Our Flawed Little Infinity

Chapter 1: The Rock

The first time she walked into that classroom, she didn't know. She didn't know what she was getting herself into. She barely noticed him. He didn't speak to her, didn't even look at her. She thought nothing of him. She'd come there with her friends, just to have fun. Not anything else. She didn't even think it would work out or that she would be able to stay, she just wanted to try. They got in lines and read a script off of a piece of paper. Loudly, and with great conviction, they said. In order to get a part, she needed to be loud and convicted. She tried her hardest. She still didn't notice him. Not his handsomeness or kindness or sense of humor. She was oblivious. There were others trying out, freshman like her and upperclassmen who never spoke to them. After the first day, she sat in the lobby with thoughts racing through her head. Barely into the first month of high school, and she was already doing something with her life. Her phone vibrated impatiently and she trudged out into the rain. All the time, she walked around with a heavy chest, like there was a weight taped to her. She got into the car, where her dad was waiting. She hated going home. Home was a trapped little place, full of pain and bullet wounds covered in Band-Aids. It hurt her that nobody understood what she was going through at home. Sure, she talked to her friends but nobody really understood. To them this was just a phase where she talked about sad things sometimes but was happy the rest of the times. That wasn't how it is. Those were the Band-Aids, the things she said, or rather didn't say to convince herself and even others that everything was fine. But it really wasn't. Nobody understood. Nobody else, not even the rest of her family. Sure, they understood more than most but she was the rock, the one who everybody talked to when they needed help or needed someone to talk to. She loved her family but they hadn't seen what she'd seen. They didn't see her ten year old sisters face when she told her that she wanted to kill herself. They didn't have to be strong and make her sister stay home and they didn't have to convince their sisters to come home and not to run away. She could still see it, the bikes parked on the side of the street, the bright yellow playground equipment, the fur trees, the dirty picnic benches, the half finished school construction site standing open and abandoned. She could still smell the sweat, and hear her sister telling her that she wanted to die, that she needed to be free, that it would be better without her there. No, they didn't understand how hard it was to be her, even during the first incident. Her parents expected her to be the rock underneath the family, the strong person who they could always fall on, but they forgot about her. They forgot that it was her sister that was sad, that she wasn't made of steel. They forgot that she was human because she had always been there for them before, and so they assumed that she could take anything, that she was more than human, but the truth is that she was rusted and corroded, and that she was about to break. She wished she was invincible, that she could be the rock that her family needed, but she just wasn't and that was ok.