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First I would like to thank xxNightDragonxx, roselilie, dustytiger, Luneko, Aslan Israel, Mettie, The-unimportant-item, Water Kokoro, Ellen Paulis, citrus cented, and illy for their reviews. Thank you so much for your wonderful feed back! I would also like to give a shout out to Alexz Lynn for putting me on her favorites list. I appreciate it greatly!
This is kind of an experiment of mine in characterization. I have no idea how it is, but that's for you to decide. If it's terrible or needs anysort of improvementplease let me know. That's whyI post onhere, to improve. :)
Well, here it is: my first real attempt at anything fiction. Please tell me what you think about the characters.
“Well, we are already given the measurements of side AB and side DE and then we know that angle BCA and angle BED are congruent because they’re alternate interior angles…”
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I watched the dark-haired girl begin her lengthy and perfectly correct response and almost groaned. Here we go again. Her flawlessly waxed eyebrows went up, then down, then up again like some performing monkey. Her hands gestured wildly to emphasize every point, faultless blue eyes flashing in gusto. I felt a strong urge to punch her. No one should be that enthusiastic about math of all things. And, as usual, Mr. Warrington’s beaming only helped to make his favorite student’s gesticulation increase in amount and intensity. It was pathetic really, how much she relied on his opinion. She hung onto every scrap of approval, every glance, every nod he gave her, greedily hoarding it away like a half-starved dog. And Warrington, the fool… didn’t he notice how she practically worshiped the very ground he walked on? Like I said, pathetic.
Anyway, it seemed like Miss I-Know-Everything’s explanation wasn’t going to end any time soon, so I turned my attention elsewhere. A quick survey of the room confirmed my suspicions. No one else was listening either, or else everyone else’s enthusiasm seemed nonexistent beneath the great light bulb Laura. It was probably a combination of both, to be honest. I mean really, it’s a wonder any of us passed that class, especially when you consider that we had Laura for Warrington to compare us to. It also didn’t help that none of us ever cared enough to ever listen in the first place. But who could blame us? I mean, no one listened in math class, especially not in Warrington’s class. He was so stupid. He wouldn’t even spare me the dignity to call me by my name. “Mary-Alice,” he’d say, “what is the answer to number 5?” or more often “Mary-Alice Cumber, for the final time, would you please stop drawing on your desk or need I remind you the importance of paying attention by assigning you another detention with Mr. Emerson?” No one had called me Mary-Alice since Gary Buckman in the first grade, and I had made sure he never made that mistake again. I’d punched him right in the nose and everyone else seemed to take the hint as well. No, I went by Mac, which was really just my initials, no Mary-Alice for me. Honestly, it should be a criminal offence to stick a kid with such a name. And even after I had explained this to Warrington, the idiot, he insisted on calling me by that sickening name.
Anyway, none of us cared to waste our time listening to Warrington, or at least no one who mattered. Because now that I think about it, there was this one kid who listened—other than Laura, I mean. Who knows why. I think his name was Sam, or was it George? I don’t remember. All I know is that he seemed to have this strange thing for llamas, considering I can never remember seeing him without one plastered on the front of his t-shirt. But then again, it’s not like I ever cared what that weirdo was wearing. He was always just… weird, not to mention dorky as the day is long. He was a loser. I never talked to him.
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I should have known he wouldn’t call on me. He never did. It didn’t matter if I raised my hand or not. He wouldn’t call on me even if I was the only one with my hand raised. It figured he called on that other girl. She always was his favorite. And me, I was just that kid in the front row that everyone forgot about. No one ever remembered me. Even Mac, the angry girl who was always drawing caricatures of Mr. Wellington on her desk, couldn’t remember my name, and we’d been going to school together since kindergarten. But she probably didn’t remember that. I was a nobody, and people like her didn’t have time for nobodies.
I wonder if she ever figured out how I felt about her. No, who am I kidding, of course not. How could she ever know that when she didn’t even know my name? She always used to call me George, and I never corrected her. It was enough that she called me anything at all. At least that meant she noticed me. Anyway, it was better than some of the variations people made on my real name. It’s amazing what taunts people can come up with when your name is Everett. In the first grade I was ‘Ever-wet’, mainly due to my embarrassing struggle with bed-wetting at the time.
I don’t know why I even bothered trying to get her attention. I’d raise my hand every single time Mr. Wellington asked a question, wishing he would pick me and hoping that whatever I said would sound intelligent enough for Mac to notice me. But he never did, and she never did. Surprise, surprise, I went unnoticed once again. Every year it was the same. I would try desperately to earn her attention, only to have my attempts end up making me look like even more of an idiot in her eyes. The look of disgust she always had on her face whenever she looked at me never left my memory. It was branded into my mind for eternity. I was worse than dirt in her eyes; to her I was a dork, a weirdo loser, and once she told me so right to my face. I never got over that. She also told me that I was a llama-loving freak. I never got over that either. But I couldn’t just stop being who I was because of her… even for her. She was asking the impossible: for me to give up my identity, the only thing differentiating me from everybody else, the only thing that made me feel like I was somebody—if only because I was different. Who else could I be if I wasn’t ‘the llama loser’? Although I wasn’t happy in my role, it was a safe role. In my carefully maintained niche, my life was stable. I wasn’t happy, but I was secure in my unhappiness. And that security was the only thing that kept me from the going over the edge all those years ago.