I Looked Ahead

I do not feel alone, though I may look so sad. I am in another world; I’m not staring at the asphalt, and I’m looking into a portal. Out here is the only place I can see it; it’s not there indoors. I’m happy, not sad, actually happy. Not like I am when I laugh with the others, but a different sort of happy. But there are days when I wish I could be one of the others without this special gift, the others who aren’t looking down into this portal.

     They don’t walk the path alone, but once I think about it, I decide I do not want to walk with these others. I prefer to be alone on this path I walk in this playground. But I always look downwards. I detest hearing the words that bring me to that horrid reality.

     “Samantha!! SAM!!” I heard the familiar voice yell from the other side of the playground. I instantly looked to see a blue Lupe running towards me, a disco Zafara racing after her. It was Candice and her friend, Lizzie. Candice was my first cousin, slightly insane and super annoying, but I supposed you could classify her as my friend.

     “Candice, shut up, would you? What is it?” I asked her, flicking my long yellow Gelert ears away from my eyes then straightening my favorite light blue sweater. Candice glanced annoyingly at me. I never meant to be this... well, mean, but it always came out; coming out of that reverie was always hard. My head always hurt and I ached to be back in my other world.

     “Well...” Candice said the words slowly, as if to annoy me, and Lizzie came up to her side. They were two years younger than me, and somewhere inside me I felt embarrassed to be talking to them. I was in sixth grade and they were so much younger than us, and they came from a weird class. My classmates never talked to them. Candice continued, “Why do you always look so sad, Sam? You know you could always be with us, playing ‘Lupe Pack’ or ‘Wild Wockies’.”

     That was another thing. They were so immature at school. I wanted just to be normal, but they always try to tempt me out of my hole of safety and try to make me act like a first grader in front of my classmates I was just getting used to. I had just opened my eyes this year; I’d been so blind to life. I learned to laugh at things, instead of cry. I became stronger. But recess always presented me to that portal to the other world, where I could be happy, and myself. I couldn’t be that here.

     “No,” I answered firmly and began to walk away, my eyes moving towards the pavement. Candice grabbed my sleeve and laughed.

     “You’re no fun at neoschool. Why can’t you be fun like you are at home, why don’t you sing and play ‘Pack’ with us?” Candice said. I closed my eyes and sighed. I heard the laugh behind me and knew it was Amy. Amy was always laughing at everything; her laughs always made me feel small, even if they had nothing to do with me. They always sounded so ‘she is such a freak’ and they crushed my self-confidence, made me weak... made me want to cry...

     “Candice, just leave me alone,” I sighed. That Lupe could never take a hint from me. She followed me for a little bit as I began to walk again, but the bell rang soon. I was not in the mood for math class. But I filed into the school with everyone else half pushing each other and the little kids screaming like something from evil was after them. Why did they always scream like that?

     I made it to my homeroom; Mrs. Gordon was our teacher, a plain brown Lenny. I was the first one there, and I sat at our group. Soon the idiot Evan came over and so did shy Sherry. And Kiki, Amy’s best friend; she was much the same as her. Pets always sighed when they were assigned to sit near me. But I was much better than I was last year; I was always so depressed and shy, and everything seemed to hurt me.

     Evan was an idiot. But I liked him okay. ‘Idiot’, to me, has a few different meanings, one is just a stupid person and the other is a somewhat annoying boy that you always laugh at. Evan was definition number two, along with a couple others, like Jack and Nathan.

     Sherry was one of the few pets who were always nice to me. Pets were getting nicer to me now, but Sherry was always nice. Kiki was annoying, calling over to Amy from across the room, and disrupting the class. But I survived through math, and then history, which were about the most boring subjects we had.

     Then the bell rang and it was lunchtime. Thank Fyora, I thought as I ate my lunch quietly. I needed more time to be alone; Kiki was really starting to get to me. She was laughing and looking at me. I hated when anyone did that. It was just like Amy’s laugh. I was the first of my class to leave. I was so glad to be rid of them; they were good in small doses, but sometimes it was too much.

     So I re-entered my beloved other world. I thought about things, different things. Things that made me happy, things that gave me this bubbly, insane feeling inside. Made me want to laugh weirdly. It took me to a world where I was happy, and people liked me. Where I was myself. Where I didn’t stare at the ground all the time until people began to whisper about me.

     I hated pets sometimes.

     Pets were idiots, definition number one. They ridiculed each other and always, there was always someone being made fun of. Always. They laughed at them and that pet got crushed, like I was sometimes. Pets were idiots. They made me angry.

     But they made me happy too.

     “Hey, Sam!” A voice jolted me out of the reverie; I knew it was not Candice. I looked over to the school wall where the voice had come from and saw Tim. Tim, Kate, Sherry and Alice. He motioned his Wocky head to come over to them. Bewildered, I went. Sherry smiled at me. That Cybunny had always been so nice.

     “Hi,” I greeted them. They were a group, like Amy, Kiki and Kristy were, but this was the not-so-mean-unpopular-group, I guessed. I liked them best. They all nodded and greeted me back. Then silence. I hated that silence when I was with pets. I knew if I ever got someone to talk to I’d never have anything to say. But then Kate began to talk about a band she liked, and Alice commented on them, then Tim teased them about the band being terrible. I listened. I put in some things, and no one laughed at my opinions. I felt more at home with them than I had anyone else at school. Was this what it felt like to have friends?

     The bell rang too soon. We started to go back to class, Tim and Alice to one, Kate, Sherry and I to the other. I felt lighter and happy. It was a weird feeling I hadn’t felt in so long. I actually felt like talking to people, not letting them do all the talking. And in that happiness I realized something.

     I had looked ahead.

The End