The Chronicles of Aida Sickler | H.S

one.

The chapters will get longer and better as we progress, just a reminder. Also! Please leave feedback, it gives me a sense of direction and it helps a lot. Please enjoy.

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Future Aida speaking here; I know it's confusing but bear with me ladies and gents.

Without seeming awfully cliche, in reference to that last bit, I didn't intentionally go into high school looking for someone to fall in love with. Contrary to popular belief, not every girl entering their freshman year wants a boyfriend. I don't think that's a popular belief but let's just make it a hypothetical situation. According to statistics that are unreliable, every 7 in 10 girls have once had a boyfriend or kissed a boy before sophomore year. These statistics are unreliable because I myself have gotten the data from 10 sophomore girls. Seven, including myself, have had their first kiss. The other three girls haven't because two of them are lesbians, and the other is my friend Alicia.

Alicia plays an important role in this story because she is my designated best friend. She actually doesn't apply to my unreliable statistics because she's.. done things. Pretty self explanatory if I do say so myself.

Anyway. This is how it all went down.

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It was the first day of sophomore year in this town that I have been in since I was about 12. I moved from the town over, but it was still a pretty large adjustment. It's a new school with new people, I think you catch my drift.

"Making friends" wasn't on my to do list. Coming into a new school in a small town means mingling with groups of friends that have been groups of friends for a long time. That's really what I was afraid of, stepping in where I wasn't welcome and not relating to inside jokes that needed explanation. That's when people usually say,

"You should've involved yourself anyway! That's how you make friends."

Easier said than done. Especially in a predominantly white school who treated you more like a history museum exhibit rather than an actual human being; questions constantly asked quietly amongst themselves but never presented to the piece because the piece cannot explain itself in the time of their short attention span.

So I've been here for four years and I've only latched onto three people and I barely hang out with them. Except for Alicia. Alicia has been to my house so many times I don't even consider her a friend but more a family member. Once you get sick of spending time with your friends, they're not really friends anymore. It would help if she were black though, my mother always questioned why I didn't befriend someone who matched my skin tone. It wasn't intentional of course. I didn't go into school thinking that I was only going to befriend "my own kind". I sort of follow the not judging a person by their skin color method but I digress.

So there I sat, in the back of the homeroom I had the year prior, my hair frizzing from the humidity coming from the open window behind me. Sun kissed girls greeted their friends with hugs and automatic spurts of over the summer gossip while I twiddled my thumbs, watching as the clock ticked. My homeroom teacher sat at his desk, new pictures of him on vacation with his family taped lazily on the walls nearest to where the new whiteboard was placed. He played some music from his Spotify playlist and greeted me with a smile as his eyes travelled to the corner where I sat, alone. And completely satisfied, might I add.

"Aida, how was your summer?" His smile was genuine and for a thirty-something year old married man, I found this unusual. I was only 16 and I felt like I got the gist of the dark corners in this world due to unnecessary research on serial killers and money hungry government officials. Just a brief explanation; I get really fucking bored.