Dark Cloud

1. Untouchable

Everything was bright and new, colours blossoming like the flowers peaking out from the long grass. The school loomed ahead of me, a depressing beige and red brick monstrosity. Bikes lined the entrance with students completing complex circuits to get to the main path. The grey stairs made the school entrance all the more intimidating while making it a physical effort to enter. Angry teachers and dutiful students climbed the mountainous stairs just as the bell started to ring. Suddenly a collective and swift change in movement happened and students sprinted in action to make it in time while the teachers tried to barricade them. Almost as if they wanted the students too fail. Running up the stairs proved to be a mistake and three separate people almost broke their kneecaps after their inevitable trip on the giant sized stairs.

The reception was filled with real barricades preventing any unauthorised individual from entering without a card. Forget that card, then a page waited for you. Why are you late? Did you lose your card? Almost as if they were trying to dig in how much of a failure you were. Make it through the barricades with your card, then wait for the human block with her arms spread out wide if you were so much as a second late. In fact, people on time were blocked from entering the rest of the school. The human block loved late slips, her blocking nature connecting with the blocky shape of the slip. The entrance to the school was a whole ordeal. People everywhere, staring at you, judging you. I could tell that they were all looking at me with every mistake showing clearly across my entire body. The human block sneered looking at me, the receptionists laughed, the students avoided me. How could I blame them, I felt the same looking at myself.

The plaza stood like a cattle-cage with everyone huddled in crowds of people they already know. I stood there still, leaning against the nearest object. Everyone was untouchable, who knows what they were talking about. Probably me and how stupid I looked. The stupid outfit I choose to wear that day. My stupid face, my stupid body and my stupid self. All so stupid. I saw her glance at me and thoughts rushed in. She turned back to her friends. Yes, it was definitely about me. There was no doubt, there was only panic. She walked towards me and there was the normal feeling of anxiousness kicking in. What was she going to say? I looked horrible? My appearance disgusted her? I was the living embodiment of a troll? All things I had told myself yet nothing I wanted other people to say.

"Hi!"

"...Hi?" My pure fear was obvious. She took a fraction of a step back but I could still tell. Clearly she saw me up close and wanted to stay as far away from me as possible.

"Hi, I'm Avery! I saw we had similar names. I think you're in my class." She said this with no disgust in her voice. I was perplexed. She had come to taunt me. She had come to pin me down and fling me open, exposing all my insecurities with only her words. But she was kind, smiling at me while looking slightly at the floor.

"Oh yeah, we do. I'll see you in class then." I was such an idiot, cutting the conversation instantly and then wondering why I was always alone.

She smiled and left. I would probably never see her again. Her blond hair was shoulder length, her eyes like the ocean. She had all the features I did yet somehow mine were all muddled, as if they took her and took away everything that made her beautiful. Then there was me leftover, looking nothing like her. She was a glimpse of what I wished I saw when I looked in the mirror. And then she walked away.

The cattle started to spread out and escape to their respective pens. How the students ran at the sound of the bell. Such a perplexing phenomenon. A bell that you feared. A sound designed to go off that terrified everybody. What was the use? But what was the point of thinking that. My brain seemed to jump to the most useless conclusions all by itself. What did it matter? A bell was a bell and it was telling us to all make a move on.

I caught the eye of another student. Like Avery but with a complete quietness radiating off of her. Slightly lanky, clearly disliked the loudness the swarms of students brought. She looked almost bored, as if there were better things for her to do then just stand there. She too ran off to class, surprising me. She seemed like an individual. I wanted to know more but I also had class.

I was the same as everyone else, no different. I too had to follow the herd and meet people that I would have the displeasure of knowing for the next number of years. Although I liked others, they terrified me. Their judgemental eyes always followed me and I knew their laughs were directed at me. I knew this since a young age. I was different. Yet I never knew why until I was older. But now I knew it was all due to my face and body and entire appearance.I hated every aspect of it with a burning passion. It consumed all of my thoughts. I wished that I would change but I never did. I was always the same half troll looking thing that I had always been.

School would be difficult, I knew even on the first day. But I was optimistic. The sky was a beautiful mixture of white fluffy clouds and a happy sun almost dancing as it gave life to all around. But right behind was a dark cloud and I knew that something was about to happen.