Flashback to April 11, 2012…

It was lunch time at El Dorado middle school. I walk outside to find my best friend, Aiko Soragami, sitting in her usual spot: the wooden bench that overlooked the tennis courts. She’s a thin girl with long black hair, and the daughter of a couple of Japanese immigrants. She has a Hello Kitty lunchbox that had contained the peanut butter and jelly sandwich she’s currently eating.

“Hi, Aiko!” I say cheerily, sitting to her right. “I was hoping to find you here.”

“Hey Ashley,” Aiko says. For some reason, she sounds… dull today.

There is an awkward pause. I suppose it’s time for me to spill what’s on my mind.

“I was going to sit with Tasha and Nathan like usual, but… they didn’t… they don’t want me to sit with them anymore.”

Aiko doesn’t say anything at first. She eats the last bite of the sandwich and closes her lunchbox. Then she asks, “You don’t have any food. Aren’t you going to eat something?”

“Um… well… I had a big breakfast,” I say, blushing a little bit. (I was hoping that she might have some extra food, but it’d be rude to ask for it now.) “Aiko… do you think that I’m a braggart?” I ask her suddenly.

“Well, I have to admit, you’ve let your skills in band get to your head a bit,” she says, still looking straight forward.

I sigh at the ground. So it is true… I guess I really do need to learn to reel it in. “It feels like nobody wants to hang around me anymore,” I tell her.

Because it’s true. Everywhere I go, I can’t shake the feeling that people are avoiding me… And with Tasha’s rejection still ringing in my ears, I can’t ignore it any longer.

Aiko doesn’t say anything to that, so we just sit here for about a minute.

As I think about what I planned to do, I feel a fresh wave of anxiety… but I just have to do it. I have to find out. It’s going to tear me apart from the inside if I don’t.

I turn to her. “But… you still like me, right?”

Then, my nerves get the better of me, and I grab her hand. She furrows her eyebrows and says, “Um, Ashley…?”

“Because I like you,” I say very quickly and nervously, the words spilling from me before I can stop them. “I like you a lot. Like, as more than just friends. And if you…”

But then, she retracts her hand from me, looking shocked. She quickly gets up, and just looks at me for about thirty seconds, before turning around and sort of jogging away.

And… um… I’m not sure what to do from there.

Maybe I should’ve… took it a little slower? I may have freaked her out by grabbing her hand…

Of course, I’d been preparing myself for this… She may not be interested in other girls, or in me… And of course, I can’t fault her for that. But somehow, I can’t shake the plummeting feeling in my stomach… Had I just messed up our whole friendship? Aiko’s the only one left now who’s willing to be friends with me… if I lost her… Or had she already been having second thoughts about me? She seemed so cold the whole time, even before I popped the question… She’s normally so sweet and polite...

All of these thoughts are going to drive me nuts with anxiety, so I get up to head back into the school.

As I go through the door, I see Emily approaching from the other way. I hold the door open and say, “Hey Emily!”

She glares at me suspiciously and uses the other door. “Don’t get too close to me,” she says.

“Huh?” I say stupidly, as I feel another stab in my stomach. What on earth is going on…? We never knew each other that well, but I’ve never seen her act like this…

Then, I gaze down the hallway, and…

I see a group of other girls partway down the hallway, all looking at me, some of them pointing.

And in the middle of them, was Aiko.

It seems that all of my worst fears are confirmed.

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I feel numb. I feel nothing but numb. I don’t want to think about anything. I can’t.

I hear the sound of the door opening and closing.

“Hey Ashley! I’m home!” My father’s voice says.

I can’t find it in me to respond. I just sit there. Blank. My eyes are glued to the television screen. I’m watching a re-run of some old Nick show.

After about a minute, I hear my father’s voice again.

“Hey, didn’t we still have half a tub of ice cream left? Don’t tell me you ate all of it! That’s not good for your teeth.”

I don’t say anything. An empty tub of ice cream sits to my left, the spoon still sitting on the inside.

I hear footsteps behind me, indicating that my dad has entered the room. I’m expecting him to yell, but instead, there’s a few seconds of silence. And then...

“Well… on the other hand, I’m not a big fan of caramel in ice cream, so I’m glad you finished it off for me.” I hear him shifting around behind me, and then I feel him scratching my back. “Rough day at school?”

I don’t say anything. How could I explain what happened?

I already lost all of my friends. I can’t risk losing my parents, too.

“Hey, I think I remember this,” my dad says. “What’s this show called again?”

“Hey Arnold,” I say weakly. “It’s an old Nickelodeon show.”

“Hey, it’s not that old!” my father says. “I think this was coming out around the time your mom got married, when we had first moved here… okay, I guess that’s old for you.”

There was a minute of awkward silence, and then he puts a hand on my shoulder.

