Loving The Bully

My eyes met the gray stormy sky through the window, and I sighed. The heaviness in the air outside mirrored my heart. It was screaming with perpetual sadness, anxiety… fear. My face grew tight, and even the thought this would be my last year of high school didn’t let the tension release me. It was stuck into my bones like my second nature.

“Honey, are you ready?” Mom appeared from the stairs, and I flipped my head to look at her. She was dressed in her business attire and beaming like a ray of sunlight.

I cracked my dry, tormented lips into a smile and squeezed my hands behind my back. I had to look fine. I couldn’t let her know what I was going through in school. I’d caused her enough anxiety, and I knew revealing the truth would only burden her. She stood by my side by obligation.

“I’ve been ready for more than twenty minutes,” I returned and weaved fingers through my mousy braid. My hands had grown painful with the way I was squeezing them.

For a moment, I enjoyed the clean feel of my hair because I knew it wouldn’t last long. It never stood through the first day of school, but I wanted to give it a try and keep it tamed until the moment came.

I knew the drill.

It could be getting pushed into a muddle in front of school, it could be getting spilled with some juice or cola, it could be getting burned with a lighter. I still remembered the way my hair smelled. My nose wrinkled for a millisecond, but I covered my expression as fast as possible. I was tired of being questioned what was wrong or how I felt. Isolated, sad, angry. My jaw tensed. How else?

“Is there something you’re not telling me?” I barely stopped myself from rolling my eyes. I was my mother’s daughter, so she noticed any small gesture that my face made. How could she expect me to be happy all the time, considering what happened three years ago?

“Mom, how many times do I have to tell you I’m fine?” My voice was gentle as I stood up from the window sill and headed to the front door.

Every time I walked through that door or looked through the window, I saw flames and terror. That night was stuck on repeat in my mind all the time and followed me in my nightmares. That familiar tightening of my chest made its presence known, but I pushed it down by swallowing and stepped out of the house.

“Ava, allow me to be your mother and to know you best,” mom said as she hovered behind me, and I made space for her to pass me. I hated walking in front of someone. It made fear crawl up my spine. I’d had people creep up behind me to hit me, shove me, pull my hair, or something equally or even more mean. My back prickled just at the thought, and I straightened my shoulders to hide my discomfort.

Mom eyed me with suspicion as she stood next to me.

I took her hands in mine to ease her worry. There were plays to be performed, and I had to be the main character in them. If she wanted to pretend she was concerned about me, I was going to pretend to calm her down. I couldn’t unveil the truth and show her that Chase was still tormenting me.

After all… they all thought I deserved it.

My reaction was like a hive all over my skin. I wanted to curl in on myself, but the need to keep the charade on was a requirement I couldn’t deny.

Besides, denying my fault or trying to make them see things in my perspective was fruitless.

This would never end. The charade, the animosity Chase and the town felt towards me, my misery and the agony that suffocated me every single second.

“Mom, I told you I’m fine,” I half growled, tired of repeating the same thing every day. Why was she even playing her role of a caring mother? Did she think I was actually buying it when I knew she tore the threads of our relationship?

My body stiffened at my somber thoughts, and I took a dip in that lake of black water my consciousness usually swam in. It was my second home, and when I couldn’t hide from the pain, I let myself drown in it for hours. It was one of the reasons my teachers often put me in detention—I couldn’t focus on the real world. Beth’s blue eyes often followed me in the real world and brought the flames of that night. That, in return, led me to panic attacks and feeling like the heat was all around me.

My fingers ached with the guilt the accident brought.

“I’m going to be late,” I mumbled and scurried towards the bus stop.

“Ava!” mom called out after me. “I thought I was going to drive you to school. What about Mab—”“Mabel said she’s going to miss the first class,” I yelled, not looking back at her, and hid behind the shed that my father used as an office before he left us. Sometimes, I wanted to kick it and blow it up.

I peeked from it and watched as mom sighed and entered her white car. Her hair wasn’t as shiny and curly as before, her clothes had grown darker over the past few years, and she’d gained some weight because of her emotional eating. My guts wailed, and I bit my lip to stop my frown. My hands were shaking. It was all my fault.

I leaned on the wall and took a deep breath, knowing I couldn’t just stand here and miss the first school day. I couldn’t let mom take me to school because I knew she would stay for a bit and she could see witness what I was going through. I hadn’t spent so much effort in hiding it only to ruin it on the very first day of the school year.

I ran to the bus stop on the other side of our house and shuddered in expectation. I had just one more year of high school, I could easily go through it and then hide at home. Right? My brows knit together. In reality, I doubted that would happen. Chase would never let me off, and mom was eager to have me out of the house once and for all. The world was spinning in on me, and I s*ck*d in a deep breath to remain standing. This wasn’t the time for another panic attack. It was the time to survive.

The bus appeared in the distance, and my arms dropped by my sides, doom gathering over my head. As the bus stopped in front of me and the door opened, I forced air into my lungs and got on. The faces that met me, the same old ones that had been tormenting me for the last three years, leered at me and shot me with their judgment and hateful thoughts.

I swallowed and headed to the last row, keeping my head down, until one of them shouted, “Hey, arsonist! How haven’t you set your house on fire yet?”

The weight of his words struck me so hard that my foot twisted to the side, and I started to fall. I supported myself on one of the seats, but a hiss came from it.

“Don’t touch, ew.” A girl frowned at me and shoved my hand away, causing me to fall on the floor.

“Take your seat!” the bus driver scolded me, but I couldn’t recover from the way I was called.

The Arsonist.

This had become my nickname at first, and as time passed, people forgot my actual name and called me the Arsonist. The whole town hated me because of it.

Because of what I did.

I opened my closed eyes and, using any possible strength I had, dashed to the backseats and hid behind the students. My eyes stared out the window, but I couldn’t see anything past my pain and the neverending flames that roared behind my lids. This burden was never going to leave.

Dashmond high school was glowering in my face with its big letters and old, three-story building. They had repainted the walls white during the summer, and the school yard had been cleared of grass and small holes, but the place was as sweltering as I remembered it. Dashmond meant innovative and powerful, but these were the last things I felt here.

This place was constricted of bullies and their supporters, and the teachers turned a blind eye to it. I glanced to the left where a few boys were pushing one of their regular victims in a certain direction. They were probably leading him to get his new high school year beating. The skin on my shoulders prickled, and I lowered my head like a dog, in the urgent need to hide. There was somebody behind me, and that aura was so powerful that I felt like I could be shot out of earth in a second. Spit left my mouth, but my dread was so strong that I couldn’t move my jaw to restart its production. My eyes shifted to my hands. The way they