His arm drops to his side when I create distance between us.
“This conversation is ten years too late.” Crawling back into my bunk and leaving him to hover speechless, I close my curtain to hide my tears.
The internet is right; I may be a bitch, but the world made me this way.
TWENTY-EIGHT
LILY
PAST
There’s a saying: as we grow older, we get wiser.
I choose to believe that as I get ready for my first day of high school, refusing to accept that the bullying will follow me into grade nine.
They’re going to get bored someday, and the day that happens, it will be the best one I’ve lived so far.
Smoothing down the best black sundress I have, only wearing it because I want Elijah to see me as a woman and not a little girl anymore, I smile at myself in the mirror.
I’ve got this.
I’ve got this.
“Lily, Elijah is here!” my mom’s voice calls out from downstairs.
Giving myself one last glance, with my bag over one shoulder, I rush down the stairs.
“Wow, you look fancy,” Elijah says, waiting by the door once I round the corner.
“This is a casual dress,” I correct him, hopping around the foyer, trying to lace up one sneaker.
With a fist around one of my biceps, he helps me balance. “Little Miss Monkey, do you have shorts under there?”
Bringing my leg up and almost touching my knee to my nose, I smirk at his dumbfounded expression. “You tell me.”
“Ye-yes,” he stammers and looks over my shoulder nervously.
Spinning, I spot both my parents lurking in the hallway, spying on us.
“Mom, Dad!” I whine, suddenly the embarrassed one.
Dad holds up his hands in surrender while my mom hides her laughter behind a fist.
“We just wanted to wish you guys a good first day of school,” Dad says before kissing Mom on the temple.
“It’s not just going to be good.” My best friend swings his arm across my shoulders and squishes me to his side. “It’s going to be great. Right, Lulu?”
“Right,” I chirp back, my giant smile matching his.
Fingers crossed.
Whoever came up with that saying was lying.
At the end of the day, my shoulders ache from how many times Mia and Luna pushed me. The fingers they pointed in my face in the hallway while laughing gave me a headache. And like the “popular” girls they are, they recruited some minions to hate on me too.
They can have them. Anyone who hates me before even hearing the way my voice sounds is someone I don’t want in my life.
Two months into the school year, shoves become body slams, and laughing far away turns into right in my face. The looks? They get dirtier and dirtier.
