Resilience

02| This is why I don't socialise

"I expend tremendous energy merely to pretend
I'm normal."

ARABELLA'S POV

"Stop looking for reasons to be unhappy and start focusing on what you do have and why you should be happy."

What a load of crap—

I don't deliberately chose to be unhappy. I just don't have a single reason to be happy.

What am I supposed to be happy about?

Life– ha! not worth the effort...

Getting no attainment of peace for my mind, I resignedly shut the book I borrowed from my school's library and put it back in my bag as frustration set in, from the lack of any help.

I'm practically beyond help.

Anyway, I'm sitting in the school bus right now, and the pain in my body is jolting up to match the vibrations of the moving bus. My ribs and shoulder are throbbing, and the ache in my entire body's getting intense.

Only if I could cancel my subscription of daily pain

The bus is divided in the same hierarchy as the school is; the quiet ones and loners are at the front, the normal or insignificant ones are at the middle, and the populars or the only significant ones are at the back.

And I'm obviously sitting at the end with a bunch of significant ones.

Yeah, I wish—

Yours truly have a special seat reserved in the front row, which even the school's loners wanted to avoid.

Impressive no?

Was I glad to be left alone? Yes

Did it hurt? So much–

The popular ones usually keep to themselves, just staying in with their small tight knit group of populars and occasionally 'joking around' with the population they look down on.

The quiet ones; I'm pretty sure they know exactly what's going around with everyone, but they just don't care.

The loners simply stay away from everyone, mostly from those who pick up on them, and some of them try too hard to escape their label of loners.

And the ones who fit into 'the normals' are the most vicious ones. These are the ones you must be on the lookout from if you want to survive in school.

Their noses are always up in everyone else's business except their own, and those are the ones who get butt hurt when their lives are brought to the spotlight.

I'd made sure of staying away from them ever since I started at the school, but I still wasn't left out by their prodding noses.

The rumors these guys spread about me are weirdly astounding.

Someone said my mother was a stripper, and that rumor lingered for so long that everyone just started calling me 'Sizzlebella'.

This was because one time my dear mother came to my school wearing clothes that were probably shorter for me as well.

The other time, it was said that I am dark and mysterious because I fight underground and that's the reason why I have faint bruise marks on my face.

Interesting...

This rumour lingered for so long that it birthed a completely bizarre one. My stoic face, aloof nature and ability to ignore also kinda fuelled these rumours and I became a 'bad-girl' who is a member of a big gang.