1. Loose Leaf

I was surprised to find behind the white door of my closet a
hot pink binder with hundreds of loose college ruled sheets of paper shoved
inside it. It reminded me of those times in school when everyone shoved loose
papers sloppily into their binders. And everybody wanted a binder, because
having a binder meant you were somebody important in school. And I would set my
plastic pink binder on a desk that had pen markings scribbled all over it.

2. Impressions

On my desk, somebody had written the words “I’M HUMAN”. I
laughed because it was so funny, but then later in the year I didn’t laugh at
the words anymore. Instead I took a pen and at the start of every class, I
would trace the words to make the impression deeper. But I didn’t make it
deeper for the desk. I didn’t do it to point at the teachers or the school, but
I did it to leave an impression on the students there. And every day I would
watch the students pass by and see if they would notice the words engraved on
my desk. But if any of them did it didn’t seem to have any affect. So I just
penciled it in deeper.

I wanted them to know how unkind they could be, and I would
always write stories about school, aimed towards them, and I would drop them on
purpose near their desks for them to pick up and read. I saw a plump kid named
Toby pick up one of my stories. When he read it he laughed and ripped it in
half before throwing it in the trashcan.

3. Trashcan

The trashcan had tissues always overflowing from it. I think
that 95% of them came from me. A lot of people called me the “Notorious
Nose-Blower” and I think that even the teachers knew me by that name by the end
of the year. I remember the first friend I ever made at that place. She was so
fun and weird, but weird in a good way. The people around her called her awkward.
But I never thought of her, My Friend, as awkward.

4. Friend

She had short and thin red hair. At least my mother called
it red hair when I showed her the picture of My Friend from the yearbook, but
really I called it orange. She wore skinny jeans and baggy shirts all the time,
and she wore very thick glasses. And the reason I like that band with the
really dirty songs is because she said that the structure of the songs by the
band with the really dirty songs was genius. And she wrote down the chords and
the structure of all their songs and would make two copies. One for her, one
for me.

It didn’t take me too long to realize that she never really
listened for lyrics, but for the music and for the structure of a song.
Sometimes, without thinking, I’d start singing the lyrics out loud in the
hallways of school, and a teacher would pass by and stare at me. But I would
stare back, glare, and I didn’t care what they thought of me because they
couldn’t hear how genius the structure of the song was.

And I’d glare at my classmates, when they stared at my
friend when she sang the songs out loud, because they couldn’t see how genius
the structure of the song was and how genius My Friend was for hearing it.

5. Timeline

I remember that I called the times before I found My Friend
“BF” and I thought that was so cool of me because BF could stand for Best
Friend, but for the times before I met My Friend it could also stand for
“Before Friend”. After that I started making myself a timeline about my time at
school and I carefully labeled everything correctly, and I especially bolded
the letters BF. And I wrote it those darkened words in green ink. Not because
green was my favourite  color, but
because my friend liked it. And maybe I was being obsessive, but at the time I
could only think of it as being thoughtful.

6. Logic

My Friend told me that making a timeline was a really fun
idea, so she did the same thing. She called the time before she met me the
Depths of Despair. During class we would both laugh at the people who passed
each other notes, because afterwards all of them had to rely on us, the
non-human beings in their eyes, the odd ones, for our organized notes.

I don’t know why, but I always hid the fact that I had a
disorganized binder like all the rest of them. Maybe because I wanted to show
them something about myself that was better than them and to do that I needed
an organized binder.

If I told that to My Friend, she’d probably tell me that my
logic was twisted. I agree with her, but it occurs to me now, looking back at
my past behind my closet door, that all of the students in that school had twisted
logic.

7. Quirky

I had this habit during school to draw little doodles of
this cartoon character I called a Quirk. It looked like a cat in many ways, but
I don’t think anybody saw the cat inside the Quirk but me. My Friend saw my
doodles of the Quirk and said that she absolutely adored them and that her
favourite band with the really dirty songs could totally use my Quirk as
inspiration for an awesome song. And that made me smile.

My Friend smiled at my smile and showed me her braces. They
were black and white, and I wondered why she hadn’t gotten them in pink or
green or blue, but she said she really liked the simplicity. So when I got
braces for the first time and they asked me what color bands I wanted I
answered firmly, “Piano key colors please.” So I got black and white braces
because of My Friend.

