Making Circles - Vanessa Gilbert (recommended reading txt) 📗

face as he walked over to me and pulled me into a tight protective hug. “Where is he, I’ll kill him,” he said.
“No dad. Don’t I’ll be okay,” I said to him.
“You sure, I can go out there and kick his ass.”
I smiled and nodded knowing that dad beating the crap out of Carter wouldn’t help anything all it would do was make things harder…and make me smile. I nodded once again and just enjoyed dad hugging me. Dad let his grip drop then he and mom went back to their breakfast while I went further into the kitchen to get some breakfast. We’re going to go on with life…like nothing happened…like my heart wasn’t breaking.

After eating breakfast I went back outside and helped my parents with the farm. I watered and cleaned up the garden then helped harvest all fully grown goods. Sadly though I had to go to school so I only picked three, I’m such a helper. I turned the radio up high and let my left elbow hang out and let the wind play with my hair and let it stroke my cheek. I turned down Marston Street and bobbed my head along with the music that played on the radio.
“That was All Around Me by Flyleaf next up is Playing God by Paramore,” the radio talkers announced.
I smiled and began to sing with the radio. “I can’t make my own decisions or make any with precision. Maybe you should tie me up so I don’t go where you don’t want me. You say that I’ve been changing, that I’m not just simple aging. How could that be logical? Just keep on cramming ideas down my throat. Whoa. You don’t have to believe me but the way I, way I see it. Next time you point a finger I might have to bend it back or break it, break it off. Next time you point a finger…I’ll point you to the mirror,” I sang.
As I sang along with the radio and let the wind mess with my hair my mind raced back to that summer day. Back to when Jacie and Terri …when they…even the thought made me sick. I could see it as clear as day…could see it and feel everything...I wanted to scream to run away and cry. I turned down another road then stopped at a red light and waited patiently for the light to change to green. The more I waited the more the memory came back and the more it controlled me.
The memories filled my mind…the smell of smoke…the sound of cars…the sensation of feeling…feeling scared. I remember feeling so alone and lost…feeling so used after what happened…and then I got used more. It was just a non ending rope of using. I remember running down the dirt road…the car honking at me to hurry over. I heard a honk and looked at the light and saw that the light had changed. I quickly raced down the road and towards the school…hoping to maybe run away from the memories of what happened.

