floating | ✓

03| unicorns

"I always did something I was a little not ready to do. I think that's how you grow. When there's that moment of 'Wow, I'm not really sure, I can do this' And you punch through those moments, that's when you have a breakthrough. "

- Marissa Meyer

03| unicorns

"So, how was your day?" The question is thrown my way.

How was my day? How was my day? I ask myself. It was an up and down of floating and grounding, grounding and floating. My focus came and went, like waves in the ocean, gone and back, gone and back. When I was alone, I was all the way up. When I was in class, I was gone. When I was with Jason and Oliver, I was a little bit grounded. But after Oliver left and Jason started talking, somehow I tuned out the volume and got lost. I was there with him, talking, listening, shaking my head, but I wasn't.

Should I tell this to my parents? No, it doesn't make sense, and I don't want to give them heart attacks.

I force a smile on my face and make myself look as cheerful as possible. "My day was really great!"

"Good," Dad says, cutting a bit of his steak. Then he turns to mom, and they start talking about some news of the day. I tune out their conversation and start going up, up, up in the clouds. I am not with them anymore.

When I find myself again, I am in my bed, tucked underneath my cover. My room is dark, and the silence is all around. Deep, dark silence. I used to like silence. I still like silence, but this silence echoes and echoes. I need something to think about so I can fall asleep. So I don't get lost again.

Oliver Carlson.

The truth about Oliver is that he is honest. Or so I think. He is rude and mean to me. He can't stand me and doesn't take me for granted. Anything I do, he is annoyed by it.

Every person I came across that I associated with was nice to me. In fact, they were really nice, and I was comfortable with the niceness. What I didn't know was the nicer they were on the outside, the worse they were on the inside. I suffered because I thought they were nice, while they weren't. I thought they cared, but they didn't.

They were acting nice to me, to show me they liked my company. But Oliver is different.

He isn't nice to me. That can mean two things: one, he really isn't a nice person, and I have no problem with that, and two, he doesn't like me, which he shows with every chance he gets.

I need that. The honesty, the brutal truth. Oliver Carlson hates me, and I need that certainty of his feelings. Better to be hated than to be treated well only for show.

*****

It is AP chemistry. I don't hate chemistry. Well, I like everything I can understand and wrap my head around, that I can learn. For example: reactions, compounds, metals, etc.

What I don't like is humans. I can't figure them out. They are complex. They are not black and white; they are gray. Some are more gray, some less. It would have been so easy to figure them out if they were only black and white, bad or good, but they aren't. What a shame.

"So, today we will learn about intramolecular and intermolecular forces," Mrs. Robin says with her singsong voice.

I take a deep breath. Focus, focus, stay here, stay here, don't slip. I already did really bad on the previous test. I can't fail another one.

"As you can see here," Mrs. Robin points towards the slide, "Hydrogen and chlorine are bound to each other with polar covalent bonds. Before we go forward, can anyone tell me what the specialty of a polar covalent bond is?"