Laughter Lines

1.6 | the girl

the girl

as told by char

•

You did not ride the bus home that day. I sat with my two friends like I had during the morning, but this time I did think about you, and I kind of wish that I hadn't. I needed to get over the fact that you were just some other guy who just so happened to be riding the same bus and smiled to be friendly, or something of the sort. Yet, as we traveled down the bumpy backroads to my house, I wondered why you hadn't rode or who brought you home or how you got home.

The bus driver let me off at my long dusty driveway and I walked towards my house humming the song 'The Girl' by City and Colour, because it always made me incredibly sad and incredibly happy at the same time. It was a nice feeling, I suppose, being in the middle. It was like floating in thin air and you didn't know where you were going or what to think. Usually I listened to it when I was home alone so that I could dance around my kitchen in a dress like I was having the time of my life, but while doing so I would be crying so hard and so loud that by the end I would be shaking. If anyone saw me doing that, I would be probably sent to the hospital. They'd think I was mentally ill. And maybe I was. I was just confused about if I enjoyed living or not.

When I got inside, my parents were sitting at the table talking about politics. I did not enjoy listening to their conversations because they were always about politics. I didn't know what they were saying half of the time. It bothered me.

They did not notice that I came in so I just slid off my near-empty backpack and hung it on the staircase banister and bounded up the carpeted stairs attached to it. My house was fancy and spotless and looked more like a British castle than an American house out in the middle of the woods, which made me feel completely out of place living here. We used to live in a Victorian in a development on the East Coast, which was completely normal over there, but our home here in the Midwest was so peculiar that I wanted to crawl under a rock anytime someone mentioned it. My friends on the school bus asked about it but I changed the subject right away, and they did not ask again. Maybe I am just overthinking things. I tend to do that a lot.

I walked into my larger-than-need-be bedroom and glanced at my desk, realizing I had left my cell phone here instead of bringing it to school like I should have. I clicked it on and saw I had no text messages. I picked it up and sat on my bed and opened up my multiple social networking apps, in which I had no messages or likes or comments or anything.

Of course not. No one wanted to talk to me.