Focus in Pink

Chapter 1


The sun shone down through the window, striping my uplifted face as it hit the blinds. The singing of the birds in the boughs made my longing for the outdoors so severe, that my oppression inside seemed to grow quite unbearable.

This, I suppose, was to be expected, considering that it was the first day of my sophomore year of high school; a day crammed with forms, mispronounced names, and flustered teachers who looked as though they would rather be anywhere but here.

As a fly leisurely flew past the all-too-thick panes of glass, I found myself for the first time in my life envying it for its freedom. Although we claim to be the dominant species on the earth, at what cost does it come? We slave for at least twelve years on end in a classroom, only to find ourselves thrust out into a world that leads us from one disappointment to another. I envy the simplicity of the lives of animals. And while they hardly do what we as humans would consider ‘work’ and ‘progress’, their happiness is one more true and pure than ours.

From the above musing, one can only imagine that my mind would wander to every corner of the earth had it not been for the teacher’s high pitched waver of “Take a book and put your name in it, then bring it up to me to sign.” Descending very slowly from the cloud on which I had been happily daydreaming, I stared grumpily to the front of the class. This year so far seemed to take on the unhappy reality of one continuous line of monotonous courses. Although I had always liked school, it was the happy anomaly that I would find a teacher where a mutually respectful relationship could be born. It seemed that none this year fit the niche.

“….so return all the papers by this date, and if you don’t, I will have to reserve you a seat in detention or Friday school!” rang the last part of what seemed to me to have been an extremely long and boring sentence. Whatever she said didn’t matter to me anyways. As long as I had a replica of my parent’s signatures, I could photocopy them on whenever I needed.

Fortunately for me, the bell rang to cut off any more idle chit-chat. I slung my back pack over my shoulder, stuffing the forms somewhere in the recesses of my bag. Stumbling out of my chair, I slowly picked my way through the stagnating crowd that was accumulating at the door. Why is it that whenever people see a door they automatically slow down? It is not as though they were going to run into it.

I had to push my way through the hall as well; my age old belief that people walk as slowly as they think was being proved right and left. Only one more class left, and I would be as free as the fly that had so caught my fancy minutes before.

I knew nobody when I stepped into the classroom for my last class, so I felt slightly depressed. It too was a room lined up with the outside wall, so once again I felt myself teased and tortured by its tantalizing allurements. I tried not to compare it with my current quarters, as the contrast made me feel like an inmate. It seemed to be a pattern, because this teacher repeated the performance of the last as she droned on and on in a monotonic voice.

Right in the middle of her soliloquy, however, a welcome distraction entered our classroom. The door squeaked open as a sort of tall, skinny boy with thin, framed glasses and a rather large stack of books entered the classroom. Looking around at us with wide eyes, the scene resembled one in the old Wild West movies when the odd cowboy enters the saloon. The room got quiet as everyone tried to figure out who the newcomer was.

“Hello, boy,” the teacher said rather abruptly, “what’s your name, I’ll look you up on the roster.” As she approached him, the boy said nothing, but instead, handed her a slip of paper; “Gavin Lawley,” she read, then lifting her head and looking over her horn-rimmed glasses, “would you please take a seat over in that corner?” I was a little nonplussed to discover that his seat for the year would be right in front of me, considering I had picked my spot for the fact it was set apart from the others.

From what I had seen of the boy already, Gavin seemed to be extremely quiet, perhaps shy. I loved to observe the oddities of the people around me, and it disappointed me that he would not provide liable fodder. So with what seemed to be a tedious year ahead of me, I filled out the last of the forms with great rapidity and laid my head down to rest, the last thing I saw before I fell asleep was the dark, longish hair flipping out to one side on the back of Gavin’s head.

Chapter 2


In the past, I have always believed that the mood of mother earth, expressed in the turning of the weather, always gave soil to the roots of my emotions too. That her bliss, exuded in the form of sunshine, and her sorrow, so evident in the rain, always extended to me as well. However, I was proved wrong for the next few weeks, as the brightness of the sun only served to depress me further, and exacerbated my envy of Gaia’s contentedness.

