Just One More Chapter

Chapter 2

The school bell rang announcing we had over fifteen minutes of break from this exhaustion. I get out of the class and start walking in the hallway towards the lunch area.

Sometimes, I can see myself out of my body, watching my every move. The most difficult part of my life is becoming unbearable, I pretend to be alive when everything inside me seems dead. And I want to shake myself, my whole body, hit myself, hug myself, slap myself so I can feel anything other than this exhaustion.

Loudwaves of laughter, football players patting each other's back, kids giggling around, everything so mixed so blended. It feels like my eyes have been carrying dumbbells and someone is pounding a hammer on my head and I'm doing nothing to stop it because finally, it's good to feel something.

At night, when I'm alone watching my ceiling and my head feels dizzy, I feel tears falling down from my eyes on my cheeks but there's no pain in them, in letting them flow. There's no relief.

I think about how it would feel to go back to my new home here, my grandparent's place, but even that thought doesn't calm my mind. Lately, nothing seems to calm my damn mind.

When I'm in crowded places, I want to be alone and when I'm alone I want someone to be there for me, places which used to make me happy now make my senses trigger and I don't know what to do about it. So, I just shut up and let this feeling stay. I want to beg someone to stop this, this heaviness in my heart but I don't know what I'll be asking help for, I don't understand what's happening to me, I feel numb at one second and the other second I'll be overwhelmed from staying in my bed the whole day.

Now, I'm standing here in the lunch area thinking about what to do next. Grabbing your lunch is step one. Okay. I grab my lunch and find an empty table. I walk towards it and wonder what my first day would be like if I didn't have this constant urge to bury myself under the school ground. People are okay here, some of them tried interacting but I was so exhausted that I couldn't lead the conversation. I know they think I'm rude but they won't get how my lack of talking skills is bothering me more than any of them.

As I'm about to sit on the empty seat, I hear someone say, "Hey J!"
Oh, come on.

My head turns to where her voice came from. She's sitting two tables away from me on the right with a guy who looks like a golden retriever and is jamming music so loudly that I'm shocked no one has complained yet. Popular kids, I guess. A girl in a complete black outfit sits next to him, blankly staring at the golden retriever as if praying to god for him to stop his barking. My attention again turns to the girl I met just two days ago. Elle. "Come join us J. We are not vampires, we don't bite."

The golden retriever points at Elle and laughs at her ridiculously lame jokes and they high-five. I don't want to sit with people with such a bad sense of humour, it's too much for my already insanely-unstable thoughts but when I look at the seat I was just about to sit on which now was already occupied by a group of jocks. So we don't have a choice. I sigh in defeat and walk towards the table where three kids are staring at me like I'm a piece of their lunch. Elle and the golden retriever smiling very widely as I place my lunch on the table and the girl in all black glaring so intensely that I have to swallow down my fear to meet her gaze.

I sit next to Elle and the golden retriever says, "Buddy, you look like you just woke up from a nightmare but in a hot way."

"I know right? Like he has this tired-looking face and dead eyes which are so hot. And his hair lazily falling on his forehead is just so beautiful. But you're a little scary looking because you don't smile often." Elle exclaims, leaning closer to the golden retriever to high-five again.

I stare at him blankly and he furrows his eyes and turns to the girl beside him and says, "He's one of you." The girl stares at him blankly. Maybe she is.