The Day I Stopped Hating Myself

Chapter 5- The Bad Feeling

The next week passes by incredibly fast. I get closer to Sam, Lisa and Scott, and I even warm up to Stella. Maja and I have philosophical discussions every afternoon in the metro while Sam is watching us, smiling, and I didn't see Rachid and Amid during the whole week. That doesn't have to mean anything, though. Paris is a big city, and they might still be here, somewhere, planning their next cruel, inhuman act.

Every time I think about them, my stomach starts to boil with burning anxiety, destroying me from the inside, and that's why I try to distract myself from my own scary mind as much as possible. Sometimes it works, and I end up texting Lisa about a meme and watching YouTube videos, sometimes it doesn't work and I spend hours in my bed, crying, barely being able to move.

Today is Thursday, and we're going on a field trip with my Art class. Lisa and Sam are sitting next to me on the bus on our way to the museum, but once we arrive, Lisa ditches us for some other kids and leaves Sam and me alone, which doesn't really bother me.

"Is she always like that?" I ask Sam while we're strolling around in the gallery.

"Who?" Sam asks, his eyes focused on a very colorful painting by Keith Haring.

"Lisa," I go on, "She knows everybody, she's friends with everybody. Doesn't it get annoying after a while? That she has like 50000 other friends besides you?"

Sam shrugs and looks at me. "As long as she's a good friend, I don't mind."

"It kind of makes me feel like no friendship really matters to her," I mumble. "Since she has so many."

He chuckles, caressing my cheek with his thumb. His eyes are in a soft green today. "Roxane, Lisa is a very special girl. A prodigy. She excels at everything, and she always needs more, or else her brain gets bored. That doesn't mean she doesn't care about us." Then, he adds quietly: "You never know how another person's brain works, so don't even think for a second that you do. The mind, Roxane, is humanity's biggest mystery, and it will never be solved."

I think for a while about what he's saying before I answer: "But isn't that the beauty in humans? Our unsolvable minds?"

"Yes, it is." Sam looks like he wants to kiss me, his gaze burning, so I look away and pretend to be interested in the paintings.

I'm in a weird mood; I have this horrible feeling in my stomach, this horrible feeling telling me that something bad is about to happen. I know it doesn't make any sense: I'm in a museum with my friends, I'm safe, and still, I feel like the world is going to explode, and I'm kind of happy when we get out of the museum, because suddenly it seemed to become hotter and tighter in the rooms inside, like the walls were moving towards me and suffocating me.

Lisa is waiting for us at the exit of the museum, scrolling down Instagram and looking at us with an eye roll once we join her. "Took you long enough. All of the others went outside to find something to eat before the drive back to school. What did you do in there? Did you get inspired by one of the drawings and decided to eat each other's faces?"

She snickers at her own comment while my whole face starts burning. I'm pretty sure I've never resembled a tomato this much.

Sam, on the other hand, seems unfazed by Lisa and simply responds: "We didn't ask you to wait for us, you know."

She just shrugs. "And thinking about it, I shouldn't have, since third wheeling isn't exactly my favorite hobby." She winks at me, and my face becomes even more heated. My dear friend really needs to stop making all of these allusions.

"But I remembered that your dad used to work here and therefore you know this part of the city better than anyone else, so I decided to trust you with choosing where I shall eat my lunch today."