Hang in There

Alice!

"Alice!" my mom yells from three rooms away. I don't get why she yells when she knows I'll probably not hear her. I get up and walk over to the living room to see what she wants." How's summer reading for school going?" she asks even though she already knows the answer. I scratch my head and look away, giving no answer. "You know Alice," she starts off lecturing me with, " school is only two weeks away and you still have to read a book for school. I'm not going to allow you to be lazy again and have to retake the class again this summer. Also, you need to clean your room by tomorrow, we have family coming over. "Okay mom" I say with no attitude whatsoever. She mumbles something in spanish that I don't hear and I take that as an opportunity to leave and go to my room.

I get into my room, closing the door behind me most of the way shut and turn on some music. Pierce the Veil plays then some My Chemical Romance, Twentyone Pilots, and Sleeping With Sirens follows. I honestly don't know what I would do without this kind of music. Some people are scared to even listen to it and give it a bad name just because it's "emo" music. But emo only stands for emotional and not everyone gets that. Either way, I love it too much to let anyone make me dislike it and think otherwise. I start cleaning my room starting with picking up clothes off the floor and then throwing away trash. Before I know it, my room is clean. Afterwards I lay on my bed and put my headphones in. The music gets more real and more serious. I lay back thinking about life. What have I done that's so great? I better stop before my thoughts escalate into unthinkable things.

I hear a ding come from my phone and find a text message from my ex girlfriend Josie. Ugh, what does she want? Ignore. I get another text and see that it's from my friend April. I always laugh when I think how hypocritical their name is of their personality. When you think of the month of April you always think of bright skies, flowers, and fresh air. The April I know is probably the most depressing person you'll ever meet. They are the queen of the emos, not to be confused with scene kids because they're a whole other group of people. Anyways, I look at their text and it says to meet them at the park. By the way, if i say them or they, I'm not using bad grammar, it's just that April is genderfluid and uses those pronouns.

I grab my black hoodie and walk to the living room where my mom is. I ask her if I can go meet April and she says yes. I walk past all the houses on the block. They all have fences that you can't see through and signs that say "do not trespass". The signs should say "No, I'm definitely not hiding anything". The sidewalks are all unlevel and have cracks in them. Man, I can't wait to leave this town after high school. I walk several more blocks and finally reach the park. I see April standing near the playground handing candy out to little kids. I also see some parents steering away their kids and quickly walking away, throwing away the candy into the trash can. I don't know if they know how suspicious they seems. I'm pretty sure they do know. "Hey, do you wanna borrow my trenchcoat too?" I sarcastically ask them. They roll their eyes and says in the most sarcastic voice, "Do you have a white van I can borrow as well?".

April is pretty tall, 5'8 maybe. They have pretty short dark black hair covers their eyes. They're wearing black eyeliner that brings out their light green eyes. They are wearing tight black pants, an Asking Alexandria band t-shirt, and maybe five wristbands. "How are you?" I ask them. "How do you think I am?" she replies. "True" I respond. "How are you doing Ash?" they asks me.Yes, they just called me Ash. I came out to my mom last year and told her that I on the inside feel like I am male. She didn't exactly object to it but she won't consider me her son because she thinks my younger brother won't understand. So at school I have people use he and him pronouns for me. "Same as normal, nothing is getting better. I always try to stay clean for a while but after three days I give in". "I know how you feel" they tell me. We move off this depressing topic and start to go on a walk.

We throw rocks at duck that are in the pond and watch as they fly away. Yes, I know, that's pretty sad for the ducks. We walk and I feel something bite my ankle. Oh great. ANOTHER bug bite. Must resist urge to scratch it. Stupid spider. The sun starts to go down and we start to walk to my house. I get to my door and say goodbye to April. "See you later," they say. "Bye" I reply as I start to unlock the door. It doesn't unlock when I turn the key. I try jiggling the key in the lock a bit until I realize that I've been turning it the wrong way. Well that was embarrassing. Glad no one was here to see that.

I get inside and my mom is sitting on the living room couch. "Why did Find My iPhone say that you were at the Rite Aid?," she asks with some annoyance "I thought you said that you two were going to the park" she continues. "Sorry, April fell and their knee started bleeding." I explained. " Okay then. You should've asked me first. I need to know where you are all the time. These kind of things make it hard for me to trust you with going out by yourself. I feel like the fact that you didn't tell me was you actually lying to me about where you were so that you can do something that I don't like" she lectured me with this for maybe ten minutes. I stood by the front door for all that time nodding and acknowledging her, letting her hear what she wants to hear. I often did this so that I can get out of these situations as quickly as possible and escape to my room. I go after she finally dismisses me and head to my room. Yes, I'm practically a hermit. I almost never leave my room, except for food, restroom, school, etc. I get in and not close the door behind me because I'm not allowed to close it all the way anymore. I'm surprised that I still physically have a door and that my mom hasn't gone and unscrewed the hinges and literally removed it.

I lay down on my bed and think back to earlier today at the Rite Aid. We had an interesting time there. We were walking around the park when April fell and scraped their knee. It was bleeding quite a bit and we decided to go to the convenient store nearby to get band- aids. As we were walking in, people gave us weird looks. I wonder why people would look at us that way. Sense the sarcasm there? They probably think that we're no good and that we'll probably steal something while no one is looking. You know, maybe if people didn't make assumptions about others when they don't know the whole truth, then maybe the world would have a slight chance at being a better place. But i guess it's never going to happen because everyone has to see the speck in my eye while ignoring the log in their eyes. Oh well. What can I do?

We walked to the back of the store where the band-aids were. When we got to the aisle, we saw someone we knew from school. O gosh, we weren't ready for what happened next. There's a reason for summer vacation, to get away from people at school you don't like. Who thinks that I would want to see them two weeks before school, in public? The girl we saw was Jessica. She was the worst, meanest, girl you could ever meet. She always has a way of coming off like an angel around adults but the second they leave, she was a little demon. When she wants something, she can be the most fake person you've ever met. Most cars run on gasoline to get going but she fuels off of other people's misery. I'm pretty sure she saw us before we saw her because when we started walking towards her, where the band-aids were, she looked disgusted. "Okay," I started to mumble to April," Maybe if we don't make eye contact, we can avoid trouble." "Who cares what she thinks of us? She has nothing better to do then to make other feel bad" April whispered. "Yeah but we want to get the band-aids asap." I say and then point to their knee. "Oh, right. I forgot that blood was coming out of my knee," they responded. We walked over, got the band-aids, and started to turn around to walk to the cashier but I guess we weren't quick enough.

"What are you losers doing here?" Jessica asked. Well hey, at least she's not pretending to like us. I pull on April's arm, signaling for them to move on. They of course, being April, has to speak up and say something. " You wanna go? I'm ready to kick your ass right now blondie." they yelled. "Why don't you go and kill yourself? It's obvious that you already want to." she said with no hesitation. Who the heck says that? If someone is obviously in a dark place, you don't go and tell them to kill themselves. It bothers me so much when people joke around about that topic. Especially when they exaggerate and mess around about it like suicide is no big deal. It pisses me off when someone says " I have soccer practice after school. I'm going to kill myself " Do they know how serious that is? After having enough, I pull on April's arm and drag them out of the store. We never got the band-aids.