C
I lie in bed on my side. The lights are off, and the blanket is pulled up all the way over my shoulder. Only my right hand is still exposed to the cool air of my room, holding my phone.
The screen brightness is turned all the way down, and even so, it is blinding in the dark. But still, I can’t avert my eyes.
The screen shows N and me, lying on our backs next to each other on the bed. The sight alone makes my stomach tingle. She seems so happy. So natural in her body.
I barely had to make any contributions during dinner, and that gave me a lot of opportunity to watch her. I’m in awe, honestly. I expected that she’d become good at this at some point; it’s natural for her, after all, but I never thought she’d adapt this quickly. Her—my mum didn’t even seem to notice.
And then the two hours after dinner, when we lay here and talked. The sound of her laughter rings in my ears. My stomach dissolves into a swarm of butterflies that flutters against the inside of my ribs.
This is it. This is all I’ve ever wanted. This is what I’ve been waiting and hoping for for the last four years: an opportunity to be close to her again. To hear her laughter. To see her happy in my presence.
Because of my presence?
I turn my phone off and hold it against my chest as I turn around. I’m so hopelessly in love. But how could I not be, after everything she’s done for me?
N saved me all those years ago. She made me the person I am now, and she doesn’t even seem to realise. She barely seemed to realise that she was saving me then.
Before my inner eye, her old face flashes. It’s hazy with memory, but her smile is clear as a photograph, and her eyes still twinkle with humour.
That smile.
The first time she smiled at me like that, I knew she was special. I knew that in a world of little cruelties and stone faces, she was different.
***
The parking lot was full of children. It was still early in the morning, but already everybody was so loud.
I stood off to the side, away from the scrum that was the centre of this crowd, watching them. I knew I should be among them. I wanted friends, and you didn’t get friends by watching silently, but the noise made me uncomfortable. And anyway, everybody was standing in their groups. I couldn’t just—join them. I couldn’t be careless this time.
They were all obviously already friends. It would be difficult for me to get in now, after the school year had already been going on for several weeks. But still better than my old school.
At this point, my only hope was to wait for the bus drive. In fifteen minutes, the bus would be there, and I would have to sit somewhere. I hoped it would add up in a way that somebody would have to sit next to me.
I had already looked it up. The drive was going to be two full hours, and I was prepared. I had snacks in my bag, including some sweets, water, a writing pad to play tic-tac-toe and other games like it. For now, I only had to wait.
Adjusting my skirt, I sat down on one of the stones that lined the grass, marking the divide between the parking lot and school grounds, and got out my book. It was a book about a girl befriending a magical horse. Not really something that interested me a lot, but I had seen other older girls plead with their parents to get the latest book for them, so I figured it might be a good conversation starter if the girls here saw me read this.
Mum had been hesitant to buy it for me at first, but relented when I told her that I would get better at reading much more quickly if I was allowed to read books I enjoyed. Which was kind of a lie since I could already read well enough, and I didn’t even enjoy this book, but she never needed to know that.
I had to be careful, I kept telling myself as I stared idly at the lines of writing, not really bothering to process them. I really wanted things to be different here. I wanted to be normal now. And sure, today I was still the new kid, but that would change soon enough, right? They just had to get used to me, and today was the perfect day for that.
I had always been alone up until this point. In kindergarten, I had simply been too shy to really interact with the other children, instead playing on my own. By the time I wanted to have friends, I was already branded the odd one, and nobody wanted to play with me.
I thought that would change when I started going to school. I had been so excited on my first day with the pink school bag Mum had picked out for me. So happy I could finally use all the things the private tutors had taught me to impress not just the teachers, but also the other children. They would like me then, wouldn’t they?
That had been my biggest mistake. They hadn’t liked the fact that I knew things, and they had liked even less when I offered to teach them. I learned then that children don’t want to be elevated and prefer instead to pull others down until they can trample them.
I had lasted two months at that school before Mum had to leave work to pick me up, my face and arms scratched and my pink school bag in tatters.
I had to do better this time. I would keep to the side at first and watch when the teacher asked questions. Once I knew how the children here worked, I would have an easier time befriending them. I just had to find out how to act first. To be safe. If giving wrong answers to easy questions was the way to be safe, I could do that.
“Hey, what’s your name?” a voice demanded.
I flinched slightly, then looked up. Three girls stood before me, looking at me. One of them was frowning; the others didn’t have any expressions I could read.
All three of them looked pretty. They had their hair done in braids or ponytails, and their ears were pierced with little colourful earrings. Their clothes looked similar, with each of them wearing a combination of pink and purple.
“Chloe,” I said shyly, uncertain of what to make of their expressions. These were the kinds of girls I wanted to be friends with. Normal girls who had lots of friends. Girls who would grow up to become beautiful women that boys trip over themselves to ask out for a dance.
“Do you think you’re better than us, Chloe?” the first girl asks, still frowning.
I blinked. For a long, horrible moment, reality hung suspended by a thread, kept momentarily still as my brain struggled to comprehend the meaning of her words.
“What? Why—”
“Nobody likes a show-off. Being able to read doesn’t even make you special. Do you think you’ll be able to impress somebody with this?”
The thread tore, and reality came crashing down over me like a wave of ice-cold water. My throat grew tight at a snap, and I struggled to breathe.
“No, I—” I just wanted to be their friend, why couldn’t they realise? I didn’t care about being better than them. I would’ve happily tagged along at the tail end of their group if only they’d let me. I just didn’t want to be alone!
