Standing Still

Chapter 5: The Greater Good is Overrated

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This, my friends, up in the lovely sidebar, is Aiden Wilder. Gorgeous, is he not?

Except there's this thing, and it's a small thing, but it bugs me. So I have a very specific image in my mind of all my characters; finding someone to play them is hard. Drew Roy (Aiden) is how I picture Aiden's face exactly. But... Drew has brown eyes. Aiden has blue. This is an important trait of Aiden's (well, something I mention a lot and don't really want to take the time to change. Also, Aiden has blue eyes.) and so we can just pretend, right? Good.

Hope you like this chapter. We're gonna see Aiden's personality and charm, so enjoy that 😉

Also, the song for this is so perfect! Even has her name!

Okay, go read!

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My mother was big on volunteering.

So big on it, in fact, that she forced her innocent, bystander-ly children to partake.

She told us that apparently, when she was in high school she used to volunteer all the time, and it made her a 'better person.' Tending to the needs of the homeless, organizing food drives, and helping out at the animal shelter were all apparently crucial in building character. "What about pay?" my brother asked, but pay, was, in my mother's opinion, absurd. "Pay?" she had scoffed, "No, experience!" She said she was more in touch with people, the earth, the greater good because of it.

She was insistent.

I participated only to appease my mother, because in my opinion, the earth and I were already close enough. But she was so enthusiastic, and I hardly had the capability of turning anyone down, much less my mother. And it was for the greater good, after all, so I suppose there were worse things I could be doing.

Although, walking to school early Sunday afternoon, stepping into the hallways and smelling the reek of teenage bodily odors, - no matter how hard those janitors worked, I swear, it was irremovable - and the distinct aroma of decaying pizza and lemony-scented window cleaner, it seemed like maybe, this type of activity fell on the list of Terrible Ways to Spend Your Weekend. Being at school on one of your only days of freedom certainly ranked in the top five, at least.

I pushed the strap of my bag up my shoulder as I walked down the hallway to the cafeteria, listening to the squeak of my sneakers against the faux marble floors as I padded on. I pushed open the thick, heavy doors with both hands, putting all my weight into it. Mrs. Clementine was standing at the front of the room, reading over a piece of paper in her hand, glancing up every few seconds to catch the time on the clock as if it were somehow going to drastically change in that short amount of time.

"Hi," I said, sliding onto the bench in the center of the cafeteria. This was the holy table. The shrine of all shrines. The source and origin of the status-quo.

Aka: The popular table. And this was the only time I would ever sit at it, so I relished in the way the sunlight beamed through the window at the perfect angle, enough to feel the warmth, but not so powerful so as to make you sweaty and your pores all greasy and gross, the way this bench didn't sag underneath your bottom or wasn't lopsided, and the way the position of this table - that being at the center of the room - made you actually feel like the center.

It was an unspoken rule that the cool, charming, and overwhelmingly gorgeous people sat here, and that the geeky, awkward, and slightly-pimpled faced ones did not, and now, it was obviously evident to me as to why. I felt like I didn't belong, even if there was no one else here yet, no one to tell me to leave, and I had every right to be here when the populars weren't, but still... It wasn't my place. I didn't move, though, because a few others girls had now come in and slid in next to me and I didn't want to seem rude, so I stayed. I could practially feel the ostracism screaming out at me.