Speak Now, H.L. [phonics books .txt] 📗

I don’t know what it’s like to be bullied. I’ve never been bullied, never been the bully. I’m what you might call..the golden one. Straight As. Flashy smile. Popular. Everybody loves the golden one, right?
Wrong. Dead wrong.

And this is why.

Every night I come home. I feed my cat, then I feed myself. I do my homework silently, in my bedroom. My parents don’t bother me.
Every night I finish my homework before an hour has gone by. I can write an essay in two hours. I’m proud of that. I can read a chapter in 15 minutes. I’m proud of that too.
Every night I pack my lunch for the next day. I make sure I have the food pyramid in my lunch box. First, carbs. A sandwich, or pasta. Then dairy, usually cheese for protein. An apple a day. Maybe some carrot sticks. A few Hershey’s kisses for good luck.
Every morning I wake up on the early side, to make sure I’m never late to school. I make my breakfast, making sure I have enough protein to last me the day.
Every morning I get dressed, making sure it fits the school’s dress code. I check the weather, and make sure to grab a sweatshirt if I think it might be cold.
Every morning I get to school 15 minutes early, making sure I have all my homework. I greet all my teachers and friends with a warm smile, and make sure I have everything I need for a good start to the day.
During school I participate just enough. Not too much, however, making sure that other people have the chance to speak their minds as well.
I stay focused in class. I make sure I’m never the one talking when I’m supposed to be listening.

My day revolves around making sure of everything.

I always make sure I’m a good listener. People come to me for everything. My friend’s boyfriend tried to feel her up. My other friend was actually contemplating suicide. I talked him out of it. He felt better, thanks to me. That’s what everyone says.

My friends have their good and bad days. So do I, except my poker face is exceptional to theirs. I can become emotionless in a second if someone requires it. I never laugh too hard, or smile too big. I keep myself contained.

I have to say, it has it’s benefits.

Every time I read a book, I always wonder why the author chose to start a book in a certain place. Usually it’s when something starts to go wrong in the character’s life. Sometimes I think a book is a window into that person’s life. That’s partially why I’m writing this. I guess I’m writing this window, into my life.

And what’s about to go terribly, unbelievably wrong.

I don’t even remember how it started. Probably had something to do with the very first day of seventh grade. Every year, there’s only one or two new kids. There were two this year, a girl and a boy. I didn’t know either of them very well.
This boy, Grayson. He was interesting. Nobody really knew where he came from. My friend Martina had always been attracted to mysterious, and that he was. There were teenage pick up lines that I warned her against believing. I was the messenger. Of course, I didn’t mind. And then when it exploded, she never realized how much it affected me.
Needless to say, we aren’t close anymore, and that’s one of the reasons why. Again, of course I don’t mind.
That was the first year I noticed how out of place I felt. I’d always known how to behave, how to be the perfect student, the perfect daughter. Suddenly, being perfect didn’t matter. It was looks that counted. I didn’t wear makeup, or straighten my hair. I didn’t care what I looked like, as long as I got my work done and got straight As.
Suddenly, I started to care. It was completely silent peer pressure. I noticed I was only popular because everyone knew me. Cliques started to form, and I wasn’t in any of them. In order to stay on top of my schoolwork, I hadn’t stayed long enough with anyone to become good enough friends with them. I had no lasting relationships.
Because of my skill at hiding my feelings, I thought nobody would notice how panicked I felt. I thought it would just pass, and then I could go back to being the selfless and intelligent girl everyone knew was me. But it didn’t really happen that way.

If it wasn’t for her, I don’t know what I would have done. We had never been friends before, even though we were sort of in the same group. When things started to fall apart, we became friends for one reason: her life was falling apart too. Lacey’s parents were fighting, thinking about splitting up. Her grades were down in hell along with my social life. We had things to relate to. Maybe not the issues themselves, because in that case we were complete opposites. In the idea of your life suddenly falling apart, that we could relate to.
She was the first friend I learned to trust. In my eyes, you couldn’t trust anyone due to life’s unpredictable consequences. But with her, I knew I could trust her. It was something about her that just screamed it. She was special.
Even now, I don’t think she knows exactly what she did for me those years of junior high. Even I don’t know. All I do know is that she saved my life, and I owe her my thanks.
Unlike a lot of books I’ve read, I’m deciding to start right at the beginning. You could say it is an ending, too, but that seems too melancholy for a story like this. You’ll know what I mean by that soon enough.

After Martina and Grayson moved on from each other, I was slightly miffed at both of them. They walked away from me and never looked back. Never checked to see if I was okay from the mess they created and didn’t bother to clean up.
But I took a deep breath and fixed myself, and then cleaned it all up and smoothed things over. I didn’t mind. Or at least, by now, I was pretending not to mind.
Something had changed in me, something was different. I began to notice it right near this point in seventh grade. It was around December. I was unwilling to take any more crap from people. They used to throw their problems at me, and I would carry them around. Being me, I didn’t mind, right? But, I started throwing it back at them. And I didn’t like the person I was becoming. I was mean.
I told myself that it was just a phase, and that after I forgave Martina and Grayson, everything would go back to normal. Over Winter Break I lectured myself again about holding grudges. I slowly let it go, all that pain they had caused me.
Before I forget, I should remind you that this isn’t really the beginning of the story. This is when I realized that something was very wrong. Let me clarify something else. Martina is a repeat offender. In sixth grade, she did this exact same thing with a boy that I had a crush on since the day I saw him.