Scarred for Life

You never know that you hurt someone until it’s too late. Well, in my case it was. She’s gone now, I’ll never see her again, and it’s my entire fault. I hardly knew her, so I had no idea what I was saying could hurt her that bad. She was one of those girls you never notice. She just goes through the day; you see her laughing and goofing off a lot, but only with her friends. She hardly talks to us; of course, I’m part of the group everyone calls “popular”. The Goths and punks, and even sometimes the geeks give my group dirty looks for being in the “popular” clique. It makes me mad, I didn’t decide that our group was the popular group did I?

Anyway, she got good grades, or at least I think she did. I once heard her telling a friend she rose her grade from an F to a D. I’m not sure if she was kidding or not, she was laughing in an embarrassed way though, so I assume she was. She wore very conservative clothes, and she often wore a jacket over those clothes. Her hair was always down, I never saw her ware her hair in any fashion before, of course, I never really paid attention to her, like I said, she was in the “in between” clique.

It started one day, when she came to school, she had a bruised face. It was funny, I never notice her when she looks pretty (and I only know she looked pretty some days because I was looking at pictures of her in a photo album) but when she looked horrible because of her bruised face, I noticed her. So did all my friends.

When she walked in to class, it was fourth hour, we were goofing off, stalling until the last possible moment to start our warm-ups, or at least pretending to start them. She was looking down, avoiding everyone’s gaze, her long, black hair covering most of her face. She put down her backpack-which had a hole in it-and sat down.

I was talking about the funny commercial I had seen last night when my friend pointer her out to me, she whispered, “Hey, look at Alexis, looks like she put a bit too much eye shadow on.” He laughed after this, and he said this just loud enough for her to hear.

I laughed as I replied, the volume I chose for my voice mimicking his, “No, no, no, she must’ve talked back to her dad!” I laughed out loud. It was a joke of course, she was always doing what the teachers said, she was very quiet, like I said, and she was never known to do anything bad.

She looked up in my direction, careful not to look into my eyes, then looked back down, finishing the last few words she writing down on her warm-up. I felt a little stab of guilt, but it was very brief, because my friends were laughing too.

“Shut up.” came a soft voice. It came from the desk behind me; it was Melinda, one of Alexis’s friends.

I looked at her, she seemed to gain more confidence from this, then said, “I’m tired of you snobby preps giving people a hard time! What the hell is wrong with you, can’t you bitches get a life?”

I started at this, she seemed a bit too mad at us. Fabiola, who had pointed Alexis out to me, answered, “Oh my, the darling Melinda cussed, everybody back off!” she gave a mock horrified inhale of breath.

Just then, our teacher, Mr. Brancy walked in from whatever errand he had ran and closed the door connecting his and Miss Lancer’s class. He had opened it so that Miss Lancer could keep an eye on us while he was gone, not a smart move. Nonetheless, I have no complaints here, it gives us time to talk and goof off.

I glanced at Alexis, afraid she might tell on us, luckily, she looked more worried about our teacher noticing her bruise than telling on us. I couldn’t say the same for Melinda though, she looked ready to pounce.

The rest of the day passed by without event, though I kept on wondering if I should go and apologize to Melinda. She was never really mean to anyone, she just got good grades, was that any reason to be mean to her? For some it was, it irks me the way she’s always right and yet I can never come up with an answer quick enough. Still, she was a human being.

That night, as I lay awake, thinking about it, I decided it was best to say sorry, but I would do it in secret, so that my friends wouldn’t find out.

When I got to school the next day, I waited for her to come into homeroom-we had the same one-but she never came. I didn’t think much of it though, she was probably sick, I assumed.

When she was gone for a week, I got worried though. Finally, I decided to ask my teacher. What she told me would scar me for the rest of my life. Just as I had scarred Alexis for the rest of her short life. I had only scarred her for a day though, because at the end of it, she had relieved herself of the pain. She had freed herself from her dad’s beatings, and from mine.

You never know you hurt someone till it’s too late. Well, in my case it was.