“Hey, um… If you need to talk, you can always come to your mom and I. You can tell us anything, I promise.”

I don’t say anything to this.

Still just numb.

If only he knew...

After a while, he sighs, and then exits the room.

Meanwhile, in Hey Arnold, Arnold and an old man wearing a sort of pilot’s hat walk through a door onto a roof. Everything up there had been trashed, and was lying in ruins.

If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

“What?” Arnold asks. “This is awful! Who did this?”

The other man sadly begins walking away. “People, Arnold,” he says.

“We can rebuild your cages… and sweep up,” Arnold says hopefully, putting a piece of furniture back upright. “Your birds will come back!”

“Of course they’ll come back,” the man says, standing near the edge of the roof. “They’re birds. I trust them. I understand them. It’s people I don’t understand. You see Arnold… it’s time for me to leave here. Some people are meant to be with people. And some people, like me, are just… different.”

As you can imagine, this scene just lifts my spirits.

No, I’m being sarcastic. I start bawling my eyes out. So much so, that I never actually find out how the episode ends.

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[Well… It feels like everyone hates me now. All of the others at school do. Even Aiko hates me. If my parents knew about me, they’d probably hate me too. But… You don’t hate me, do You?] [That’s not even possible… right?]

[I just… I don’t want this anymore. You are the master of healing, right? You can take this away from me, this sickness.]

[Please, Lord, please just take this away from me. I know I’ve been acting like a bad person. I don’t want to be like that anymore. Please…]

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Back to 2014…

It was the morning of the first football game. I’m dressed in the under-uniform band clothes: a school t-shirt and basketball shorts. I’m very meticulously brushing my hair in the bathroom.

Why are these memories coming back now…? Truth be told, I usually try not to think about what happened that day.

There’s a soft knock on the door. “Don’t be too much longer,” Dad says. “We gotta leave in about five minutes.”

“What time is it?” I ask, still brushing my hair.

“7:24,” he says.

“Oh shiiiii… oot,” I say. “I’ll be right out.”

I guess I lost track of time while I was being all emo and shit.

[That was the day that everything changed for me…]

[Whenever I ask myself, “Oh God, what happened to me?” Well, that’s the answer, isn’t it?]

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I suppose today’s a pretty important day, too. Apart from the first football game, I have my first quizzes in two of my classes, the first one being my AP Human Geography class.

Most AP classes are reserved for our junior and senior years, but Human Geography is offered to a special selection of students who got excellent grades in eighth grade history.

Zoe could’ve gotten into here with me, but she actually chose to decline, not wanting the extra pressure. I can’t blame her. She’s a pretty bright kid, but she just goes to pieces any time there’s a quiz or test, and AP classes have quite a lot of those. Unfortunately, the absence of her company means that I have to deal with these idiots by myself.

While reviewing some flashcards I had made in the minutes before class, I feel a tap on my shoulder. I don’t even turn to look around, because I already know what’s about to happen.

“Hey Ashley! Can I… see those real quick?”

That’s Diana Coleman. Like Zoe, she goes to my church, but I’ve never liked her all that much. She’s always come across to me as a bit of an idiot. She’s basically one of those kids who wants to get through school without putting any work in. So obviously, I tell her “no.”

“...No? Please Ashley? I’m panicking!”

“That’s not my fault,” I say, because it isn’t. I’m the one who went through the trouble to put these together, not her.

I would’ve loved to get back to reviewing, but at that point I’m interrupted yet again, by a familiar, whiny voice which is now impersonating a stereotypical old English accent, saying “Sorry, the peasants must payeth thy taxes before speaking to the queen!”

I turn my head head to right, and I see him: Mason Wallace.

Mason Wallace is a boy whom I dislike possibly more than anyone else on the entire planet. I understand from the Bible that hatred is a sin, but I gotta admit, I fucking hate him. Think Draco Malfoy from the Harry Potter series, without any of Draco’s more redeeming qualities from the later books, and you’d be on the right track. He even has the same blonde hair.

There he sat, grinning at me in such a way so as to invoke my inner sadist. Okay, no, wait, this is important, I need to interrupt myself again to make this point. Let me give you an idea here. You know how Anja has that smile she sometimes gives me that just inexplicably annoys me? Mason’s is like, 100 times worse. Scratch that, 200 times.

“You saved the day again!” He says to me. “You sure showed Diana the importance of preparing b-”

“Mason. Shut the fuck up. I’m studying.” I whisper, cutting him off mid sentence. Because I am just not in the mood to put up with his shit. Not after my little experience this morning.

He smirks at me, evidently delighted that he got a reaction out of me. Which is the wrong response. If he knew what was going on inside my brain, he would be sprinting out of the classroom as fast as he could.

