Chapter Six.

“Is this it? Or could we still compliment each other like colors in harmony, that make each other look brighter… like we did in the old days.”
-PlayRadioPlay!

Months began to pass by faster, ocassionally slowing down to allow me to check my surroundings. Summer began to doze and soon it was fast asleep. My friendship with Julian remained stable and we were both happy. There were no more late night kisses and definitely no more confusion. Sometimes I would wake up in the morning looking for a text message from Jason… forgetting that I was washed from his hands for good. I shouldn’t say it like that, I guess.
Everytime I would do that, I felt so stupid. I had known what I wanted and set my mind to it. What I wanted was to not have Jason anymore. Although, when it came down to it… I hardly ever knew what I want until I was in that moment. Which would be great if that moment wasn’t always the second of my life where I completely forgot the difference between right and wrong.

School had started once again. My life was thrust into a monotonous schedule and I could not escape it even if I tried. It remained the same, along with a lot of other things in my life. Nothing had changed much since June, aside from the weather. I was still Libby. Confident on the outside but quaking with emotion within. I was learning how to handle life. I took up new outlooks and philosophies… I convinced myself that I was happy. With the falling of the leaves it was my chance to turn one over.

The alarm sounded louder than normal as it pushed its way into my head, irritating me to a larger extent than I could handle at such an early time in the day. But it was the last day before Thanksgiving break, and I continued to keep using that excuse to push myself through this unnecessary Wednesday.

Finally I gave in. Getting up, I threw on my clothes as fast as possible. I had left myself with hardly anytime to get ready and I hated to miss the bus. Or rather, I hated it when my mom yelled at me for missing the bus. Just another shitty way to start the day, so it was avoided whenever possible. My hands seemed to move faster than my mind could keep up with, washing my face and pulling my long hair back into one of the messiest buns you’ve ever seen.

Running down the stairs and out the door I barely said goodbye to Lara: mother and homemaker of my household. She held her title proudly as if it was the biggest trophy she’d ever gotten. Truth? It probably was. My mother was a strong woman. One of the strongest I’d ever met in my entire fourteen years of living. She was far from quiet and always had something to say about everything. We’re very similar, I guess you could say. But I wasn’t able to admit that until much later.

My mother and I fought so much, it had almost become a part of our schedules. Six o’clock: wake up. Six fifteen: Fight with mom. Six thirty: Rush to bus. I wouldn’t see her again until later in the afternoon when she got home.

She worked at a local magazine called The Spotlight. It held general information about the county and other unimportant things that adults liked to read about. I mean whenever she’d talk about work it was as if she’d go in and get whipped all day for absolutely no cash. But I think the reality of it was that she’d go in and stress all day for about 50,000 a year. It’s not really that much money, but we weren't poor, both of my parents worked and we got by on what we had.

I think that more than anything, all I wanted was for her to love me. To be proud of me and what I was becoming as a person. I knew that I messed up sometimes… but I always tried not to. For her, I don’t think my attempts at success were good enough. I needed to do better. But I didn’t do better for a while. As a person, I wasn’t capable of it. Not then, anyway.

When I got to school it was still partially dark out but as the sun rose I wanted to reach out and melt into the sky. It seemed to make everyone around me appear more beautiful than they actually were. It turned their faces from gray to vibrant oranges and purples. I always loved the sky. This november the forests surrounding my school were still blazing with reds, oranges and yellows. I knew that soon they’d turn to brown and fade into the snow. I absorbed every moment of their fiery presence in hopes I could keep it with me through the winter.

The tiles on the floor of the hallways reminded me of a hospital. They always had. As if everyone in my school was sick in some shape or form and the teachers were there to act as doctors; feeding the starving with bullshit, nurturing the unloved with pretenses of how the world works itself out for the better, in the end. Not every teacher was like that though. A few kept their heads in the real world, enabling them to work and speak with students more realistically than others.

Some students within my school choose not to interact with the others. Those tend to be the ones that will lack social skills later on in life. Others interact too much with everyone and find themselves placed easily into a clique, never to escape until their graduation. Some, myself included, don’t fit anywhere. It never came as a problem though. I had my friends arranged sparatically throughout the school and most of the time it worked to my advantage.

Of course, the one friend I valued the most was Julian. We had just started the same high school together. A new school for me, a new district for him. Julian seemed to adjust nicely with the change of a brand new school system. But I wasn’t paying much attention at the time. He stayed by my side and I still confided in him with all of my thoughts, without it even passing through my head that he may have told someone how I felt or what I thought of them. To this day, he still hasn’t. I never thought things with Julian would change, but as I let myself get pushed into school life… I could feel Julian pulling away. Maybe if I had tried harder to keep him in my reach, I could have kept him forever.