Breaking The Barriers (GXG)

Chapter 1

Seventeen years old and living in a small, tight-knit community, where everyone was neck deep in everyone else's business. The small town of Doune falls in the shadow of the Widow Fells. That's where you'll find me. I'm Chloe, a girl of little significance, with short mahogany hair and the unimpressive height of five foot four.  I've spent my entire life as an outcast among the crowd, the black sheep in the flock, so to speak, and that's the way that I liked it. No one notices you and no one cares. No spotlight.  Nothing is worse than being the talk around the town.

As it goes, there is nothing noticeable about me but my whole life I've been treated as though there was.

"You know that your father and I love you no matter how, well, different you may be." My mother would say, kissing my head before carrying on to do whatever she needed to do around the house. When I was younger, I was always left dumbstruck when she said this to me but eventually, I just learned to accepted it and move on from it.  I'm sure it was something most people's parent's had told them throughout their lives. I had a small handful of friends that were just as 'bizarre' as me, apparently. I guess that made it made it easier for me to accept my weirdness, being surrounded by people like me. People who understood me.

School had always been the hardest part of my daily life, and it still is. The littlest things here made you stand out, and in my case, it was my clothes, my hair, my hobbies, my taste in everything... I wanted to be like Charlie from Perks of being a Wallflower, I wanted to be the wallflower and notice things but not to be noticed myself. But it never seemed to work out that way for me but I don't feel as if it was through a fault of my own. The other kids at school just seemed to notice me too much and it was never the type of attention you wanted to be on the receiving end of. It was always the malicious form of attention. I know people say that if you get bullied, learning to cope with it makes you a stronger person but in all honesty, at times, it made me want to die.  But you can't explicitly say that out loud, can you? Because that makes the situation worse; saying you want to die means you're depressed and an attention seeker and you may as well just get burned at the stake for that. High school isn't really the place for finding support when it comes to sorting out those kinds of issues. It's not the place to find yourself despite what you're told. So, I resorted to keeping to myself, staying out of sight at all available times and holding my head up when the rest of the world threw insults my way. But, I mean it's easy enough to say it doesn't bother you but it is another thing trying to not let it get to you.

Sometimes it's hard, harder than anyone cares to admit.

Today was turning into one of those days, as it often did. I dragged myself out of bed, ran a brush through my short hair and I looked in the mirror. With hair sticking in all directions, I was a sight to behold. The clock beside me told me that it was time to get ready for the day ahead of me. I pulled myself into some seriously tight jeans and loose checked shirt. Whilst checking myself out in the mirror, I combed and sprayed my hair into some pixie-like style I was happy with. At least it didn't resemble a bird's nest anymore. Shouting goodbye to my family, I set off out the door to meet Ally before school started. Ally had been my best friend for forever; our parents were friends since high school so naturally, we grew up to be as thick as thieves. We've always done everything together; we made daisy chains in the summer and went sledging in the cold and snowy winters. She has always known everything about me, in fact, at times she knows me better than I even know myself. It's as if we work on the same wavelength. Like me, she was strange but she was beautiful in a way that I could never see myself being. She had long black hair, glossy and sleek, that flowed ever so gracefully down her back. Being around her made me feel even smaller than I actually was as she towered over my 5"4 body at a far more graceful great 5"9.

I walked along the grassy path we made to the old oak tree by the lake where I met her every morning before school. This was place was my safe haven, my sanctuary and if anyone knew this it was Ally. If she couldn't find me at home this would be where she would find me. Like last November, after Kyle, my now ex-boyfriend, broke up with me, Ally found me here in a heap on the floor, in the cold and bitter rain, crying like tomorrow was never going to come.

Ally saw me and threw herself at me, her arms nearly choking me.

"Hey, loser!" She giggled.

"Hey you," I smiled back at her. "Ready for another fun-filled day in that hellhole?"

"Bring it." She challenged me playfully, locking her arm in mine and setting off along the path into the eye of the storm. As we neared the school, heads began to turn in our direction and the hiss of whispers could be heard among the crowds. We knew what was being said in hushed voices, subtly not being something that they were familiar with. Hyenas. Vultures. That's what they were. Ever since last spring, our entire school thought that Ally and I were secretly dating and just not telling them. I mean, what other bizarre reason could their oh-so-creative minds come up with to why we spent so much time together. The fact I was still dating Kyle didn't seem to register to them, and when we broke up it only added fuel to the fire. It had to be the reason Kyle and I broke up. I obviously left him for my best friend. What other reason could there be? Last spring was when Ally had officially 'came out' as being a lesbian and although I had known this for at least a year prior, it had come as quite a shock to the rest of the school. It took a lot of guts for her to come out and no one at the school made it any easier for her. I've seen the glares people give her, I've seen the look of hatred and pure disgust people throw her just because of the fact she likes girls. People think that heterosexuality is normal when in actual fact it's not normal, it's just common. Once Ally came out, everyone just assumed that I was gay naturally. After countless attempts for me to explain to them all that I wasn't, in fact, a lesbian I gave up trying and learned to accept the simple fact that trying to explain anything to these savages was about as pointless as teaching a rock to speak.

When I thought about it though, I'd always felt a little weird being in relationships with guys, uncomfortable even. I didn't... Like, there was nothing there. I didn't feel it. Well, that wasn't entirely true. I had felt too much for Kyle, too much too fast. It hadn't ended well. But... I felt more attached to Ally than I did to them. No. I pushed the thoughts out of my head. I wasn't about to open this can of worms. I shook it off and kept walking, pushing through the crowd to get away from everyone's judgemental eyes. Ally looked at me, seeing a look on my face she misread. She squeezed my arm tighter. She was my rock, she grounded me.

"The vultures are circling," I said under my breath.

"Don't let them get to you. Ever." I smiled weakly and nodded. We walked through the left wing of the concrete prison to a more peaceful part of the school, away from prying eyes and curious ears.

To our surprise, when we arrived at our spot, a place we thought no one but us knew about, there was someone already there. There was a space behind an old wooden bookcase that was filled with old, dusty books that had clearly been sitting undisturbed for an age before we'd taken over the spot. The bookcase sat against a set of concrete stairs. None of the classrooms on this side of the school were used anymore and at the best of times, this place looked like it was part of an old abandoned church. Cobwebs hung freely from just about everything here and there was always a cool breeze that wormed its way through a hole in one of the windows that was broken long ago. The scamper of rats could be heard as they scurried around under furniture, along pipes and cracks in the walls. This was how I would imagine Dracula's castle to look, hidden away in the dark recesses of Transylvania. But sitting there, slightly hidden by the old bookcase on the cold stone-slabbed floor, sat a girl. She was huddled up with a book on her lap, her ginger hair falling in curls onto her book as she leaned slightly over it, totally oblivious to the fact she had company. I looked to Ally who looked about as confused as I felt. Someone was in our hideout. I nodded towards the girl. Ally understood. She walked forward, her long legs taking long but graceful steps towards our mysterious stranger. She gently tapped the girl on the shoulder.

"Excuse me-" Ally began but stopped when the girl nearly took a fit. She shot up, her book falling to the floor, and she stumbled backwards and slipped.