Memories Bequeathed

Chapter 4

"There's a chip on your shoulder girl
And by God it'll make you fall
If you let it take a part of your soul" - Sister, Mumford and Sons

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Sammy Clement, this is for you. I hated you for as long as I can remember. I actually hated you way before anything happened between us. I never liked you, you just amplified every fiber of my hatred and also added fear. You added disgust. You subtracted the respect I automatically have for elders.

For years after you laid your hand on me, I avoided you. I ran. I hid. I hated you. I despised you.

But now... Now I'm speaking up. Now I am coming out from my hiding spot and telling what kind of disgusting, ugly little troll you are. I hope you suffer.

Let me go back a few paces. As a small child, I always wanted more time with my friends. However, on the weekends, my family went to synagogue. I was always afraid to go to the youth program where my friends were.

But, Tina, my "friend", refused to leave the program even for one fucking day. We had known each other forever... since pre-nursery. Tina had always been by my side. But never did she once stand up for me. Not once.

I was nothing more than a playmate. A person to chit-chat with during lunch time. A person to throw a football with during recess. I person to waste time with... not a person to spend time with.

But I needed a friend. I thought she was it. I thought she was my friend.

Oh, what a fool I was.

Anyway, in the 5th grade, when I finally got the guts to join and go to the group, there was trouble. The counselors didn't like me and my "friend" did not want to hang out with me. Goody.

But, I didn't give up. I never do... easily.

I tried to befriend the other girls... Esther commanded them not to talk to me.

I tried to talk to Tina... She ignored me. She blocked me out. She made me feel like shit. She made me feel invisible... even worse than that. In his novel Everyday, David Levithan says "It would be too easy to say that I feel invisible. Instead, I feel painfully visible, and entirely ignored". That's how I felt.

That is how I felt most of my life. Most of my life post seventh grade.

But Tina made me feel like that for the first time. She made me feel helpless and insane and crushed. I was exasperated and angry and depressed.

So I tried to ignore her. I attempted to force my eyes to skip over her. It was hard. During the week, she would hang out with me, but on our free time when she wasn't forced to be with me, she wanted nothing to do with me. So, I was to stay away. For my own good, I guess.

Instead of trying to impossibly make friends and be entirely ignored, I decided to try to hang out with the counselors who were only about three or four years older. I guess I wasn't too smart then.

Lena Osbern and Sammy Clement. From the outside, they seemed friendly enough. They seemed like they could befriend the girl with no friends... like they could just have pity and say a couple of words to brighter a girl's day. But, I suppose that you can't befriend the friendless girl, because then she wouldn't be friendless anymore. What would she be when the only title people have given her is revoked? Nothing. Unknown.

Unfortunately, people are afraid of the unknown. They create lies and fabricate stories and keep terrors that shouldn't be in place in order to fill in the void of unknown knowledge in this world. So, my friendlessness was a terror and they didn't know who I was without it. They didn't want to know. They couldn't know so they made it impossible for me to shed that title.

Sure, I was nice to Lena and Sammy. I was at their intellectual level. I read the same books as them. I watched the same shows. We could have been perfect friends. But I cannot have friends. According to human law, anyway. So, they too pushed me away. They excluded me in games. They told me to keep score or sit in the corner and watch. They put me down.

"Go sit in the corner where you belong," they would tell me. Where I fucking belong! Did I bring these problems on myself? That's the way it seemed although I cannot possibly fathom how I could have asked for this.

I tried to ask them. What else could I have done? I didn't know...

I couldn't have known.

They were insane. I'm not sure how else to explain it.

I was lost.

I felt alone.

I needed to know why they were doing it.

So I approached them.

Sammy and Lena.

Lena and Sammy.

No matter how I think of them, I feel nauseous every time.

Little ol' me approached them to ask why the older girls, counselors who should have been taking care of me, were bullying me themselves. My little mind couldn't understand it, couldn't comprehend any aspect of it.

I walked up to them, asking why they, too, left me out. But that only seemed to anger the beasts. It was as if smoke blew from their nostrils and their eyes filled with rage.

It all happened so fast I'm not exactly what occurred.

One second I was asking why they hated me... then Lena.. well, Lena had me pinned to the wall, holding me there with her body while she pinned my arms behind my back, twisting them - twisting my skin and muscle in an endless spiral of pain. Sammy walked around me from the other side and grabbed at my throat, squeezing. I remember being scared. I remember thinking that I was going to die. I remember looking around the room for help while I squirmed, attempting to break free from their grasps while the air escaped my lungs and I felt my consciousness begin to slip away. I remember making eye contact with Tina as she walked out of the room.

I remember her eyes, cold and uncaring, as she fled to escape trouble.

I remember hoping with my whole heart that maybe, just maybe, she was getting help.

I remember Lena and Sammy realizing what they had done and running from the room.

But even as they left I still saw Tina's eyes... always hers, haunting me, abandoning me all over again.

I saw them until I blacked out, but even then they were still watching me, leaving me, never caring for me.

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Author's Note:

1,111 words! So Cool! What do you guys think? 

Please comment and vote. It would be greatly appreciated.

- NerdilyNerdy