Sincerely, Red

Chapter Seven

Dear Liv,

Lots of people were talking about you at school today.

They hadn't really had a chance to before, you see. Everyone was always getting ready for exams or finishing coursework or rehearsing for the school play. Since that's basically gone and we can all relax (for at least a week), people are desperately clinging on to every piece of gossip they can get.

It's in human nature, after all.

I think in the last letter, I told you about the students in our school and how we don't have cliques. Nothing's changed there, but I forgot to mention that we do have distinctive lines between good, bad and under-the-radar people.

Let's start with the good ones.

These people generally break up fights, lend you a pencil in class, stop bullying and make at least one person laugh each day (even if it's unintentional). You can find them practically everywhere: in the library, the art department, the basketball and tennis courts, even in the lunch hall.

I guess, without even knowing it, we as a bunch of students depend on them more than they'll ever understand. Sometimes, we even admit it to ourselves, but only in our minds.

The other thing is thought that these people are nice, almost too nice in fact. It makes the rest of us feel inferior and awful, so to make it better we make them feel awful instead, until they're as bitter and as twisted as us. It's sick if you think about it, because our jealousy of people runs so deep that we're willing to sabotage the goodness they carry.

This leads me to the under-the-radar people.

Sometimes, the good people (having been broken) become lost and fall further down until they're almost undetectable.

You mostly find them in the quiet places like the library, because the under-the-radar people are generally silent. They don't like talking in front of others because they're more conscious of the surroundings and people than we are. They stand and see a simplified form of threads interconnecting everybody in the class, with Bitterness and Misery urging people to make wrong decisions. They see the worst parts of human nature, and it scares them so much that they don't like to talk. In other words, they don't like to make it real, so they just don't.

It's this that causes their names to slip off the minds of ordinary people, people that they come across every day. And none of them complain, because it's what they want, what they need.

So strong is this fear of interacting that when it comes to gossiping and fighting, they hide away in their protective bubbles and don't come out until it's over.

If you do come back, try to stay with the under-the-radar people because they're some of the kindest and wisest people you'll ever meet. It'll probably be scary as heck though.

Sincerely-

Sorry, I almost forgot the bad people.

They're what I was talking about when I described the worst parts of human nature. They don't like to create small lies that nobody will ever care about. They like twisting everything, until it meets what they want, so they feel superior and important and feared. They like to create stories that are manipulative and damaging, just to waste time because it's sickeningly fun.

I think I'd go as far as to call them Damage in its human form.

The bad people are the ones who are talking about you right now, Liv. It's stupid words like 'murder' and 'tragic' and 'blame' that's running in our school halls. Later on, the 'pack' will turn to specifics and somehow you'll be in the middle of an effortlessly spun lie.