In creative writing on Monday, we talked about conflict. It was then that I realized that I had no clue what I was doing. I didn't know any of what my characters internal conflict would be. I had actually gone into more detail with a side character, who I originally hated.
When answering a series of forty-six questions about him, I realized that he could still be annoying, but he had backstory. Oh boy did he have backstory. He had been flying (this is a story about dragons) with his little brother, when his little brother fell off the dragon. His brother died, and he was never able to fly on a dragon again. His parents were hardly ever home and with his brother dead, he was always alone. When he finally got his dragon who had no wings, he felt slightly happier.
But then, his life was brutally ripped away from him again. And the main character blamed herself for his death.
I honestly liked his story better.
He was my newest fictional crush.
He was my new Gansey.
Incidentally, on Wednesday I thought that I saw Gansey (the guy who looked like Gansey) twice. On Monday he (or maybe someone else, I started second guessing myself) passed my table at lunch before my friends got there, and I probably stared for too long.
On Wednesday, I thought that I saw him when I was going to lunch, but I honestly had no clue. And when I was sitting on the bus, waiting for Nikki, I thought I saw him. But then I realized that it wasn't. It just looked like him. Are there more than one Gansey/Four lookalikes in this school? I asked myself.
Anyway, Wednesday in creative writing, we talked about plot.
That was when I realized that I had plot, but not so much conflict. And when I started writing the plot, I got confused. I got lost. But as I wrote answers to questions about my story's plot, I became ever so slightly more comfortable. I thought that maybe, just maybe, I could actually finish this. I could actually not give up. I just had to hope that no one opened my folder until December. And that was hoping a lot.
We had the computer lab, which meant that we did almost everything on the computer. I actually hated this, as ideas mostly came to me on paper. I was planning to start my book on paper, Sunday at midnight, write through the morning, and then type it up later or when I got to school on Tuesday. But an additional reason to hate the computers was that everyone could open everyone's folders. We could all read everything that anyone in the class had written, if we wanted. And that terrified me. What if someone read the crap that I wrote? It was absolute crap.
Thursday felt off. Wrong. Thursday was wrong. Everything about it.
I took a test in math, and I felt off. I felt like I did okay, maybe good. But I felt off anyway. Like something was wrong. In history I didn't have time to feel like anything was different. And nothing was. Our history teacher had been really nice and cool at the start of the year. But eight week into the year, he seemed to hate us. On Wednesday he had told us that we were getting new seats. But we didn't. I didn't know why, but I was fine with it. And at the end of class, as always, the bell rang without warning and we all had to grab our things and run out the door.
This was particularly inconvenient as leaving a minute late messed with everything. It meant that I saw different people in the halls, and it meant that I had to walk behind slower people. The person walking behind me, at one point stepped on my heels every three seconds. Not that I could do anything about it. I was practically pressing my body into the person in front of me. It didn't really help that there were about four people just standing in the center of the hall.
Standing and talking.
By the time that I got to class, it had taken three minutes. That may sound fine, but it would probably take me a minute to get there if it weren't for the other people. It also wasn't fine because the bell rang at 11:17 am. Six minutes. All we had to get to class was six minutes. And they wondered why people were always late?! Maybe if they gave less time, though, people would move faster.
Probably not. They would move at the time pace, and I would be late.
By the end of science, I was ready for death. But I had no idea just how ready for death one could be. I had yet to go to health. Ahh, health. My last year of health. That was what got me through the first quarter. I don't know what I thought was going to get me through the second quarter. Driver Ed. I had decided to take life one day at a time, at least for now.
We had a test in health, and that was it, I thought. But we also ended up doing something that has to do with community service on the computers. I honestly decided that I didn't care at all, but I would do what the librarian said to do. Fifty hours of community service for some seal on my diploma? No problem. I had to do about a hundred for Girl Scouts to get my gold award. But I did hate that it was Girl Scouts. Seeing as I was not a girl. I was a nothing.
But anyhow, I got a ninety percent on my health test. I had accepted my nineties in health. And I had moved on. It was the second to last day of the quarter, after all. There were two good things that came of that day, though.
Firstly, I saw Gansey. I had come to the conclusion that I must still have the same lunch times as him, just like the year before. That pleased me, as he was very aesthetically pleasing. And second, I finally got into The Anatomy Of Curiosities. I hadn't made it past page thirty-three the day before. But by the end of the day, I was through page eighty.
Sitting on the bus, I tried to listen to music and read The Perks of Being a Wallflower again. It was my favorite book. But that's probably when I started realizing that things felt off.
I don't know why, but I just felt so wrong.
Every time that the bus came to a stop, I looked up, but we seemed to be getting to all the stops too fast. At one point, I jumped because I thought that it was my stop. But then I realized that it wasn't, and then I felt kind of sick.
As I listened to the theme music from Back to the Future, I really felt off. It didn't sound right unless I imagined Clara leaning out the side of the train, and Marty and Doc finally realizing that she was there, that part in the third movie. And at some point, it stopped working. So I just imagined in the second movie when Marty first arrives in the future, and then I didn't feel too sick.
But when I thought about it, I felt sick again. I just wanted to stop this feeling that was growing inside me.
This feeling that everything was wrong, not just something.
Friday was fine. It was bland.
Saturday was Halloween. I was Cecil from Night Vale. No one knew what I was. But that was okay; I had a glow cloud.
But it took some convincing to get Nikki to go trick or treating with me. Lacy had a concussion from volleyball (she was a manager and had gotten hit on the head), so there was no way that she was going.
I finally convinced Nikki to go trick or treating, and we had a great time. But it was probably the last time I would ever go, I realized. That just made me feel sick, even in the weeks to come, so I tried not to think about it.