And for a long time we walked around the school, both of us
with glasses singing lyrics by that band with the really dirty songs reading
classics for fun, and drawing Quirks and constructing timelines. I loved those days.

8. Counterfeit Reality

Those times with My Friend I labeled The Good Times because
everybody I’ve met has had what they call “The Good Times” so I figured I might
as well call those times Good. And they truly were at the time, wonderful. But
later I went back and scratched out the ink that said “The Good Times” and
instead I wrote in its place: Counterfeit Reality. Because that’s what those
times really were.

They were fake. Fool’s gold. I remember the bad things as
well as the good things. And there was always that group whom I always called them. But for some unexplainable reason,
whenever I say “them” people know who
I’m talking about. The Others in my school, the ones who I tried to persuade
that I was normal. Those people who caused the student before me to carve those
words on my desk. I’M HUMAN. But I never guessed that they would take her, my friend, away from me.

 I never guessed that
My Friend would possibly desert me like she did.

9. Betrayal

I heard them all talking because they were all flocked in
the bathroom, fooling with makeup and hair, swapping rumors, and I was inside a
stall. It occurred to me that they looked like a bunch of twittering birds.
Then they started talking and I heard My Friend’s voice. She said something
intelligent and funny, and somehow they started talking with her.

But My Friend wasn’t talking the same way that she talked
around me. She talked like a different person entirely. And they told her that
she could become one of them. So long as she didn’t stay really great friends
with me. I had hoped that My Friend, being the person she was, would obviously
say no. In the back of my head, I had a feeling though a feeling of dread and I
thought to myself

it’s finally happening

because I guess I had seen this coming for a while after  all. I stayed in my stall, standing up, hand
on the latch, ready to walk out at a moment’s notice. I heard My Friend’s voice
and she said in a clear, confident, resounding voice that rung and drilled into
my heart, echoed in my brain

YES.

10. Hurt

I walked out of my stall a while later and tried to cheer
myself up by humming. When I’m depressed, humming always helps, but I ended up
accidentally humming a song from that band with the really dirty songs, and it
didn’t help me with anything.

I walked to My Friend’s desk with a pair of scissors and
engraved on it deeply the words: I’M HUMAN. And then I went over it with green
permanent marker. Because I knew that even though she was a liar all along, she
still liked green. Then I walked back to my desk and wrote a story about a girl
whose friend betrayed her. And how the pain hurt like a knife and left a deep, fatal
wound.

The friend in the story would never know how much she
influenced the girl’s life.

11. Eyes

My eyes during my next class were not dry, and my nose more
runny than usual, so naturally they started laughing at me. But this time, My
Friend was laughing along with them. Our eyes met during that class, just once.
My eyes asked why, and her eyes replied: Because
I’ve finally moved up. But I think they also looked sad.

It occurred to me later on after I had gotten over the event
that I was happy her eyes had looked sad then, because it meant that she really
had been my friend all those times. But I still labeled that space in the
timeline “Counterfeit Reality”.

12. Dark Ages

I called the times after that the Dark Ages. My Not-Friend
had been my only friend and the Dark Ages were dark because I had nobody.

Nobody to show my Quirks to, nobody to sing lyrics by that
band with the really dirty songs.

Nobody to get lost in the hallways with.

Nobody to eat lunch with and nobody to help you survive
history class.

After that I just focused on my classes and my grades and
little of anything else. And I felt nothing but pressure to get straight A’s,
because somehow it was driven in my head to get all A’s. I would walk to class
and would see My Not Friend laughing with 
them and they would sit near each other and talk about pointless things.
Like friends do. As if they were really all friends.

13. Subdued

I think the days away from My Not Friend made me more subdued.
But not in a bad way. In a good way. I started loosening up and doing things
more for me, not for her. Like I started filling my ipod up with classical music
by Ravel and Debussy instead of things by that band with the really dirty
songs. I drew Quirks still, but only inside a notebook, and I didn’t display
them or show them to anybody.

I changed my braces colors to blue and pink. I started
caring how I looked in the eyes of everyone—maybe that was the one bad thing. I
cared too much. I hated wearing my glasses to school, and hated wearing jeans
an shirts from Lands’ End. I bought two pairs of jeans from American Eagle and
some shirts and wore them as much as possible. Just so I could fly under the
radar at school. But part of me was disturbed at me becoming like this. A
thought kept nagging at the back of my brain.

