If You Smile At Me Today [ON HOLD]

Prologue [Part Two]- Titch

 My room is freezing cold when I awake. I pull the duvet up, over my head, and shut myself away from the early morning light that invades my room from around the edge of the curtains. The sun is so rude, letting itself into places it isn’t wanted… I hate that. Too much light, too much heat, too much tanning, make it stop. I wait for my mother to start yelling for me to get up, but she doesn’t. Then I remember that it is a week day and she and dad are already at work. And no-one cares.

 I roll over and peer out from under the covers at my alarm clock which goes tick, tick, tick. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t. Today I have woken up a couple of minutes earlier than necessary, and I wonder why. I hate that- waking up early. It just means more time in the real world and less time in the world where anything can happen. Not that I really dream, not anymore. I sold my dreams to save my soul a long time ago. I just seem to… stop existing for a couple of hours.

 So I sigh and sit up and swing my legs over the bed and shudder as more cold air hits me. I make my way slowly and sleepily to the bathroom, unsure whether or not I want the lights to be on or off. I settle for on. And then I am sat on the floor and I can hear running water, and I panic and wonder where it is coming from. Then I realise that it is coming from the shower- I had turned it on and then forgotten about it. I was always doing that.

 In the shower my mind starts wondering again. I think about music, food, and people. People that surround me in my everyday life. If I fall and hit my head in the shower and die, will they miss me?

 If he smiles at me today.

 Is it weird to think about people in the shower? Probably, but once they are in my mind they won’t get out, and they are making it dirty, so I have to scrub, scrub, scrub at my skin until I am clean. If I am clean on the outside, I will be clean on the inside too. Hopefully. Pray.

 I jump out of the shower and wrap myself in a large towel which has been on the radiator for a long time so that it may shield me from the coolness of the air. I go back into my bedroom and sit on my bed for a long moment, thinking about nothing as there is nothing worth thinking about.

 Uniform. Coffee. Brush teeth. Pack bag. Leave.

 I forget to put on the house alarm, unlock the front door, put on the house alarm, and lock the door again.

 This morning on the way to school I listen to The Ballad Of Mona Lisa by Panic! At the Disco.

 I have to squint against the bright sunlight as I walk. I find it strange that it is warmer outside than it is indoors. That rarely happens. The strap on my schoolbag is so low that I can feel my books bash against my cal with every step I take. I can’t hear anything other than the music blasting form my headphones, but if I didn’t have my IPod on I would probably hear cars, rustling leaves, heavy, light, slow, fast paced footsteps, mothers calling for their children to come back to them, teenagers teasing each other and laughing on their way.

 It is hard to tell whether I am late or not when I finally arrive at school; lots of people aren’t in their form rooms, but they are all walking quicker than normal. I keep my pace the same and therefore get shoved around a lot in the vast sea of people on their way around school. I normally get shoved around, in fact, as people don’t seem to notice me very much, and today is no exception. There isn’t one person in the over a thousand students ehre that I would call my friend. Not one person that I would even smile to.

 Well, maybe one person I would smile to.

 If he smiles at me today.

 And then I am standing outside my form room, and I sigh and push the door open, and eyes flicker over to me without really seeing me before reverting back to whatever they had been looking at before. I pull my thick black cardigan tighter around myself to save me from the lack of warmth emanating from these people, making my way to the back of the classroom to sit in the corner and ignore the world.