bullying the bullies | aspir | ✓

05 | join

05

j o i n

I bite back a sob, and instead hit my head back on the wall behind me. This is entirely my fault. I shouldn't have taken out the album of photographs.

I let out a sigh, before my finger strokes the photo. It's a picture of a thirteen year old me, standing next to a fourteen year old Jeremy. It was taken at the park, by Jeremy's mother, back when we were friends. Or at least that's what everyone thought we were, including Jeremy himself. It was only myself who knew how deeply and irrevocably in love I was with him.

I scrutinize the picture thoroughly, noticing how my shoulder was brushing his. I still remember the feeling I felt when I came into contact with him, and how happy I was that day.

My chest clenches together painfully as I think about how everything has changed between us. A major part of me still hates him for what he did, but another part of me always wishes that somehow we could go back to being just friends at least. After all, they do say that first love is the most painful and the most heart breaking.

I stare into the ceiling as my mind reels back to the day when everything began to go downhill. He was half-heartedly seated on my bed, and the ridge in our friendship had started to deepen the moment we grew up. When he turned fifteen, he joined the football team, and subsequently his position on the social ladder began to rise.

That's how it worked. People of the popular group seldom spoke to the other people. I was doing everything in my power to keep our friendship striving, to keep it going, but the sad truth was, Jeremy didn't give a fuck about our friendship anymore.

So there I was that day, and as a last straw, I asked him to go to prom with me. Obviously I thought he would give in, seeing as we were friends right from when we were little, but he laughed at my face. He then became angry and arrogantly asked me how I had the audacity to ask him to prom, citing that he had throngs of cheerleaders waiting to go with him him.

It broke me. Literally. It broke me to see him become one of those people that I always wished he wouldn't be.

And the next day in school was when all hell broke loose. The story was blown into rather large proportions, everyone looked at me in a a degrading manner and Mikalea's squad had fixed me as their main target.

Why?

Because I asked out a guy that I was in love with to prom. Irregardless of the fact that we were in different social circles, I faced hell in school, just for asking out a guy to prom.

I shut the photo-album, before angry tears make their way down my cheek.

I've always known about the bullying that was going on in our school. I've seen people getting bullied but I seldom ever helped anyone because they always had someone with them. Always. They were never alone and they never had to fight a lone battle. And plus, I had my own battles to fight by myself.

But then Liam came along and now he's successfully blurred the lines of my non-helping policy. We're both lone fighters, and the best thing to do in such situations is to team up.

XxX XxX XxX XxX

"Hey," I say with a smile as I walk up to Liam.

He immediately drops the book that he just took out of his locker in fear, but after realizing its me, he relaxes.

I bend down and pick up the book.

"Thanks," he says with a smile as he plucks the note from me.