What if you’re doing
this to become one of THEM after all?

14. Energized

During the Dark Ages, I really liked Saturdays. Because they
were the days in which I could remind myself that

I’M HUMAN.

That I’m not some freak or some dog going to some silly
thing called school that everyone has to go to. On Saturdays I’d take long
walks downtown to the Borders bookstore and buy a book and some coffee and do
nothing but read. Not even a classic, but I’d get some fantasy novel or some romance.
It made me feel more human.  I’d compose
music and write stories and by the end of the day, I’d be completely
re-energized.

15. Boy

I shift through the loose pages of my old hot pink binder
and come across a piece of paper that is a story. It’s a story of a depressed
girl who meets a very nice boy and they become friends.

It reminds me of the time during school when I literally ran
into somebody in the hallways on my way to the cafeteria. It was during the
Dark Ages. My hot pink binder fell out of my hands and my papers spilled
everywhere. My heavy biology book fell on my foot. I fell onto the ground and
looked up and saw exactly who I had run into. It was a very tall skinny boy
with glasses and brown curly hair.

 He rushed to help me and
apologized a thousand times. His glasses slipped down his nose as he bent down
to help me gather all the pages. I laughed out loud and he looked up, pushed
his glasses up his nose again, and smiled at me. He said that his name was
Griffin. I said that his name was awesome and he laughed.

16. New Friendship

The next day at school, I met Griffin again. I ended up hanging
out with him a lot, and I figured out that he liked that band with the really
dirty songs because of their structure and suddenly he had gained my respect. I
said the same thing and we both laughed. He played the guitar and I told him I
played the piano. We both liked Ravel and Debussy. And we both didn’t have any
friends at the moment. So I think that day is when we became friends.

17. Misunderstand

There’s something strange about families and making friends
with a person who’s the opposite gender. That is they start mercilessly teasing
you all the time despite the fact that you know you’d never love him. But love
him with a sort of sibling love.

It’s just one of those ongoing misunderstandings that I was
never able to escape from during those times. Even at school, when confronted
about the matter, I accidentally said, “But I don’t like guys!” and then everybody
got the wrong idea. And then I wasn’t just the Notorious Nose Blower anymore.

I was suddenly a lesbian.

18. New Perspective

The fact that I had said “I don’t like guys!” traveled through
the schools like wildfire. I even overheard Mrs. Hensley, my Spanish teacher,
talking with another teacher and she mentioned my name and “homosexual” in the
same sentence. Suddenly, I was the center of attention, the new celebrity. Not
in the way I wanted to be.

I counted the number of times I was shoved into a locker (5
times) and badmouthed (lost track). Yet, somehow, despite the situation, I
gained some more new friends. Two girls who came up to me timidly, and,
blushing, commented on how brave I was for admitting something like that and
told me they were the same way and suffered the same treatment too.

I told them that I was “so sorry” but I wasn’t actually
lesbian. But I also told them, and I meant it, that I’d never judge them
because now I knew how it feels to be judged in such an unkind way. It also
made me open my eyes a bit because before I had always thought of such matter
in black and white. But at that time it was when I finally realized that there
really is hardly a case when everything is just plain black and white.

19. Safe

It was really nice during those times, even when I was

a lesbian

a freak

a nerd

an attention seeker,

that I had friends who were there to help comfort me.
Jennica and Trinity were always there for me from that point on (the two
lesbian girls) and Griffin didn’t just assume that I didn’t like guys but asked
me face to face. And I said no. I do like guys. And he smiled at me and said
that all of those people were jerks for teasing me over such a stupid matter.
On my timeline I ended the Dark Ages. I didn’t feel ready to name it anything
like Good either, but I decided to call it The Safe Times. And I coloured the
name in with a blue gel pen.

20. Drama

In my old hot pink binder, I see another page full of my
rushed handwriting. It was written in a very angry sort of manner and I was reminded
again of exactly how bad my handwriting was (and still is). I remember when I
had written it. It had been during The Safe Times and I had just noticed how
many things and how much drama seemed to revolve around school.