The plush carpet was soft and soothing under my hands as I sat cross-legged in the middle of my messy room. Sighing loudly, I picked my hands up and fell back with a soft thud. The homework that had once lay on my lap had escaped to either side of me, jumbling out of the neat, organized, files I had kept them in. I found I didn’t care, however; the slight depression that was clouding my head made that impossible.

I heard the squeak of the door behind me, and jolted, nearly kinking my neck when I turned around to ascertain who the intruder was.

“Are you okay, Blanche?” inquired my mother’s voice in a worried tone, “You looked a little sad when I picked you up from school today; is anything wrong?” She stepped forward, somewhat hesitantly, a sign I well knew to mean that she was concerned, but unaware of how to be of assistance to me.

“I’m fine, just a little tired,” I heard myself say, “I had trouble going to sleep last night.” Well, it was half true.

“Oh, okay,” she said, somehow placated by my lame excuse. “Well, just remember tomorrow that your father and I are going into work early, so you will have to get to school on you own.” I nodded that I understood, and school continued, “What would you like for dinner tonight?”

I answered noncommittally, truly not caring, and after a few more prosaic questions, I was left to myself and my homework. The truth was that lately I had often been finding myself sad, with an undue weight upon my shoulders that few kids my age experienced; or so I had observed. I had never attributed this slight depression to anything chronic, however, merely the overwhelming stress I had placed on myself to succeed in the world.

But I made sure that nobody ever figured this out; by then I had nearly perfected the art of displaying emotions not my own. My friends from school and other places saw the same amicable face as always, and thought no more of it. Every teen has their dark secrets, though.

There was a problem with this, however. It seemed as though after a period of stress, my nerves would be stretched to the breaking point, and it took only the slightest of pressures to shatter me. It happened one time in my English class with a simple insult, and I knew that it would happen again.

Finding myself unable to concentrate on the homework in front of me, I forced myself to my feet and walked over to my iPod. Turning the volume on my speakers up, I chose some good hard rock, and found myself feeling better within minutes. It wasn’t so much that fact that it helped me concentrate, but how I could find parts of me in all the lyrics.

As I became more and more weary both from physical and from emotional exhaustion, I flopped onto my bed, not even caring to change clothes or turn off the lights, and felt myself dozing off immediately. The warm sheets enveloped me, and I felt the stark lights grow hazy in my almost drunken sense of lethargy. A small twinge in the back of my mind was the only thing keeping me from falling, but I soon dispelled it, and allowed myself the luxury of resting.

Chapter 3


The next morning opened in a most disagreeable way, considering a rattering on the glass was the first sound to puncture my ears. Looking up drearily to see what it was, I realized that it was nothing of the sort, but the ringing of the telephone instead. My eyes shot open, but my mind, still drugged with sleep, forced my body groggily across the room.

I punched the ‘on’ button, and grumpily waited for them to say something. “Hey, Blanche, I just needed to ask you a question, kay?”

“Who is this? Why are you calling me so early?” I said back, not caring about civility at the moment.

When the mystery person started speaking again, her voice was irritated, and a bit exasperated “Blanche, what the hell are you doing? Get up you slacker! It’s 8:45; the only person who’s not supposed to be up by now is me….” I didn’t hear the rest of her sentence, as I had already thrown the phone across the floor, sprinting to my dresser to pull some clothes on. I felt I was about to throw up, I couldn’t believe that I forgot to set my alarm! Usually, I didn’t have to bother, but since my parents were going in to work early today... The sudden violent urges rushed through me were somehow repressed by the moment.

I probably went to school that day in clothes that clashed worse than the cymbals at the local symphony, but I hardly noticed. I didn’t spend any time on my hair, opting to get my school stuff together in lieu of fussing about the odd angles at which it was poking ominiously.

I was about to lock the door when the nagging feeling I had felt the previous night settled over me again like a dark, hovering cloud. I glanced over the room, and seeing a book I was reading laying on top of a stack of papers, I crossed the floor to pick it up. It was then that I realized why my mind had been nagging me.

I groaned and nearly kicked a wall in my frustration.

The small stack of homework that I had abandoned the night before now lay sitting on the desk, hardly a question of it done.

