The Child That Never Was (NaNoWriMo 2014)

Chapter Two

Chapter Two

One morning before school, I woke up sweating.  I had kicked off all of my blankets, and I laid on my bed in just a skimpy, loose black dress, and my hair pulled together in a messy bun.  I looked like a mess, and I felt like one, too.  I had dreamt about how Langer had kissed me, and how my reputation had been killed.  It was then that I realized that I hadn't drawn in over a month, and that I missed it.  But at this point, I didn't even care.  I had no one to turn to, and drawing my weird pictures suddenly felt like a waste of my time.

I walked downstairs to the kitchen and grabbed some cereal for breakfast.  Lucky Charms seemed too fake and happy, nowadays with the colors and the shapes.  I mean, are you kidding me?  My little sister, who was in seventh grade, was sitting at the table chatting with her friend on the phone.  She had this head full of blonde curls, these huge blue eyes, and a pink tank top with a huge bow hanging off the neckline near the shoulder.  Lindsey thought she was all that, but what she needed to realize was that she was living in real life, not some dream land.

As I ate the stale cereal, I felt like a huge waste of space, dressed as if I had just come back from the dead.  However, this was the new and improved Mikayla Brookes, and nobody could take this from me now.  This feeling of nothingness absorbed me whole without a way to escape, and this was how I should be feeling.  I finished my meal, grabbed my bag, and rode to school on my bike.  I passed neighbors on the street who waved to me, but I didn't say a single word to any of them.  I just stared straight ahead, and felt the stares of people looking at me but I did not acknowledge it.  

When I got to school, the principal called me over, and said, “Miss Brookes, you've changed a lot lately.  That's great!  I love to see kids expressing themselves, and I know how you love to express yourself through drawings.  New Water High is entering this little show on Saturday where we enter students' works, and so I thought that perhaps you'd like to enter one of your amazing drawings.  Ms. Greper tells me all of the time how your work is so detailed and...”

“I don't draw anymore,” I cut him off and walked away, leaving him to scratch his head.

Later on I found out that during the Faculty Meeting yesterday, they had discussed me.  The faculty were considered about me, saying that I used to be such a quiet student who gave all I had, and how I was their little ray of sunshine.  Now I'm broken, and apparently they were going to try to fix me.  Good luck.

I went through the day not taking a single bit of notes.  Even Mr. Kraner seemed to be worried about me.  It’s incredibly how as soon as someone becomes “broken”, everyone begins to care about them.  This pathetic world never even realized that I was here before, but now that I’m basically dead, I’m everyone’s hero.  This was the problem with society, nowadays.  Suicides happen all the time, but people don’t begin to care until it’s too late.

During class, Mr. Kraner walked over to me and offered help.  “Kaylie, you've been doing so well with Langer's help lately, but now that your tutoring sessions have stopped, it seems that you're getting a little confused again.  Is there anything I can clear up for you?”  He had even called me Kaylie, and not Brookes as he always had.  I looked away, rolled my eyes, and walked out of classroom.

When I got home, I ran up to my room, threw my empty bag on the floor, and changed into this dress I had.  It was a plain, black dress that reached the middle of my thighs, with black lace decorating the neckline.  Whenever I wore it, my dad would say, “Kaylie what are you wearing?”

“A dress,” I would say.

“A dress?  Says who?” he would reply angrily, ordering me to take it off, but I never did.  Today I thought that would wear the dress and annoy him.