26| claire

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“You care so much you feel as though you will bleed to death with the pain of it.”

- Dumbledore, Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix

26| claire

It’s weird how you can have so many good days, and then one day something happens, and you are down to where you were.

Today is Sunday. Unlike any other school day, I don’t have the opportunity to annoy the boys and act like a crazy girl and spend my day without thinking much about myself.

Mom and Dad were home. But they planned a date night for themselves, so they left around 6. Now, it’s 7 pm and I’m home alone with pretty much nothing to do. For once, I finished my homework.

I think of calling Jason. He didn’t look really good after his ‘girlfriend’ ditched him. I call him and I find that his phone is turned off. Then I think of Oliver.

What will I say after calling him? What will we talk about?

I shake my head. I can’t call him. I don’t know why. So I just scroll through my Instagram mindlessly.

A post catches my eyes. It’s a photo from a party, which probably happened yesterday. The photo is kind of blurred and dark. In the photo, a girl is laughing. Around her are more people who look like they are having fun as well. I can see the drinks in their hands. It’s a typical party photo.

Then I see Claire. I tap on the post and find out she is tagged. Just to torture myself further, I go to her profile.

Claire Brown’s profile is as colourful as her personality. Crazy, extroverted, weird, and talkative—that’s Claire for you.

Sounds familiar? Yeah, I guess she rubbed off on me.

I wasn’t supposed to be friends with Claire. We were the two opposite sides of a coin. We didn’t mix. After losing my one and only best friend, Faye, I was tuned into myself. I was quiet, wondering if I really was that boring and stupid.

I was alone.

So I used to hang out with Sean, Jolene, and their whole group of nerds. For some reason, I was still up to date with my studies. So I could chat with them without any problem. It was all about progress. Nobody ever talked about how they felt, or what they were going through.

Then one day Jolene introduced me to Claire. She was Jolene’s neighbour. Claire and I didn’t click instantly. We talked sometimes, and although she sat with us, she was nowhere as nerdy as we were.

She was all about fun. Someday I’d see her all by herself, listening to songs and dancing weirdly, vibing by herself. She didn’t care about what people thought about her.

That was really weird for me. I used to think she was absolutely crazy.

Claire joked around a lot. She made people laugh. I remember one day laughing at her jokes so hard that coke came out of my nose. It was a disaster. I spilled coke everywhere. Everyone was giving me looks. They were annoyed by how clumsy I was.

But Claire, she was laughing at me. She didn’t help me. She just kept laughing, and so did I.

For the first time I didn’t care what other people thought of me. It felt good to laugh it off. It felt good being a little crazy.

So we became best friends, just like that.

Faye and I had a lot in common. But with her, everything was a little bit formal. I don’t know if that makes sense to you. She was a mannered girl, the mannered lady.

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