There was no time to think about that now, though. I glanced down at my watch, and seeing the minute hand pass twelve signaling 8:55, I threw the papers over my shoulder and ran for the door. School started at 9:15, if I hurried, I might still have time.

That day I must have made record time in getting to school. What should have been a twenty minute ride was shortened to fifteen by my almost crazed drive to get my neglected homework done.

Hardly taking time to lock my bike to an outside staircase, I tore inside, scattering kids as I went, and sat down at a table just as the second bell rang, warning that there was only five minutes left until class started. I ripped out my work, ascertaining what had to be done. There was one worksheet due in my first period class, and two paragraphs owed later on in the day. Stashing the two paragraphs, I pulled out a pencil, and let my eyes scan the questions.

The first two were done, so I went down the line. It was a biology paper, and since our unit was on genetics, most of it asked about nucleotide bases and the works. Conjuring up every lesson I could remember, I pulled the paper from the table and tried to write on it as I hurriedly made my way towards my first class.

My handwriting was jumbled, and the paper was crinkled from being held in my hand, but I placated my perfectionist self by saying that this mediocre performance was at least better than nothing at all.

Standing in the hallway just out of sight of the biology classroom, I put the question sheet up against the wall and wrote the last of my answers, the words bumping out of form due to the wall’s rutted texture. I found myself slowly sliding down the walls as I crossed my last‘t’ and dotted the period. Crushing the paper even more, I crammed it back into my backpack and made a run for my first class.

The bell just started ringing when I passed through the doors, much to my relief. The next few minutes are totally lost to my memory, since I was so complacent, and proud of myself for my fast handy work that I hardly cared what anyone else was doing.

After the pledge to the flag was over and done with, I unzipped my backpack, and pulled out the ruined paper and the rest of my notes. To add the icing on the cake, my teacher looked over her thin, frameless glasses and said to the class, “I hope you did a thorough job on your homework and your notes last night, we’re having a quiz today over lesson seven.”

By this point I had reconciled myself to the fact that my luck was severely lacking, and only expressed my annoyance with an exaggerated roll of the eyes and a long sigh. It was only fitting that I had remembered the regular homework but not the regular chapter notes. My table partner looked at me in pity, “Forget something?” she asked somewhat sardonically.

I wasn’t in the mood, so I merely gave her a death glare and returned to the pointless shuffling through my bag. When the quiz came, I looked at it with glazed eyes. There were a few answers I knew, but for the most part I bullshitted my way through it. Pardon my language, I usually don’t talk like that, but in this case, it was the most apt adjective I could find.

When we checked our answers, I couldn’t believe how many of my guesses were close enough to the true answer that they were counted correct. Instead of failing miserably like I was certain I would do, I only failed slightly. Oh well, there would be more quizzes.

When the class was up, I truly felt saved by the bell, and I made my way out of the room as quickly as I possible could. I breathed my relief as I found myself in the bustling hallway, and took a more leisurely pace to my next class.

I was turning a corner, when I heard my name called out behind me. Spinning around, I felt an arm around my shoulders, squeezing me in an awkward side-hug. I smiled, “Hey Liz, what’s up?”

“That’s what I should be asking you! What was up with you this morning?”

“Oh, so that was you calling,” I laughed, “I forgot my parents were going in to work early this morning and didn’t hit the alarm clock.” I then told her about the precarious homework situation I had found myself in.

Sniggering, she gave me a pitied look, “Sorry, chick, but life’s a bitch sometimes.”

“Don’t I know,” I muttered, rolling my eyes. I could never quite get used to the way Liz talked; she certainly didn’t make too many concerted efforts to contain her words like I did.

“Well, go on and get your ass to the next class. We can’t be having you being late again. Slapping me gently over the back of my head, she split with me, heading towards the other side of the building. I chuckled again, Liz was crazy, there was no doubt about that, and for some reason, that was exactly why I was attracted to her as a friend. I loved unconventiality, and she offered its acme.



Classes did, however, offer me the amusement of ascertaining the humor in each person’s character. I found that the best way to spend each period of the day was to pretend as though working diligently, while truly reading a book perched on my lap under the desk, and keeping a small portion of my brain trained on the conversation of the room. By the second week, I had deduced the temperament of everyone who was anyone to me to a tee. That is, excepting one.

