally decided on a flowery printed blouse and jeans. I figured it looked simple enough. Not exactly eye popping, but it would do.

I walked into the kitchen where my mom was making breakfast.

“Heather, do you want some eggs before you go to school?” I gagged in my head. She knew I didn’t like eggs. Never have, never would.

“No, thanks. I’m gonna go ahead and head out,” I grabbed my backpack from the counter.

“Okay, sweetie. Have a fun day,” my mom waved. I closed the door and breathed a sigh of relief. A fun day? Yeah, right. My mom could be way too cheery at times.

As I walked into school, I made my way to my best friend, Michaela or Mickey for short. She wasn’t only my best friend, she was my only friend (well, only gal friend anyway) and she had been for 3 years. Mickey saw me and gave a high pitched squeal.

“Heather, I’ve missed you so much!” she said, giving me a big hug.

“We just saw each other 2 days ago,” I reminded her.

“Exactly! I’ve missed you! How is everything?” she asked.

“Um, good. Just fine,” I swallowed and looked around the room. I could tell she didn’t buy it.

“Okay, Heather. Our new grade resolution is to get you to where you can lie without it actually looking like a lie because honey, you suck at lying,” I knew she was right. I hated lying. It just seemed so wrong, but I could never pull it off. “What’s wrong, Heather?” she asked, concern etched on her face.

“I don’t know, it’s just summer sucked,” I said sheepishly.

“Well, duh. You didn’t do anything. You just sat around the house and read books and bleh.” She made a disgusted grunt. “Did you even do anything fun?”

“Yes, I—“

“Besides going to that concert that I dragged you to,” she interrupted.

“Then, uh, no.”

She sighed. “We got some work to do, my friend,” She dragged me down the hall to our first class.

The first class I had was History. I was lucky to have Michaela in that class with me. We found two seats that were right next to each other and sat down. I was really not looking forward to this class. It wasn’t that I didn’t like the teacher or anything, I just sucked at history. Give me English any day but math, science or history? No thank you.

“Hey, I’m gonna go to the restroom real quick,” Mickey whispered to me.

“It’s only first period,” I reminded her.

“Yeah, but I had a full pot of coffee before I came here and I really gotta go. If Mr. Wilkinson shows up before I get back, can you tell him where I went?”

“Sure.”

“Or don’t. I really don’t care. Bye!” she said as she ran out of the classroom. As much as I hated history, I really wanted Mr. Wilkinson to come in. I didn’t wanna be alone the entire period. Knowing Mickey, if she wanted to, she would just leave school at any time.

“Short,” I heard someone call out behind me. Oh no, I thought to myself silently. I turned around and it was none other than, my crush since 8th grade, Jeff. We had met in science class our 8th grade year and he had made it a goal to harass me and make fun of me every single day of my life. And it also didn’t help that I had a major crush on him as well. He always made fun of my height because I was 16 and only 5 foot 1, but it wasn’t like I could help it. He also made fun of my grades. He was annoying as heck, and yet, I still liked him. Go figure.

“What do you want, Jeff?” I asked him.

“Nothing. I just wanted to call you short,” he said with a huge grin.

“And is there a reason why you picked the seat right behind me?” I asked him.

“Of course. Because I wanted to make fun of you,” he replied, still grinning like a maniac. It really freaked me out how much he always smiled at me. He kinda reminded me of the Cheshire cat.

“Well, could ya not?” I asked him. I wasn’t trying to be polite.

“No,” he replied. “Now, turn around and face the front like the good little girl you are,”

I gave him the death glare. “What do you mean by that?”

“I think the better question is ‘what do I not mean by that?’”

“What the heck is that supposed to mean?” I was really not in the mood for one of his puzzles.

“Um, Heather,” I looked to my right to see who had called my name and saw it was Rebecca. She was the most popular girl in school. I was pretty sure she had had sex with the majority of our grade and then some. She wasn’t really at the top of my list. “I understand you probably don’t get talked to by many people, but could you possibly learn to talk quieter? Some of us have important things to do,” I looked down at her lap and saw she was texting.

“You’re just texting,” Jeff informed her. Thank you, Jeff, I thought to myself.

“Wow. I’m surprised you know what that even means considering how you and Big Mouth over here probably don’t even have anyone that wants to talk to you,” she said with a smug look.

“Okay, first of all, Heather is not a big mouth. In fact, she rarely talks at all so why don’t you pay attention to your own goddamn business and leave us out of it,” Jeff said. I looked back at him and he looked like he was really pissed off. I didn’t think I had ever seen him that angry.

“Ouch, that hurt. But at least you can defend yourself, unlike Heather over here,” she turned to look at me. “You really can’t defend yourself. You’re too shy. You’re lucky even Jeff here talks to you,”

“Stop it, Rebecca!” Jeff yelled.

“I’ll stop. Once Heather here says something for once,” she just kept staring at me. I wanted to say something, but I couldn’t. I was too afraid. I really wanted Mickey to come back, but I knew she probably wouldn’t. I could only stare back, hoping she wouldn’t attack me or something. “Are you deaf?” she yelled in my ear.

“Are you a backpack?” Jeff countered back. “Because something always seems to be inside of you,” the class all oohed at the same time. I was assuming it was a burn because I had no idea what he meant by that. Rebecca’s mouth dropped wide open and she was about to retort when Mr. Wilkinson walked in.

“Sorry, I’m late class; I had an important meeting to attend. Now let’s talk about the syllabus for this year,” I drowned him out. Normally I would pay attention to the syllabus but my mind wasn’t on World War II. It was on Jeff and how he had stood up for me when no one else would. I smiled to myself. This might turn out to be a good year after all.