I pulled into the parking lot and parked the car than sat there starring out at the school. Of course I was a tad bit early and have lots and lots of time to kill. What to do, what to do, I wondered. I could walk around, say hi to all of my old teachers and talk to my new ones. I could go hang out in the forest and draw some of the trees…and flowers. I sighed and then opened the car door and made my way towards the school.
As I crept towards the school I saw people stop and stare at me…they knew what happened. I could just hear them now. “Look it’s that girl that was there when Jacie and Terri got you know,” they would say as I passed or “Hey it’s that chick that murdered her friends.” I looked down at the ground then pulled the hood of my hoodie up to cover my face as best as it could. Maybe if I hid well enough no one would notice me and I could go on with the day as if nothing happened.
I walked towards the entrance and as soon as I barely laid a hand on the handle of the door I heard, “Arien!” I looked behind me and running towards me was Kitty. Kitty had the usual torn up jeans, her new rainbow shirt that she talked about on Facebook, her old black combat boots, her new side bag that matched mine, and her new hoddie that said across her chest, “Love is for all,” it also has the symbols of gender and the equations for love. Like the male symbol plus another male symbol, then a female symbol plus another female symbol, and lastly a male symbol plus a female symbol.
Kitty slowed from a running to a jog then a jog to a fast paced walk. I laughed at her and asked, “Could you be any slower.”
Kitty laughed and began to do the slow walking that you only see in movies. I laughed at her and called out, “You dork.”
She laughed at me and nodded, “Yes, yes I am a dork.”
I shook my head at her and then opened the school entrance doors and waved her to go first. She nodded then walked through, I fallowed close behind. The school hadn’t changed, not that I expected it to. The walls were still a dull white and had the same portrait of the animal our school represented…the Majestic Doe and, just the same, the tiles where the same as last year; a dull white with mixed in grey and black streaks. We stood in the medium sized entrance room for the entrance door and began to look for either one of our friends or for a familiar face.
Last year we were all about getting to classes on time and being early but now we know we have time and we can walk as slow or as fast as we want. I laughed as I saw a group of freshmen walk towards the English and Science halls. I remember when that was me and Kitty, rushing to get our classes on time even though as soon as we got there we saw we could have just walked, it wouldn’t have mattered. The girls passed by us like they were the hottest things on earth…yea right, me and Kitty whispered to one another.
We both began to walk down the long hallways that connected with the, I guess you could say boring classes, and that the boring class rooms hallway that runs into the computer lab hallways. The long hallway also lid toward the library, my locker, and the math hallway. We walked down the hallway walking side by side and stopping by my locker. I knelt down and unlocked the lock that locked my locker then set my side bag down and pulled out the binders that I knew I’d need later.
My classes are Enriched Language Arts, IMP 2, Guitar, Student Prep, Art, Lunch, Computers, Science, and lastly French 2. I pulled out all of my binders…all five of them. My Enriched Language Arts binder has rainbow strips going diagonally down it and across it in the middle reads, “Enriched Language.” My Art binder (yes my art binder) has a drawing I did over the summer of me and Carter pasted on the cover of the binder and on the back it has a poem Carter and I did together with a rose drawn down the side of it. My IMP 2 binder is a bunch of cut up pictures and writings pasted all over the binder on the outside. Right under the heading of IMP 2 Binder is a picture of Kitty, Mark, Jason, Carter, and myself.
My guitar binder has a picture of me holding my guitar and smiling on the front and on the back is the guitar sheet music to my favorite song “Sally’s Song.” My Science binder has a picture of me and Carter laughing our heads off, his arms wrapped around my waist, and me holding a soda that was spraying out its white foam. On the back it has a picture of me and Carter, with his arms wrapped around my waist, and both of us kissing. I glared down at the photo and felt myself wanting to rip it off my binder and tear it to shreds. I threw the binder down in anger and threw my face into my hands and let a few tears out. Why did he have to convince me to paste pictures of me and him all over almost all of my binders?
I threw the binders in the locker in anger then sighed. “Are you okay there,” Kitty asked.
I looked up at her and nodded as I said, “Yea I’m fine.”
I pulled out my Enriched Language binder, shut my locker door, and then locked it back up. I stood then said to Kitty, “Let's go to your locker now, I guess.”
Kitty shrugged and said, “Nah, I don’t mind caring all my binders besides I kinda wanna go hang with some of our friends.”
I felt myself tense up at the thought, our friends…my old friends…the friends who said that I was never to show my face again to them. I clinched up my fists and tried to push the thoughts out of my head. “Are you okay,” Kitty asked.
I looked at her and shook my head. “Kitty they said I was never to show my face again after what happened to Jacie and Terri.”
“They probably didn’t mean that.”
“Kitty, they hate me…they want to see me die and burn in hell after what I did to them!”
“It wasn’t even your fault thought, it was theirs!”
“They're not going to believe me…they think I’m a lying, back stabbing whore.”
Kitty sighed in anger and said, “Whatever.”
I sighed and watched as she walked away then called out to myself, “Fuck me.”
I stood and spun around, picked up my stuff, then made my way to my classroom. Fuck everyone who doesn’t believe me, fuck everyone who threw me to the sharks, fuck everyone who-and just like that I was on the ground, the air knocked out of me and a huge head ache running throughout my head. I slowly sat up and looked to find out what the hell I had just run into that could do that. Standing right in front of me was a very cute guy looking down at me. I starred up at him trying to find words…what do I say. “Oh my god, are you okay,” he asked.
I nodded slowly, feeling a little…dizzy…and it wasn’t from the fall. He reached out his hand towards me and said, “Here let me help you up.”
I reached up and grabbed his hand, letting him help me up. He practically picked me up as if though I weighed nothing and as soon as I was standing on solid ground I said shyly, “Thanks. I guess I should watch where I’m going.”
“No it’s my fault, I’m kind of having a bad day,” he said, throwing his hands in his pockets and swishing his head to the left, making his hair move to the left as well.
I stared at him and asked slowly, “What happened to you?”
He smiled a brilliant smile at me, a smile that made my legs turn to pudding and made my mind turn to nothing…nothing but ash. The guy has black ‘emo’ cut hair, silver blue eyes, and very pale skin. He has a light purple hoodie on, tight dark blue skinny jeans, black and white high tops, and it looked like he has on a white shirt under the hoodie. He had a razor on a chain around his neck and he also has on a bunch of random bracelets.
“Oh, um well my girlfriend just recently