Daffodil Sprouts🌼

Ch. 53 ' Hope.

It’s what transpired between Sam, Mal and me this morning that helps me be alive in school. That helps me be there, in class, learning. It lessened so much of the weight I’ve been carrying around. The same weight that made yesterday seem like a blur. Amazing how much of life someone misses out on while buried in depression. Amazing, and sad.

While I’m glad to regain a semblance of my consciousness, the stares which I’m now aware of are unnerving. They were much easier to deal with when I didn’t notice them. Now, try hard as I may, I can’t bring myself to not care about them. Can’t bring myself to not wonder what's going through their head as they stare at me. What they're thinking of.

At first, I saw all the stares as glares. I thought they were all mad at me and cursing me out in their minds for what happed to Jason, but a few of them have come to me. Some were eager to know how Jason was doing, some offered condolences and expressed support, and some merely smiled. Those little smiles given when the person doesn’t think it’s okay to ask how you’re doing, so they smile an ‘I-hope-you’re-doing-fine’ instead.

Most of the other stares are passive. Unfamiliar. A few were painfully familiar. Like the faces of Jason’s friends. There are some faces I don’t even know how to feel towards. Like Leo’s. Angel’s. Leo had the mind to keep eye contact but, Angel didn’t. She looked away immediately. I thought, well, if anybody should be looking away, it’s her.

———

Sixth period, Bella comes marching into the class. Towards me. Her face looks mellow, but not her demeanour, and when she finally slows down in front of me, I can tell she's angry.

I thought this girl apologised just yesterday. Has she relapsed back to b**ching me so fast?

“I apologized, didn’t I? I said I was sorry,” she stresses each word. Slowly, deliberately, like she’s controlling her emotions from getting out of mind.

“I said I was sorry for everything. I was sincere, AND I never confessed to being responsible for theft of—”

“What are you talking about?”

She can’t just come dumping her emotions on me. I’m already torn enough as it is and don’t need some other thought bothering me. “What is this about? Why are you even here talking to me?”

Her eyes screen me for a few seconds. “You— you’re not the one who reported me to the Principal?”

There’s a sharp silence. A drop. A cut. A halt. Like a time halt. Sh*t.

“Reported . . . reported what?”

She opens her mouth to answer, blinks in confusion, looks at me, and then turns away, leaving.

“Bella! Reported what?”

“Everything,” she says, her back still turned to me. “The principal knows everything now. Everything that’s happened in the past week . . . ”

It feels like a weight is being lifted off my shoulder with every sentence she says. Every meaning I make of her statements washes relief on me. Surprising, because, till now, I didn’t know this is how it would feel.

“Oh.”

She turns to me now. “Oh?”

“Yes, Oh.”

She bristles. A little.

“What? Should I feel sorry for you?”

She starts shaking her head—

“What you thought . . . you really came here to confront me about reporting you, which I didn’t, but the fact that you even thought you could confront me for reporting you if I did do it,” I pause, letting it sink in. She’s unbelievable. “The audacity.”