Awkward

~FRIDAYS /PART 1/~

-EPISODE 8.

"Bro, listen. There is nobody who has never failed at what they want to be in the process of becoming who they are."

"The failure is a moment. It's happened. Time happens. What is ahead of you is a possibility of failure, but equally of success if you stand up one more time."

"But if you think you'll be happy, then give up. It's a choice. Some people give up and they seem happy. But just know that to make your failure permanent, to give up, is a choice. It's not a destiny. You aren't destined for failure; you choose to stop trying.
And around your death bed will be the ghosts of your unfulfilled potential. On that day, will you be happy with the choice you made?"

~/•/
now.

I called Kavi last night. I told him I wasn't chosen for the team and how I felt. That was what he said. I told him that I just feel stuck. I said I just feel like I won't ever be good enough. I feel like I'm wasting my time. I feel like I'm behind everyone else. I feel like the team list was my sign to just 'quit', but talking to him made me think, 'then what?'

When I quit, I still won't be free. I'll be free from disappointment, yeah. But I'll be shackled to a reality of an undesired mediocrity and it's a whole new disappointment when I realise that I wish I didn't give up... but it's too late to turn back time.

In short, if I don't get used to getting my butt kicked, I'll live my life too afraid to live.

So next time, Mr Anderson.

I finished the test early so I'm staring through the water in my bottle when the last period ends. The team went to Toddington this morning and it is a FRIDAY.

My physics class was missing a few faces cause they left for the tournament but otherwise, most of us were here for the 'mini-exam'.

Mr Brown lifts my paper off the desk and disappears into the backroom office with everyone's papers pressed to his collar.
"Class dismissed."

Chairs screech as everyone leaves, chatting their way outside.
I stay, watching Mr Brown go, staring at my bottle, waiting for the class to empty and before I know it, all is tranquil. It's just me, the tables and the gentle sunlight through the windows.

I flick my bottle off the desk and prepare to head out; but then my eyes quick-skim to the other one who stayed.

Her face is buried in her desk like she left the radioactivity question blank - to which the simple answer was: 'the background radiation is coming from the surrounding objects. These could be the rocks, the sun, the person and it is fluctuating because—' well, it was a whole paragraph and I know I've gotten four marks or more, definitely.

"Tough test, huh?" I joke, to no response. "You look real POOPED, man."

She doesn't look up, speaking into the desk when she says, "Get lost, Turner."

"Oh, come on, Julianna. I was joking," I say, spinning on my heels and strutting to her desk in teacher-like formality. "What's got you so down on this very fine afternoon?"

"Nothing. You wouldn't care anyway." Her voice sounds muffled and throaty and she's still hiding her face, but I swear I see her cheeks lift for the moment she says it. Her bare elbows rest out just as wide as the desk, almost giving the impression that she just fell asleep.

Is it disrespectful to leave now?

She doesn't see me walk away.

I reach the table closest to the door and stand at the class door, but then I am compelled to turn around and tow a chair back to her desk. She feels it when I sit opposite her because she kicks me when our knees knock under the desk.
"I'll be the judge of that," I say. "Until proven guilty, assume you have a friend in me."

'In exploring the possibility of what happened if I stayed, I have given up the possibility of knowing what would have happened if I left.'

I could be unknowingly saving a life, or knowingly wasting my own.

Damn it, that sounds like a Kavi sort of thought.

"Don't you think I already have friends?" She lifts her head and I feel dread. I feel hostility. I feel just how I felt the time she ripped Ella's card. This is exactly how it was set up and she looked just like this. It's the one thing that's patterned.
I shouldn't have stayed. If the shoe was on the other foot, she probably wouldn't have even stuck around to ask.

Her eyes are glossy around the edges but she's not crying, not yet - only a rage in stormy slumber.

"No, you do have friends and I've seen them, several times, but I meant.. friends to help.. right now, because.. yeah." Wow, you sound just like Mikaela. "Sorry if I sound over-pitiful," I add.

At that, she laughs, but it's short and more out of contempt than anything.
"I thought that too," she sighs, and she sinks back into the face of the table.

"Thought what? Pitiful?" I ask.

"No, I thought you could help. I- that's why I was nice, anyway."

I don't think I heard that right.
"You know, Julianna, I can't hear you if you're talking to the desk," I say.

Raising her head but evading my eyes, she repeats, "I said that's what I thought and that's why I was nice, but it didn't work and it was a waste of time because it was stuck from the start - what with me shooting my own foot every so often and in fact, from the beginning anyway but—" She sighs and pulls her hair over her eyes, stretching dark sheets of it melt-straight before letting it spring back to shape. "But some days I wavered between leaving the mess I made and the thought that if I worked to become friends with you, then by some divine... spectacle, one day you would magically say 'Hey Julianna, how's your life going?' and I would tell you and that would just," she laughs, but it's flat. "That would just somehow end in you telling me something - anything - that would help me get Alastair to talk to, only, me... again."

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"what?"

Mr Brown's voice cracks from the backroom, "Who's there?" His footsteps start pounding back this way.

I half-lift myself off the seat, but before I go-
"Julianna... did you say Alastai— WhAT are you saying?"

She plants her face into the desk like she doesn't care about the trouble at all, joylessly sighing before she repeats it, like a mindless android built with only a single line of code, "But it didn't work."

The office door whips open.

|• | •|

to be continued.