Thirteen

30 Minutes In Hell

The next day it was back to school and regular weekly routines started up as if that entire weekend had never happened.

I woke up feeling the exact same way I did my last day of being twelve. It was as if my thirteenth birthday had all been some sort of dream.

When I arrived at the bus stop, I found myself smothered by 8-year-old May Belle who I hadn't seen one sight of the day before.

"Happy Birthday, Les! I know I'm late, but Jess wouldn't let me hang around at all yesterday. I made you this" the girl said, yanking at something she had suppressed in her small pink backpack.

She placed a small mug in my hand that had been painted by obviously May Belle herself. It was covered in pink and purple splatters of paint as well as writing I made out as "Happy Birthday, Leslie" with a painted picture of May Belle and me, hand-in-hand.

"Awe, it's beautiful! You made this for me?"

The brunette nodded excitedly.

"Thank you, May! It's definitely one of my favorite gifts" I smiled at her, giving her a sense of reassurance.

"I thought since Jess was hand making a gift for you I would do the same. Especially since my spending money for your birthday was $20 less than his. He only got 20!" she sighed hysterically, causing me to laugh with her.

"Hey, where's Jess?" I asked after having a moment to realize he wasn't at his little sister's side.

"He said he wasn't feeling good this morning. He might come to school later in the day. That's what Mommy told me."

As she finished answering my question, the bright yellow school bus pulled up at our side, receiving a giggly leap from the fourth grader as she jumped anxiously on the bus to meet her long-term best friend, Alexandra.

I stepped on not a moment after her, mentally preparing myself for the usual 30 minute bus driver, except this time without my best friend right beside me, and found myself a seat near the back. Now that Janice had been in Lark Creek High a few years now, the back row wasn't exactly anyone's territory anymore.

"Hey Heather" a familiar and unpleasant voice spat from behind me.

Ricky Manning.

Ever since transferring to Lark Creek Elementary from some preppy school in Roanoke, Ricky had become good friends with Scott Hoager and Gary Fulcher, my worst enemies since the fifth grade.

Manning had went out of his way to torture me even more so than Hoager or Fulcher had. Jess was Scott's ultimate target, I was Ricky's and Fulcher fell at the side of whoever needed him for backup.

I rolled my eyes at Ricky's familiar nickname for me. For the entire year of seventh grade, he, Scott and Gary had always referred to me as "Heather." I never knew why until one day Tom Jacobs did some snooping around and found out the deeper meaning behind the unappealing nickname.

Last year, the high school did a play called The Sound of Music, and openly allowed students from the elementary school to audition for roles.

Both Grace and I auditioned and made it. I obtained one of the major roles with a variety of speaking parts. Grace, maintaining a lesser role was still proud of her accomplishment in making the cut for the high school play.

Tom found out long after their continuous mocking with use of the name "Heather" that the role I was casted as, as soon as the play first was brought to life years and years ago, was played by someone named Heather who had plenty of sexual interactions with fellow cast members that was evidently known to the public.

The actress was in no way similar to me at all, I had never crossed sexual boundaries for as long as I had lived. And even if I had, Ricky Manning or any of those other boys would definitely not have known about it.

I decided maturely to ignore Ricky's inappropriate way to mock me and kept my head held high as if I hadn't heard a word he said.

That didn't go as far as I had initially hoped. This was confirmed when I felt a light smack to the back of my head. And there he had crossed the line I had put in front of him.

I turned around to face my opponent and found myself face-to-face with a mask which was painted like a gruesome monster, making me question his maturity even more.

"Is this somehow supposed to scare me?" I sighed, quite used to his reckless and immature behavior.

"Sure it is, Heather."

I sighed, and nearly turned myself back around to face forward again.

"That is, if this is second grade" he spat and laughed at his own joke. Even on his own this kid seemed strong.

"Supposing you're not in second grade, what kind of sick joke is this?" I asked sternly with an unamused expression painted across my pale face.

"Oh, this?" he played dumb, pointing feverishly at the mask he wore before pulling it up to reveal his face.

"This is just what you and Jess's kid is probably gonna look like after you screw each other over" he laughed, once again, at his own immature joke.

I repeated the action of rolling my eyes and resuming my position of facing forward in my seat.

In the fifth grade, the worst comments I got were about my fashion choices, my what seemed to them as never-growing hair and my lack of participation in girly activity. Now having advanced three years, the comments I received were still the same ones, but with a few extra ones about Jess and my friendship usually involving romantic acts such as making out or participating in sexual activity.

The rest of the bus ride was a continuation of inappropriate and nerve wracking comments from Ricky Manning in the seat behind me. Boy was I ever lucky that Gary Fulcher was on another bus and Scott Hoager lived within walking distance of the school.

The sight of Lark Creek Elementary School had never made me happier. I was more than eager to get off the bus and into class than I had ever been before. It was a feeling that made me feel sick inside, like I was going to collapse at any given moment as I walked shakily down the hallway towards my locker. At that point I knew it was going to be a rough day at Lark Creek Elementary.