Every day, when I walked into my last period class (which I had figured out was geography class a few days into the year) and found that mass of chocolate hair sitting in front of me, I was stumped.

So far I had discerned that he did not speak from a lack of intelligence, but from something else. I did not believe him arrogant, and so the only reason must have been shyness. But whenever I had attempted to start a conversation with him before or after class, he would either respond in short, punctuated syllables, or act as though he had not heard at all.

This to me was surely not the behavior of someone who was shy, was it?

I tried to put it out of my head, as just something not worth my notice, and this worked for a time. I actually looked at the teacher once in a while which focused my attention off of him more easily than I would have imagined. I was almost disconcerted at how easily I forgot him when he was out of sight.

I also had many other things going on outside of class too, and I suppose this aided in the process. Although I may not sound like it, I am a very assiduous student, and make good grades in all my classes. And so much of my time was spent at home, processing homework and studying for incessant stream of tests and quizzes that passed my desk every day.

Soccer was the first love in my life though. Hard times in the sport had taught me to appreciate the goodness of my current situation, and I took full advantage of that fact. In my family, everything is scheduled around the sport, and at times this can get quite tiresome. There have been many times when my friends have invited me out to a Friday night movie and I had to decline due to the fact that I was headed out of town for my latest tournament, or that a last minute practice had been called.

I couldn’t say I regretted it though. Soccer was probably the one thing that would get me into the college of my choice. My grades were fine, and I was in as good a public school district as you could find, but I knew that there were thousands upon thousands of kids just like me. Soccer was the only thing that made me stand out, and in a way, I was a both proud and a bit ashamed of this at the same time. The fact that I was relying on a sport and not on my brains continued to bruise my ego a bit.

And so several weeks passed; my interest in anything else sparking only intermittently now. I had made some new friends too, which was a nice change. Many times I found it hard to make friends in a place where my ideals and beliefs are so different from those around me. After realizing this, though, I shut down my defense, and realized that it is often the differences of mind that makes a relationship truly interesting.

But these were mainly my friends inside of school. Other than that, I rarely saw them out of the normal mold of classes. I was somewhat a loner, and for odd reasons, would often purposely avoid my friends just so I could be alone.

It was one of these days, when I slipped into my last period class, nearly running backwards so as to make sure none of them saw me. Sliding in past the doorframe, I made contact with an object behind me. That object became a person quite obviously when I felt it give way a bit, and then wince slightly, as though in pain.

Startled, I whipped my head around, and was about to apologize when I found myself speaking into a wall of cloth. I looked up slightly, and realizing that the material belonged to the back of Gavin’s shirt, I tried to back away quickly. A slightly annoyed look crossed his face as he looked down at me over his shoulder. I muttered a quick excuse, and attempted to brush past him into my seat.

“It’s fine, but I’m not going to hurt you, you know,” he said sardonically to my back.

Pressing my lips together in an indignant line, I suppressed the words that wanted to fly from my mouth, and swiveled back to look at him. There must have been something in my posture that warned him away from me, whether it be my clenched fists, or my slightly jutting jaw. However, that was definitely not my intention. Though I had at first been overcome with a strong surge of emotion, as I pondered it later that night, I was surprised to find that it was shock more than any other one thing. Shock that he had actually strung together a sentence aimed at me.

The situation seemed as clear as day then, from the slight defensive hunching of his back, to the confused look in his eyes as he took in the impassioned pixie before him. But when I mused further, other elements started to pop into my stream of memory that I had not noticed before.

At first I took it as a side effect in the intoxication of sleep, but this theory was soon discarded when the true realization came into clear view.

As I searched his eyes in my dream, eyes that were a speckled hazel I noticed, I began to notice traces, hints of the person that stood behind them. And there was that one disturbing spark behind them, something that I had never before attributed to his character; a twinge of sadness, being withheld behind a façade of indifference.

I don’t know why I thought this disconcerting, perhaps it was because I could not understand it, or maybe because I had noticed it before. But whatever it was, it made me denounce my earlier resolution not to dwell on Gavin.