Just Another High School Story!

The day of the 'coronation', might as well call it that now, passed without much further commotion, everyone wondered what had happened to Leah. Mindy was furious and she cried her eyes out after she lost, "I even made her stupid speech disappear. That bitch still won?" She had copied some parts off her speech, but Leah didn't know that, she had been nervous as hell to even really hear what everyone else was saying, so she didn't notice the plagiarism. Oh well, who could care enough now? She was blissfully unaware. But Ethan knew, he'd seen. At first, he'd wanted to intervene, 'protect his girl', but then he realised that he wanted her to grow as a person and was sure that she had it in her to nail the whole thing without help, therefore, he let her have her victory and observed from the sidelines, he was really happy for her.

Mindy didn't consider the simple fact that Leah's speech about change touched the hearts of many students including her, students that probably... no definitely felt the same as her, every person wants someone to talk to, Leah was planning to give them that someone, herself and the whole school, through her broadcast.

After school was over, Ethan accompanied her, and they walked home, it was evening and the weather was perfect, not too hot but enough that you would not feel the cold, on top of that, a soft breeze was blowing and Leah let her hair down, not so much as she let it down as much as Ethan forced her to, he grabbed her pins and yanked them off, accidentally pulling off some hair. "What the hell?" she asked him, she wasn't annoyed though, today was a good day, the only thing that she was wondering was whether she'd gone bad, but when she looked at the pins, she noticed that only a couple of hairs were tangled in the pins, she let it go because she was 'really too happy to be mad or angry'.

Ethan liked her like this, she was so free, not faking it, not smiling forcefully like a scary mannequin, a forced smile looks sad, however a smile that is genuine looks beautiful, this is a universal fact that Ethan had come up with. Her smile right now, as she hummed to herself, "Teach me how to love you" by Shawn Mendes and smiled at the setting sun, this was genuine. Ethan was pleased at his idea and he had successfully stuck by her side the whole day, engrossing her mind so much that she didn't even once think about purging today, as a bulimic, this was a huge improvement for her but it went by unnoticed. She liked how today went. When they finally reached her house, she looked exhausted, "What's wrong?" Ethan asked and she shook her head in resignation, "I don't like coming home." She opened up and soon realised what she had done, she had let down her walls and showed her bare self for the first time today, this scared... no, it terrified her, and so she retreated immediately, and awkwardly saying bye ran into her home. When she was inside, Ethan yelled, "I'll see you tomorrow." and left with a smile on his face. They had spent an hour walking together, and though a lot of words had not been exchanged, he felt happy, he could stay by her side, and no one was there to disturb them. Ever since the first time he saw her, he had wondered why she liked solitude so much, other than on the court, she never really hung out in a group, neither with a friend, she was surely hanging out with her 'soccer bros' but she wasn't with them all the time, she was with them occasionally but because she was alone all the time, the time that she did spend with them seemed more than enough to make the cut as 'frequent', she was always eating alone. E remembered making fun of her for it, and as the memory played itself like a movie, he slapped his head, on his way home, "Why the hell was I such a jerk and an idiot?"

When Ethan got home, he was greeted by an empty house, he didn't like living alone, he hated the echo his voice produced when he said something, he ordered pizza furtively, and set to work in his room, on his wall was a huge board that held a lot of sticky notes. He started writing, there was a list of all the things he'd said and done to her in Middle School that could have possibly hurt her, as he recounted everything, he felt worse than the devil, "I'm not qualified to be human." he said as he ruffled his hair with his fingers, trying to judge when it went so wrong, the times he had playfully pushed her might have been offensive to her, the times he had called her 'Fatty' and then he realised that kids had started calling her by this name too, this led him to wondering why he'd done all this and it was because he felt jealous. She was always so put together, good at everything she did, beautiful, praise worthy, and she looked so perfect on the outside that he wouldn't have imagined her to be even a little moved by what he said, but after realising the turret which is that no one is perfect, he decided to repent and make things right, for as he put it, "It's never too late to be better."

Meanwhile, Leah felt happy and content, she liked hanging out with just herself but hanging out with someone like Ethan... wasn't bad after all. She realised that she hadn't once thought about food or her body when she was with him, and thanked God that she didn't have to fake her emotions in front of him, it was like he could read her, though she was a closed book, fully wrapped up and still in the box, somehow he had managed to open the box, this made her feel complicated, she felt happy, but another voice inside of her was telling her to shut down, that Ethan wasn't worth it, it tried to remind her of what she had been through in Middle School, how she had tried to kill herself after she had had enough of her life and she massaged her temples trying to understand what she wanted to do.

Would she be able to forgive him? And move on?