It was no surprise to me how many TV shows used school as
their setting. It was just perfect for drama. I think I remember every year in
highs school there’d be one person who happened to get pregnant, and one person
would be caught dealing drugs. Or taking drugs. Or smoking. It made life at
home really pale in comparison drama wise.

Then again, it occurred to me that a lot of the people in my
school didn’t live very good home lives. But I still wondered why there had to
be so much drama in school and so many tears and broken hearts because of that
drama. And I knew, and I think everybody in that school knew, that all the
drama was just the result of imperfect teachers, imperfect school buildings,
imperfect lives and imperfect humans.

And I think the only thing I could do at the time was to
just deal with it.

21. Sound

There was so much loudness in the cafeteria. Noise and
eating lunch seemed to go hand in hand. It bugged me to no end. I wanted to eat
in a silent place where I could listen and hear other things besides from
people’s voices.

I remember the day that Griffin, Jennica, Trinity and I were
sitting at our own lunch table (everybody else avoided it) and I told everyone,
“It’s so loud.” Jen and Trinity nodded. Jen flicked her brunette hair behind
her shoulder and said  loftily, “Yeah, I
wish everyone would just shut up for a second.”

And Trinity agreed. Griffin, though, just sat there for a
while, listening and I watched him closely (Jen and Trinity watched me watch
him like I was some spectacle) and I asked, “What is it?”

 And to that he replied,
“I like the sound of this place.” His words made me think. Now, looking back, I
can say that I miss the sounds of the cafeteria.

22. Not-Friend

I remember one day I was walking with my friends and I saw her. She was standing just outside some
glass doors right outside the cafeteria for students who wanted to eat outside.
She was with her circle of friends.

Except I noticed that she was biting her lip in that certain
way.

I knew that it meant she was sad and trying not to cry. I
remembered those days when My Friend had come running to me, telling me deep
sad secrets about her family, and looking all trembly and fragile. But I really
remember her facial ex
pression, and that was trying to look fine, but she
always  bit her lip when something bad
was happening. So seeing her then was strange, because even though I thought I
disliked her I couldn’t be mad at her.

I only felt worry for My Not-Friend who deserted me.

23. Doubt

Griffin and Trinity and Jennica all agreed. They told me to “Go
for it!” and “Confront her!” Jennica said I should finally tell her off and
tell her how much of a *censored* she had been. I decided inwardly not to say that
(though part of me really wanted to). Trinity said a more “subtle” approach
might work, whatever that meant (I just nodded) and Griffin just  shrugged. And smiled, naturally. He smiled a
lot.

I saw My Not-Friend again, but she was standing alone outside
the school in the rain, looking up to the sky. I wondered what had happened to
make her so sad and to make her eyes so full of doubt. But to tell the truth, I
had my doubts too. About her.

24. Strength

It doesn’t take me too long to realize what my strengths and
weaknesses are, and I find that my weaknesses outweigh my strengths by a long
shot. One such weakness was confronting people. I remember the day I finally confronted
My Not-Friend. I walked out to her when she was alone, outside, all over again.
Biting her lip.

I  didn’t know what to
say but I finally just said, “You don’t look so good.” When she turned around
the look in her eyes was scared and infuriated. Infuriated for me worrying over
her. But she didn’t do anything, she just looked down at her feet after a while
and it was very silent. Awkward wasn’t the best word to describe the silence
either. More like  tension. Apprehension.

She said to me after the silence, “I saw what you wrote on
my desk. It’s annoying.” Then she walked away before I could say anything else.

25. Sigh

I sigh a lot. Usually it’s when something stressful is happening
(work) or sometimes I sigh because something cute or happy happens. I used to
sigh all the time in school, too. But usually it had to do with annoying
teacher and annoying assignments that just made you sigh. And groan. I sighed at
home when I thought of My Not-Friend’s reaction: “I saw what you wrote on my
desk. It’s annoying.” What had I expected anyway? Something like “I’m sorry, let’s
be friends again” maybe. But after I thought about it, I knew, that’s not what
I wanted. But I wanted some form of reconciliation. I wanted her to acknowledge
me.

26. Sidetrack

My friends, my real friends, noticed how I was kind of down.
I felt like a dark black mass of something was over my head and a 100 pound
weight was strapped to my back. They asked me if they could help me somehow.
And I wondered what they could do.

