My Monster

PART 1 // Chapter One: I Hate The World

PART 1

Chapter 1: I Hate the World

My parallel life with Shawn Henderson has been going on for eight years. It started with the dinners. The third Friday night of each month, my parents visit the Hendersons and drag me along. Bob Henderson is Dad's boss and golf buddy. They're supposedly "old pals," but all this means is that Dad behaves like an eccentric chihuahua on steroids in Bob's presence. It's revolting.

Our parents kept lumping Shawn and me together—as if we belong in the same universe and are automatically supposed to be friends just because we're the same age.

Eight years ago, we were both nine, and even back then, Shawn was too popular for his own good. It's not difficult to become popular when you're that small. Just have the neatest toys, the best snacks, the most exciting family vacations, and the nicest sneakers, plus the confidence to back it all up, and you're practically a god among the other kids.

We didn't attend the same elementary school, but I didn't need to be in his class to know how popular he was. He told me, with alarming awareness for a kid, how he got the other kids to worship him. He bragged about pitting them against each other, getting them to fight over who sat next to him on the school bus, who was on his team in PE, and who was allowed to play with him during recess. He controlled everything, he said, but they never noticed, and they loved him.

The obvious question to ask was why he would reveal himself to me and risk that he may someday, somehow, be exposed to the world?

But what's the point of purposefully being a jerk if you can't brag about it to someone? He saw my potential value as a girl not from his school. I was someone to commemorate his genius. If he kept the knowledge of what he was doing to himself, it was as if he wasn't actually doing it.

During the first few dinners, he would take me to his father's "den", try to offer me chocolate bars, which I always refused, and would talk and talk, looking happy and relieved. I would sit there on the overstuffed sofa and think to myself, This kid reminds me of Draco Malfoy, only less blond.

The first time he actually asked me a question about myself was on the sixth dinner.

"You're not popular in your school, are you?" He claimed for years that he didn't remember my name. He called me "you."

It was slightly better than what I called him. To his face, I didn't call him at all, but behind his back, he was "Greasy Fart-Face."

I remember rolling my eyes in response to his question. It was the stupidest question I had ever heard.

"I knew it," he replied triumphantly. "Everyone hates you because your hair is all orange and ugly."

Back then, my hair was a lot brighter than it is today. It was an orange that screamed at people. I had plenty of freckles too and hated every single one of them. But people didn't hate me—they were afraid of me. I was as intimidating as a sleeping serpent.

I still am.

"At least people feel something when they see me," I said. I was nine. I didn't actually understand that he was only goading me. "When they see you, they don't feel anything."

His face became very sour at my words. He wasn't expecting me to say that. It wasn't true; people loved him. He looked like a sweet angel back then, with huge blue eyes and a mane of dark curls. He had apples for cheeks, apples.

But I knew he wasn't as confident as he let everyone believe. I knew how to give voice to his small, bothersome insecurities. Like Shawn, even as a child, I had striking awareness of the world around me and how people in it worked.