Self Love • Christopher Velez •

Chapter 4; delusional and gullible

Chapter 4 - Delusional and Gullible

When they were 18 -

She had finally graduated from secondary school and she should have been happy and glad that she was finally out of that hellhole, but she could not feel anything when she went to receive her certificate for graduating. It felt like she was watching a movie, or watching someone else. She saw everything that happened, but that was it. She did not feel anything. 

She was top in her grade with her straight A’s, but she did not feel anything when she found out about it. She simply nodded and looked down at the ground when the principal announced it to everyone. Christopher, unsurprisingly, started cheering when the principal said that while the rest clapped. They knew that they should have cheered, but none of them actually knew her. To them, she was simply the quiet and shy girl that had the best grades every year. 

Her classmates, of course, made fun of her because of that. She knew that it would happen and was expecting it. She knew that no matter what she did, she would be made fun of. She knew that the problem was her. If an entire group have something against one person, the problem was probably the person. She was the person. And she knew that it was not ‘probably’ for her, it was definite. 

She tried to change. Maybe if she changed, she would not be bullied. So she tried talking to her classmates, tried being friends with them, tried being the girl that talked to all of the boys, tried being the person that did not care about her grades and skipped classes, tried being the person that’s the opposite of who she was, but it did not work -

“Hey Emilio,” she said as she took a seat next to him. The boy looked up and smirked at her. Ever since she tried being a different person, Emilio started talking to her. He was always smirking at her and being very affectionate towards her. He would hold her hand under the table in class, called her nicknames like ‘babe’ and was always having some sort of physical contact with her. 

Of course, this made her flustered. She was never involved in anything like this before. Sure, she had crushes on boys, but she did not do anything about them and so nothing happened. But this was different. It was something that she was unfamiliar with. Everything she knew about relationships were from her books that she had not read in a long time. She was sure that she and Emilio had something. He had even told the others in their class that he was going to ask someone out while looking at her and winking. The girls all around her immediately giggled, making her force herself to giggle. 

“He would definitely ask you out!” one of the girls told her. “It’s so obvious. The two of you are freaking adorbs!” 

She believed what the girl said. Who wouldn’t? She was not saying that because they were friends and she had a crush on Emilio or that she was guessing. It was so obvious! Why would he do all that to her if he did not like her? 

She had waited for the day he asked her out. She had overheard him talking to his friends about going to the park with her and asking her out there. She was so excited when he actually asked her out to the park, as he said he would.

When she went home, she was skipping around and laughing with Christopher. He looked at her and smiled, happy to follow her as she skipped around him like she used to. She wanted to tell him as he was her best friend, but Emilio had told her not to tell anyone from outside their class what was happening as he did not want there to be rumours and she promised not to tell about them to anyone outside their class.

When she went home, she immediately asked her mother and she allowed without even hesitating. After three years of being in secondary school, she was finally going out and was the same happy girl in primary school. Her mother was so happy when she heard that Dani was going out with some of the girls that were from her class. She had no siblings and was an only child, so she was happy that her daughter was finally going out and mixing with girls of her age. This, of course, was a lie. She was going out with a boy that she had a crush on, but her mother did not need to know this.