TW: SUICIDE, DRUGS, DEPRESSION
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A bunch of Teenagers who want to find their way around the world.
Especially two people who slowly find their love for each other.
...
She saw Violet from afar, somehow she always caught her eye because so much about her caught Clementine's attention. Maybe it was the frayed pony that hung cheekily on her face. Her unusual clothing style or her light porcelain skin, perhaps, without any impurities.
Clementine's skin was similar in texture, except that it was a little tanned. During the break, Violet was often in the backyard of the school, where you met every break to smoke, which she didn't do. How she stood there with a dreamy expression and her current best friend who was trying to look like Violet. But who could blame her too? Who wouldn't have felt the need to be Violet for at least a moment?
Maybe her light will rub off, at least a little, if you walk next to her. Unfortunately, her friend's hairstyle somehow looked like a wig, the make-up did not match her features (does not flatter her at all, as if it were supposed to change her natural proportions instead of underlining them, and therefore unfavorable let it appear shift...).
She would have been pretty if she hadn't necessarily wanted to be like her friend but had recognized her own beauty.
Violet's gaze met Clem's and she felt caught. The embarrassment that had just been floating in the air quickly gave way to an electrifying tingling sensation in her fingertips when Violet gave her a gentle smile and tucked a strand of blonde-blue hair behind her ear.
"Do you know her?" Ana whispered to her and screwed up her eyes when Clem turned around again and looked after Violet, who disappeared into the hallway with her would-be twin.
''Saw her a few times...''
Ana's eyebrows shot up and she clicked her tongue.
''Saw her in Gabe's photos...''. Ana was rarely in town because she lived far out, and accordingly only knew the people from the field (a popular meeting point for all those young people whom Clem found interesting) who also went to school here. Clem could have elaborated on who Violet was - the Violet who knew each other from ballet school and the meadow. But somehow she wanted to keep it to herself. She didn't want to take away her magic, didn't want to reveal her secret to her thoughts on her. It also went against the grain that Ana was apparently stalking Gabe's profile.
Later in History, she would just keep whispering in Sophie's ear again, informing her of her latest observations and information she had gained, and while doing this she would throw Clem furtive glances. They didn't even make a secret of it when she talked about them; Clem believed that she was watching them while doing this was an essential part of the kick Ana felt. She seemed to enjoy suppressing others and setting them up like laboratory rats, unsettling them and leaving them in the dark about their friendship. Was it important to her or not? Did she like or was she against you? A puppeteer who only used friends to tease her and thus enhance herself.
Clementine had always been too sensitive to characters like that, she needed confirmation from them, and she needed the feeling of belonging to the strong and cool, whether in the classroom or on the field. In the introductory round on the first day of school, when everyone was supposed to tell something about themselves, Ana had said that in last school she had always been portrayed as the devil in person, but that she wasn't as bad as she seemed at first glance. She told it as if she had been the one her old class was after, and Clem still thought that she seemed totally tame and shy and that the others in the class might have been too wrong about her perky facade let ... conceited bitch and nothing more.
She had been nice to Clementine right away until she had started to feel comfortable with her - and that was around the third day (because she probably thought she had fully assessed and understood from then on). After that, Ana was nothing more than a mouse to play with, which was made possible by Clem's reserved manner ...
And Clem had no idea of their charisma, she didn't know what they tell people about themselves without wanting to. She looked like an injured deer when she floated so absent-mindedly through the corridors and her curly brown hair kept falling into her face as if she wanted to hide behind it. She blew it out of her field of vision and mumbled: "I fucking hate Spanish...".
''Just learn more often, it's not that difficult either!'' Poisoned Ana.
"You have advantages in learning because you can speak Romanian," said Clem back.
''Are you stupid? Those are completely different languages ?!''
''I just saying, you're more into this language learning thing,'' Clem replied meekly.
At last school, Ana had certainly had friends like Sophie and her.
Communication with some people was child's play when everyone presents authentically carried their real thoughts to the outside and let what they felt gush out creatively. Then it was an exciting connection of souls. Others unfortunately only used their communication to manipulate their environment and never dared to show their true colors - Ana was someone like that. Clem allowed herself to be used voluntarily by people like Ana because Ana was too superficially trapped in her behavioral patterns to be able to go deeper, but Clem still gave Clem the confirmation she needed.
Actually, she didn't want to think about any of that at all, she just wanted to buy something to eat.
★
Whenever Clementine walked through the central station, she felt like a little stray Ant, lost in the chaos of the big city. Somehow she also loved the fact that everyone around her was a stranger and that she was just there, in the middle of it all, at that moment, consciously radiating alone. She liked to imagine that she was a serene and tough bitch that one respected and whose strong aura led, purposeful and emphatically casual, regularly provoked eye duels on the train and always doggedly drew her eyebrows together to suggest the strong shell that was she would have liked ...
In reality, however, she was just a little girl who was somehow looking for a place in this world. The great search, the search for determination, for belonging and security.
This search was not easy and she still hadn't arrived, she felt that, but her current life was still the best that had happened to her so far. Sometimes she was afraid that it might already have been, that it would never get better than this, and those deeper connections with other people were just fairy tales to give hope.
Everyone from the field was at a house party today, and because she didn't know anyone more than superficially, no one had given her a decision either. Clem was used to never really belonging anywhere. She always stood outside the circle and looked in from the outside, observing everything that she longed for but didn't have herself. It never bothered me, but when it wasn't there, nobody noticed. She was not missed.
Clem had spent a few minutes alone at the lake to lure ducks with cigarette butts (which chattered loudly again, as soon as they recognized the dizziness ...) when she realized something: At least she had herself.
To be alone didn't feel painful, more liberating - because she'd rather be alone and without any tension than desperately trying to adapt to the company.
