Sidewalk Chalk (Chapter Two)

My stomach’s fluttering when I walk into that school. Still, I don’t think I’m as nervous as I was freshman year, but when I notice my shaking hands, that assumption is deemed debatable.

Maybe I’d be comforted if I had some friends to meet up with somewhere.
I wonder what my friends would be like, if they’d fit the high school group archetypes.
For it to be a balanced group of misfits, we’d need a nerd, a freak, a burnout, a queer kid just to provide supposedly correct LGTBQA representation, and then whatever the hell category I fit into.

I wonder how other people look at me quite often. Whether I’m a freak, or a nerd, or that one kid that you can’t ever make heads or tails of. There’s kids that I think about some nights, contemplating what they’re doing at the moment and trying to analyze their average behavior. I can’t help but question whether I’m on anybody’s mind outside of school.

The worst thing you can be in high school is forgettable. This may sound like a written stunt for adolescent angst or whatever, but if you think about it, it’s absolutely true. You’d rather be the kid that threatened a teacher freshman year than that one girl whose name no one can recall. You’d opt to be the school joke than be old whathisname. You’d prefer to be that one kid every few grades who dies than be invisible, and that’s when you know something’s not right.

I have high hopes for an easy day, but the first day of school, the supposedly seamless introduction, goes worse than any other day could’ve gone. After my fifth period of listening to class rules, I’m about ready to bite my own arms off, mostly out of boredom.

Lunch is my 27 minute break from the mundane repetition, but even then, it’s not an ideal one. I’m not surprised when no one offers me a spot to sit, no matter how much I stand around looking lost. I finally take my seat at a vacant back table, tossing my bag on top.

I’m not hurt or even embarrassed that I spend the entire period at my own table, just mildly disgruntled that not a single kid had thought to sit by me.

I can’t help but worry if the rumors are starting again. Except these rumors may sound just like any other lie that was blown out of proportion by some lightweight who’d had too much to drink, but they’re so much more than that.

Perhaps I’m not even allowed to call them rumors, because the majority of tales being swapped about me at North Ridge High are the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.