That’s when Griffin invited all of us over to his house on
Friday. It was really fun and energizing. We did stupid things, but at least I
could act like an idiot in front of them and know that they wouldn’t laugh at
me. Not in that mean way. We watched some scary movie and all of us three girls
made Griffin our “protector” for the rest of the night.

And as I was going to sleep I realized I hadn’t thought of
My-Not Friend for the whole of the day.

27. Bathroom

The bathroom in my school was always really gross and dirty,
but was the one place where you could get away from teachers and sometimes you
could even skip class. All of the girls loved the bathroom and used it for
everything.

I think 2/3 of all the rumors at school started in the
bathroom. There was writing on the wall inside the stalls and the biggest stall
was the one everyone avoided because it had this huge crack where people could
see you inside it when you tried to go to the bathroom. I felt bad for any handicapped
people.

I remember the day I was about to leave one of the stalls
when I saw that My Not-Friend was looking at herself in the mirror, biting her
lip. Again. She took a cigarette from her pocket and a lighter (how she snuck
them in I’ll never know) and she shakily lit it. And started smoking right
there in the girls bathroom.

28. Idiot

I didn’t even think, I just barged out of my stall and flung
the cigarette from her hand. “You idiot!” I said. “You’re really going to get
yourself caught if you do this here.” I wondered two seconds later whether or
not “idiot” was the right word to say. I thought she was going to walk away but
she just stood there.

She said, “I don’t care.” But I knew that she did care. And
she knew, I hoped she knew, that I cared. She sniffled. “I didn’t used to
smoke, you know, when you were my friend. But ever since them, it just became a
habit.”

For some reason, those words made me feel better because I
think she felt remorse, she felt bad. So I decided to let it go. I didn’t even
get mad at her for smoking because I saw her eyes. They seemed to say:

I’m broken.

Let me have this
crutch.

29. Conspiracy

Teachers can make a really bad subject seem amazing and they
can make a fun subject seem awful. There was one teacher, Mr. Press, who
everybody loved. He taught literature and always let people have discussions.
We talked about how songs were poetry and studied music. Even music from
artists like Lady Gaga.

Then there was Mrs. Hensley, my Spanish teacher who was
strict and had this awful thick accent so you couldn’t understand her anyways.
Then there was Mr. Larson who just droned on and on—but he wasn’t that bad
because you could text and send notes and get away with it.

There was Miss Julia, a pretty young teacher who wore jeans
every day. Rumor had it that Mrs. Hensley and Mr. Larson liked each other and
all the students wanted Miss Julia and Mr. Press to get together. But of
course, somebody had to start the rumor that Mr. Press had a boyfriend.

I hoped secretly with the rest of them that Miss Julia and
Mr. Press would get together. Not because I liked the drama, but because being
part of the conspiracies that went around the school was fun.

30. Envy

I admit that I was very envious of my good friend Trinity.
Because Trinity (before people found out she was a lesbian) had a record for
the number of guys who asked her out. She was beautiful and fashionable. Skinny
but curvy in just the right places. Strawberry blonde hair and fair skin. Just
too perfect. At first I didn’t admit I was envious of her. But every time I saw
her walk past in the hallways I felt something inside me itch. It went
something like this:

If I had looks like
her, I could become one of them…

I could become one of
them.

31. Church Kid

I was surprised one day because Trinity said that she went
to church on Sunday. I had thought she was more of the atheist type, being a
lesbian, but I guess I had misjudged her. I had done a lot of misjudging. She
told me her parents didn’t agree with “how she was” and didn’t want her to
continue going to church anymore, but Trinity continued anyway.

And then she was teased for being a “church kid” and liking
girls. After that, I didn’t dare be envious of her again.

32. Mess

Inside my binder, I pick up a piece of paper that has some
poetry written on it. It’s by me. It was entitled “Stuck” because I was stuck
in a bad situation. I had been noticing for some time how our happy little
threesome of awkward high school kids, suddenly had tension in it.

I think that’s because of Jennica. She was slowly, slowly
starting to pull away from us which made Trinity in turn mad because I saw that
look Trinity gave Jennica. I felt that suddenly everything was becoming a mess.

