My Bad Boy Neighbor (Now on Radish)

Episode 2

My dad was the only one at the scene, insisting both Connor and I got checked out at the hospital. Once determining that we had no serious injuries, apart from a few bruises and neck pains, they discharged us and let us go home.

Needless to say, my dad was the one who took care of the entire thing. Still in shock, I didn't know what the proper course of action was after an accident. My dad and Kai's parents exchanged the details and had easily come to the conclusion of what had happened. The traffic lights had not been working properly from the side that Kai emerged. There had been a short circuit in the other part of the town where fire had started the night before and damaged the cables which fed the traffic lights information.

This information could not have been totally accurate as I wasn't entirely sure how traffic lights even worked. I just came to a conclusion based on the tiny amount of information I gathered from my dad and even then, most of it I hadn't been able to understand.

After dropping us both home, my dad went to meet his clients for a viewing. He was a real estate agent and the property in Evergreen was in high demand. It was the perfect suburban town with white picket fences and happy families.

It all screamed average to me. I knew that behind those colorful houses were real families, each struggling with their own issues. Nobody was ever just happy. And I was the only one who knew they were all miserable.

I could see it on the faces of kids who came to school every day with big smiles plastered on their faces, their cheerful mood being betrayed by the sorrow in their eyes. Like called to like and in those moments, I could read them as easily as I could read my own thoughts.

Not everybody was unhappy. But a lot of them had been too good at showing it.

I wanted to shatter the idea that being normal meant you had a group of friends and weren't suffering from a mental illness. My anxiety had often crippled me but it was all I knew. It was my own sense of normalcy and comfort in which I took solace whenever tensions were high.

I wanted people to stop generalizing mental illness and scream at the top of my lungs that I was a human being too. That I wasn't crazy or evil or a freak, despite the rumors being spread around school like wildfire.

My fellow classmates had been anything but kind to me ever since they found out that I had been going to a psychiatrist. My own personal hell broke loose inside me one day when I had an episode in front of my entire class.

One moment I had been fine as I prepared to stand up and go through with my presentation in front of class. Sure, my hands shook and I was nervous. I wanted to do good and had been replaying a scenario in my head where the teacher would give me a low grade. I had tried reverse psychology in order to trick my brain, telling myself that I was excited, not afraid.

As I made my way toward the front of the class, my brother's best friend Matt sniggered something I couldn't quite make out but the entire class erupted in laughter that I could not understand. As I stood up at the whiteboard, with the marker in hand, ready to start speaking, I realized that my words just wouldn't come.

I heard a girl laugh and say, "She's going to choke!"

Another boy added, "We don't have all day."

I opened my mouth to speak, my hands shaking so bad one would think they were jazz-hands. I couldn't focus as the terror and humiliation enveloped me and the thick fog descended in my mind. I was frozen in fear, tears threatening to come on which made me even more afraid I'd be making an even bigger fool of myself.

I had been wrapped in emotions like a blanket and this time, they weren't making me invisible anymore. As they exploded into the world, they made a statement. A mark that I was here and I was hurting.