The Mates Pull

1

'Ugh' I sighed 'here we go again, same shit different day'' I thought to myself as I remained motionless on the ground. 'On the upside, at least it's the last day of school...now I only have about 3 months before I have to start a whole new hell...highschool.'

"They're gone H, you can get up now." Valerie said.

I opened my eyes and looked up to find my older sister standing over me, hand outstretched to help me up from the ground.

Valerie is everything that I am not.

At 2 years older than me the differences between the both of us were blatantly obvious.

Physically we looked as different as night and day.

Pretty Valerie with her porcelain skin and vibrant red hair could light up any room. It was easy to see how she could be so popular, the perfect social butterfly extrovert.

Whereas I am the awkward one.

The one everyone so easily over looks.

I'm as boring and average as my looks would suggest. Plain brown hair that couldn't be controlled, and to brush it only make it more frizzy and unmanageable. Dull brown eyes... braces to fix my horribly crooked teeth and pasty skin from lack of venturing outdoors.

Because I'm more reserved than my sister I do tend to retreat into my books, where the main characters lives are always more interesting than my own.

"Just leave me here to wallow in my own self-pity." I replied gloomily.

"Harper, you've gotta stand up for yourself...Patrick and his followers would leave you alone if you actually called them out on their shit."

I sat up and shrugged, "what good would that do, they'd still push me down and take my stuff."

All my life I've grown up with the same kids, and the bullying sort of started out of nowhere nearly 2 years ago, in sixth grade.

I mean yeah some people had gone through puberty already and my spot in that train hasn't come along just yet...but I just didn't know why everyone had suddenly targeted me. Maybe it was because I'm short and studious, those are pretty much the cliches that begs for bullying...but of course I can't help it that I'm both height challenged and smart.

To be fair, i'm not technically a little person, I'm 4 feet and 10 and 1/4th inches, so I'm practically 5 feet tall, and loads of famous people are close to five feet tall: The Olsen twins, Lady Gaga, two of the Kardashian sisters...granted they're on the taller side of 5 feet as I am on the shorter side.

Val wiggles her hand in front of me once again and this time I took it, "come on, we're gonna be late and you know how mom gets."

I dusted my butt off with my hands and Val picked particles of debris out of my hair before we made our way home in silence.

Now I know what you're probably thinking, 'if her sister is so popular, why doesn't she do anything?' Trust me, she tried to two years ago when it all started, she was an eighth grader at the time and though her intentions were good...Unfortunately it only made matters worse.

The bullies use to only name call, then it progressed to taking my things: lunch, gym uniform, notebooks...once my locker was even broken into and they stole my entire purse.

I tried going to the teachers or even the principle but some of the kids bullying came from students of teachers or cops, and of course they would t believe their offspring would be this horrible.

The kids started calling me a snitch and that's when the pushing began (still mixed with them taking things), knocking things over like my tray in the lunch room or sculpture in art class.