Fortunately for him, the quiz is being passed out at that point. Next time…

After the quiz, and band rehearsal, it’s time for lunch again. This time, all three of the others are already sitting down when I arrive. Zoe is eating in silence. She’s still acting a bit funny towards me. I can’t shake the feeling that there’s something hanging in the air between us.

As usual, Nova is playing his DS under the table, but what’s less usual is that Anja is too. I’m not bothered by this, as it may mean I’m spared from whatever asinine rambling she had prepared for today. She had followed up on Wednesday’s conversation with a long rant yesterday about some other superhero movie released earlier this year, and how she shipped Captain America with some guy who was his childhood friend or something. I wasn’t really paying attention.

The lunch went on in relative silence, with Anja and/or Nova occasionally swearing or making some comment about what’s going on. A lot of it is gibberish to me, but I do occasionally pick up on a name I recognize, such as Lucario or Alakazam.

You see, I did play Pearl back in the day. I completed almost the whole Pokédex in it. I remember Lucario in particular, because it was one of the most difficult to get. It turns out that this was because it was pretty good, so for my troubles I made it the crowned jewel of my team. After getting everything I could on my own and getting the rest from my friends (with a lot of battling in between that I usually won,) I went online to verify if I really did have every one. It turns out that there actually are three Pokémon that you could only get at “events.” This pissed me off, so I stopped playing the game.

Jeez, look at me going off again. I guess I’m just being sentimental today.

It looks like Nova won, because after several minutes Anja swears loudly and slams her head down onto the table.

“Damn you!” she exclaims. “I was not expecting that Mega-Lucario to come with Stone Edge. I thought I had you cornered with Talonflame!”

“Oh, so you like Mega-Lucario?” Nova boasts, clearly enjoying his victory.

“It’s OP as fuck,” Anja replies. “Hence why Smogon banned it!”

She catches sight of the bewildered look on my face and bursts into laughter.

“I bet it’s even OP enough to take out Lily’s Darkrai!” Nova continues. (I shouldn’t remember this, but Darkrai is one of those damned event-exclusive ones.) “I can’t wait to finally re-match her…”

“Who is Lily?” Zoe suddenly interjects, seeming interested. Admittedly, this is not a bad question.

“My cousin, who know him from back when he lived in New Braunfels,” Anja explains.

“Oh. I can’t imagine what it’s like to move,” Zoe says. “I’ve lived in Enchantment City my whole life. You must miss your friends!”

Nova doesn’t really say anything to this.

“What was it that caused you to move?” Zoe asks him tenderly.

Once again, Nova doesn’t acknowledge her, just going back into his usual sullen silence that he had before the Pokémon battle.

“Hey, she’s just trying to be nice, dude,” I tell him.

Because he’s kind of pissing me off. I know how Zoe is. She wants to be friends with absolutely everybody and always wants to be nice. I don’t know what his problem is.

At that point, however, Anja tries to save the awkward moment by asking Zoe and I questions about our exposure to the Pokémon franchise, and the lunch period continues as normal.

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At long fucking last, I’m done with tests and quizzes for the day. Just got done with my first root word quiz in Biology. Pretty sure I nailed it.

As I walk out of the classroom, however, I bump into Zoe. Not unlikely, given that she has class in the same room afterwards.

She just about runs into me, looking scared halfway out of her wits. “How was it?” she asks. “I don’t even know what is the how this going.”

….Did I just have a stroke, or was that total gibberish?

“Um… can you say that again, slowly?” I ask her.

Zoe just looks up at me, looking as if she’s about to burst into tears. “How can you stay so calm all the time? Every time I have to take another test I feel like my brain is slowly unraveling…”

“Zoe, there’s nothing wrong with you,” I say as softly as I can manage. “You just have… uh, testing anxiety.”

“Are you sure I’m not just stupid?”

“W- No, Zoe, you’re not stupid.” I put my hands on Zoe’s shoulders. “And I go to this school, so I know all about stupid.”

Zoe smiles and seems a little calmer. “Well, okay…”

But then, she looks straight up at me into my eyes. “Ashley… we need to talk about something…”

“What is it?” I ask.

She’s halfway done opening her mouth when a few other girls walk near us. One of them is Diana. I guess she’s a bit salty about Human Geo, because she’s glaring at me. The next is Terra, another girl from church I never quite clicked with. Always came across as two-faced to me. She’ll always say some horrible shit about whoever just left the room. Always just makes me wonder what she’s saying about me when I leave. The third is Yonca, who admittedly is alright. The worst thing about her is the company that she chooses. But one-on-one, she’s nice enough.

Anyways, I take my hand off of Zoe’s shoulder. She turns to see what I’m looking at, and says “Um… later.”

Then, she and the other three file into the classroom.

Damn. Something about those three appearing made her nervous.

Zoe actually seems to be pretty good friends with that lot, which should just serve as a testament to how well she can get along with literally anyone, as far as I'm concerned.