Tears stung my eyes as I frantically tried to find something, anything to say that would change their minds now. I hadn’t even gotten to talk to them this time, and already they hated me. What could I even do now? Apologise? It was too late to act like their words didn’t affect me. I was already blinking tears away.
“I’m sorry,” I said in a strangled voice, hastily closing the book and hiding it in my new school bag. This one was purple. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.” That was how adults were supposed to apologise, weren’t they? A tutor had told me once that that was what grown-ups said when they really wanted to apologise.
The first girl’s face went pale with rage. “What? You didn’t hurt us! You—you’re pathetic!”
I doubted she even knew what that word meant, but it still hurt. Because she was right, wasn’t she? I had a complete second chance, and still I couldn’t manage to find friends. Why couldn’t I do any of this right?
The girls turned and walked off with grim satisfaction, leaving me on my stone, even more lonely than before and trying very hard to hide the fact that I felt like crying.
But maybe this was just how it was always going to be. Like in kindergarten, I would be alone.
I turned away as if to inspect the school building in the distance to hide that I had to wipe tears from my eyes. They couldn’t see that I was crying. It would only make everything worse.
It took several minutes before I could breathe normally again. Maybe I should have expected this. Sure, I wanted friends, I tried to tell myself, but I’d managed so far, so why not from here on out?
I squared my shoulders. Organising the school transfer had been a lot of work for my Mum, and I couldn’t do that to her again. She had so much to do. I would manage at this school, even if they didn’t like me. For my parents if nobody else. I could do this.
When the bus finally arrived, I didn’t wait for the others to get on first. I didn’t want to walk into a full bus and ask somebody whether the seat next to them was taken, only to be laughed at. I’d already undergone that humiliation enough times that I knew I didn’t want to repeat it. So I went in first and sat somewhere near the front. I knew all the cool kids would want to sit in the back, and after my earlier interaction with the girls, I did not want to be near them.
The other kids scrambled past me, and most of them didn’t even look in my direction. Then the girls walked past, and I made the mistake of meeting their eyes. Their gazes were venomous. When she was next to me, the first girl from earlier said in a loud voice, “Why don’t you sit with the teachers if you like them so much?” and the other children replied with laughter.
I turned away from them then, and huddled further against the window. I wished I had headphones now, like the older children. Then I wouldn’t have to listen to any of this. I wouldn’t even really have to be here.
The seat next to me stayed empty. Towards the end, there was even a squabble towards the back because somebody had tried to keep a seat free, and the last person that didn’t have a seat yet refused to sit next to me or in the two rows behind the teachers that nobody ever wanted to sit in. But now that was over.
I kept my head down while the teacher went through the list of names of everybody who was supposed to be here. He didn’t get far. Only the third name on the list made him stop short.
“Noel Boutin?”
Nobody moved, and the bus fell quiet. I wondered what kind of name that was because I had never heard it before, but then there was the sound of steps on the pavement outside, and somebody climbed into the bus.
“Sorry,” a voice said, and the teacher moved to the side to let the person through.
“Just in time, Noel. Make sure to be more punctual next time. Now, hurry and take a seat. And don’t take the middle seat in the back row.”
I looked away quickly as the person stepped into view. I didn’t want to set myself up for disappointment. The person was going to see that I was sitting on my own at the front of the bus and wouldn’t want to sit next to me. They’d—
“This seat taken?”
At a snap, all my resolve was scattered in the wind, and my head turned. Next to me stood a boy with dark curly hair that hung almost into his eyes. He was tall, even for the boys, and he had perplexingly blue eyes.
Fortunately, I had reflexively shaken my head, and he just sat down next to me while I was still staring at him dumbly.
“I’m Noel,” he whispered once he had arranged himself, offering me his hand. “You’re new, aren’t you?”
With a shove, I forced myself to take his hand and shake it. “Chloe,” I said, too aware of the teacher standing barely two steps away from us. I didn’t want to anger her, but would it score me points with Noel if I did?
Fortunately, Noel didn’t say anything more until the bus has started moving. Then he turned abruptly and asked, “Did you just move here? Are you new at this school?”
Surprised, I replied, “No, I’ve always lived here, I—” I realised only then that that would have been the perfect lie. Because now I would have to admit that I got bullied at my old school, wouldn’t I?
“I didn’t like it at my old school.” Would that make me sound arrogant and spoiled? Still had to be better than the truth.
But Noel didn’t even skip a beat and beamed at me. “Well, I hope you’ll like it better here, then.” And that was the moment when I realised I was in love with Noel.
Noel spent the rest of the drive and even a little time on the class trip talking to me. Not for lack of friends, I learned quickly: he had a lot of friends among the boys, and there were several girls who were obviously vying for his attention. I’m sure that at some point, the girl who had told me I was pathetic earlier, approached him and told him what she thought of me, but he never mentioned it and didn’t particularly seem to care.
On the drive back from the class trip, he insisted on sitting next to me again, and from then on, we were friends. Noel didn’t seem to care that it wasn’t normal for boys to hang out with girls at that age, but he was too popular for anybody to say anything about it.
Even with his friendship, I was never very popular throughout primary school and even middle school. I was too silent and bookish for the others to like me. But they did leave me alone, and anyway, I had Noel. I didn’t need anything more.
I thought that it could always be like that. That it could just be us, and that Noel would take care of me. But of course, it had to end differently. The worst part about it is that I can’t even blame him for leaving me. It was my fault, after all.