At the time I didn’t know what to do because issues of love
were not my forte.

33. Telephone

During the times of school, everyone had a cell phone but
me. I didn’t like using any phones. They made me feel weird. So it was really
scary for me when I decided to call Jennica and ask what’s the matter. I
wondered why I couldn’t be like those students who had thousands of friends on
Facebook, who could text well, who were connected, who were liked by everybody.

I thought that while I pressed the “call” button on my home
phone and got hold of my friend. When I asked her if she was okay, she told me,
“I’m sitting in the bathroom with a knife. Do you think I’m okay?”

34. Relate

I clutched at the phone and in the silence I could hear
Jennica sobbing on the other end. And a voice that was calm, professional, came
from my mouth. “I’m coming over.” But I wasn’t feeling calm or professional. My
life was so different from hers, from all of my friends’ lives. I’d never been
heartbroken before, or lived in a home that hated me.

But I knew the empty feeling of being deserted and ignored
by a friend. So at the time I thought that it must have been easy for Jennica,
for in a couple of seconds, to feel like she was the loneliest person in the
world, and I knew that I had to be there for her.

35. Rescue

My heart hurts just thinking back now, at the scene in my
friend’s house when I got there. The woman who opened the door had yellow teeth
and unbrushed frizzy hair that poofed every which way. And when I looked at her
she said, “Who the hell are you?” I told her I was looking for Jennica. She
laughed and told me that Jennica was “pretty *censored*ed up” at the moment. I really
wanted to slap that mother.

And my heart died a bit inside when I asked where I could
find her and that woman said, “You wanna rescue the lesbo? Go right ahead,
kid.”

36. Pitiful

I ran past that Not Mother of my friend. I remember thinking
as I ran through that tiny house, how small and unclean looking it was. And it
smelled like burnt toast and cigarettes. The smell seemed to be absorbed into
the walls and the carpet flooring, and you could even smell it inside the
bathroom where Jennica was, huddled near the bathtub, knife in hand. There was
red on her arms and on her right wrist, as though somebody had branded her
there with hot wires.

She turned around and said, “I’m pitiful.”

I wondered what I could say to comfort such a girl. I think
I might have been crying, and I hugged her where she sat and thought

You’re strong. You’re
strong.

“Pitiful,” she sobbed.

“You’re strong,” I said.

37. Judge

That look in her eyes, that deeply hurt look that I had
never noticed, stared right at me.

“I’m going to hell,” she said. “I’m completely *censored*ed up
inside. I can’t live here.” I remember feeling so angry that if that mother
were standing right there, I would have decked her. I thought

Who has the right to
tell her that?

Or even to tell anybody that? I said, “We’re all messed up.
We’re no better than all the gays and lesbians in the world.”

38. Shield

I held her for a long time. I wanted desperately to protect
her from that Not Mother, from the people who wanted to destroy her bit by bit.
“Call me,” I said. “Call me when she gets bad or whatever, and I’ll come and
get you.” She smiled at me and tried to stop crying. I knew I had done the
right thing, because her eyes had been saying

I can’t live like
this.

And I hoped I could help her a little by supporting her. I
remember thinking

I wish I could be her
shield from the world.

39. Bubblegum

Pink highlights. There was a girl in my geometry class that
I saw every day. She had black straight hair with those neon pink highlights in
them and she wore black cardigans with everything. And she was so skinny it was
almost scary. It occurred to me how she struck me as a “bubblegum” girl—the one
who listens to pop and mainstream music and fits in beautifully with everyone
and is kind of shallow.

40. My Little Pony

That Bubblegum girl always had earbuds in, even during
class. Her ipod was pink, like the highlights in her hair. She drummed her
fingers on her desk a lot and I think she was doing it to the beat of the
music. But the thing that stood out to me the most was this small plastic
figurine of one of those characters from My Little Pony that was sitting inside
her desk.

And suddenly I became a lot more interested in the Bubblegum
girl.

41. Notebook

I had this notebook during that time and I would give people
nicknames (like Bubblegum girl) and I would draw a picture of the person next
to their nickname. Not that I was great at drawing or anything. It just gave me
something to do during geometry. But I remember the one day that I left my
notebook at school and the next day I came back it was in Bubblegum girl’s
hands.

And she was looking straight at me.