Faker

She sat quietly, tapping her pen repeatedly on the side of her chair, her eyebrow raised in a way she thought would be ironic. Cynacism was written on her face as she glanced around the hall at her classmates.

Today she was learning about God and Jesus. In fact almost everyday the entire populace of the school were forced to learn about Jesus. She found it insulting that, as a self-declared atheist, she had to sit and listen. Not that the muslims or sikhs complained. She took this as a sign of their lack of intelligence. In her mind, the hypocrisy was blaringly obvious. SHE never complained and yet she sat, moody and sullen, trying hard to procure the image of having an attitude.

It was unclear whether she realised this was an attempt or if she actually had an attitude. "Difficult" was the word most often used to describe her as she argued virilantly against the christians girls who were so damn uptight in their opinion. Someone had once suggested that it was her, not them, who was uptight and she merely slumped down in her seat, muttering "whatever".

She was not unpopular, but neither was she anybody's best friend. She was clearly respected. She was honest and people found that interesting, if disconcerting. Yet who wanted someone so painstakingly critical as a close friend. The shy girls were too afraid to befriend her, the popular girls found her too openly academic and the misfits were too aware of their own problems to take notice of her.

She smoked a lot, not because she liked it, but because she knew the girls at school would respect her in their own way. She was constantly found with a cigarette and a packet of matches and a book nobody had ever heard of. It was an image she fought hard to protect and sometimes she even convinced herself.

It was peculiar indeed that the only person aware of her true character was indeed a boy she barely knew. She was, in fact, a part time christian. Not to say that she practised, but if something bad happened, she would pray and ask for forgiveness from God. It was a bizarre paradox to say the least. She was ashamed of this though, such weakness in someone supposedly so strong was an embarassement.

The day she heard about her ex-boyfriend's car crash, she had fallen down in the street and started to cry silently. People around stared casually and then resumed their activities, she was clearly not in any physical pain. She lifted her hands together, palm to palm, and whispering to herself she begged for his survival, offered up her own body, anything.

There was a tap on her shoulder and a hand being offered. She stood up and tried to compose her shaking body. The boy smiled. She recognised him, someone from her school, the boy everyone loved. Joey.

"You're Isobel. You're the moody one who refuses to pray in assembly, so what's going on? Have I discovered your secret?" he asked, smilingly.

"Fuck off. Times of trouble, you know. Everyone gets desperate." She walked away purposefully and was surprised to hear him behind her.

"Look, I wasn't having a go, i'm just...surprised, is all" he replied sheepishly.

"It's ok".

It was not ok.