A Flower Speaks A Thousand Words

Wisteria

CHAPTER 2 - Wisteria

You won't, but I will. Five simple words. Words that were haunting her for three days now. Laura was sitting on the bus that would bring them back home. She was staring out the window as she watched the landscape fly by. The music in her ears drained out most of the noises her classmates made but it was far from everything. She could still hear the guys in the back of the bus burst out in laughter every once in a while. She was certain she was the cause of their amusement at least once.
The bullying had only been worse after she met the beautiful young woman. The guys had seen her talking to the lone stranger by the tree and had teased her for it. Then when said stranger confronted them in the bar, they decided to work it out on her because she was the closest thing they had to a punching bag. No literal punches were thrown, but the teasing and laughing never stopped from that point on. The following two days in Paris were hell. They got almost everyone involved. The entire year of students was either laughing with Jason and his 'gang', or avoiding her because they didn't want any trouble. The only three friends she had left were at home because they're a year older, and she was here on the bus from Paris to Styria, all alone.

She let her hand fall to the anchor necklace. She was happy with it because it reminded her how there were still good people out there. People that had gone through this before and had made it perfectly well once they were out of high school. People that were kind and accepting. People that didn't care about sexual orientation. People like that beautiful stranger. She still can't believe that she didn't ask for her name sooner. Now she was stuck with the description 'beautiful stranger' and that just didn't fit anymore. The stranger part. The part about her being stunning still fit.

From the back of the bus, a burst of laughter disturbed her thoughts. She shook her head as she heard her name once again but decided to ignore them. They were bullies, not good for anything but pain in her life. God, when was she getting out of this god forsaken place?

Laura reached into her bag and grabbed her notebook and pen. She kept a diary but since she didn't want to take her diary from home – in case Jason or one of this boys snatched it – she made a notebook just for her trip to Paris. She wrote down all sorts of stuff. She described how she felt standing in places like place de la Concorde where Marie-Antoinette was beheaded along with her husband Louis XVI, or how she felt when she stood on top on the Eiffel Tower. But she also wrote down her encounter with the still nameless young woman. She made sure to make it as detailed as possible because she didn't want to forget anything about it. And with that encounter, came the reaction of the boys. She wrote about how they still called her names. How Jason had whispered in her ear that he'd like to see her kiss her girlfriend for his amusement. How he wished he could change her mind about liking girls because he was oh so good in bed. In that moment, she'd been terrified because he towered over her. Now she simply rolled her eyes at him. What was it with these kind of jerks?
This is exactly why she liked to write. It helped her with her feelings. She could pour them all down on paper and no one would find out. Besides, it was good practice for later. An aspiring journalist couldn't practice enough, right? Even though it weren't news topics she was covering, all bits helped.

One of her favorite songs started playing on her iPod and she put her notebook away on the seat next to her. She liked to mouth the words as she enjoyed the melody carrying her away from her surroundings. She wouldn't want to be caught dead actually singing – not here, not now – but without making any sound, she could still test her memory on how well she kept remembering the song. She knew it by heart but she never got enough of it.

When she lifted her head from against the window on her right, she got pulled back to reality. In the silence between songs, she heard familiar words being read out loud. She glanced at the seat next to her to find her notebook gone. She snapped her head towards the back and watched in horror as Jason read from the pages she'd just filled with words as his gang laughed.