And the best compliment I’ve ever gotten is

“You’d really be beautiful if your face matched your body”

And I’d really liked it then, had smiled and nodded and allowed insult to slide off my interior/exterior to melt into a cool puddle on the ground— and my reflection then was broken, shattered into millions of tiny spider-web cracks, like gossamer thread, I guess. It had always been such a mess.

I thought that in the shards I would find a really beautiful person—whose flaws were forgivable, but I guess I haven’t (yet).

I would say that everything’s gray but that’s an overstated cliché—everyone’s moving and buzzing buzzing buzzing, the nice boys in my science class call me a prude and subtly cut me with barbed-wire under their breath when I want to hear what the teacher says. I overlook it and thank the likes of ignorance...deliberate misunderstanding—selective hearing.

I’ve been upgraded from the harmless doormat wallflower to the potentially homicidal wallflower. I only clench my teeth and narrow my eyes and say that none of these people are even worth my time.

I’m fine.

At lunch, my food attacks me and I change into my gray gym shirt—a discolored figure in a sea of blue-khaki and rubberbands. I find that I’m actually invisible and don’t deserve apologies, but I have to apologize—so this becomes something more general.

Everyone laughs at the yellow yellow mustard at lunch and I laugh too, but when I chime in people lose interest and move onto other things. I sit at the table and rest my chin on my books, stare straight ahead and look dark or thoughtful. I get a weird stare from the blue-haired brown-eyed girl across from me, but they leave me alone. I’m an invisible girl but I’m fine.

I got another compliment earlier in the year when I didn’t care (I guess it was nicer than the first one); he called me “really cute” and it made me smile, even though he didn’t really mean it the way I wanted him to—he pines for his long distance ex-girlfriend while I pine for him in last class when I sit next to him (I’m screaming on Pluto at the same time for all that he realizes).

But that’s okay, because he actually is a nice boy. (You’re just this amazing guy.)

I can see why solitary confinement is a punishment. Even when we’re together I’m apart; you’re connected. Though it’s nice that you take the time to chat when nobody else is here. (I guess I appreciate it, but I’m just as well alone sort of.) So this is what it feels like to live inside a mirror. (Take what you want; give nothing back.)

Everybody says I’m just too scary (dark, brooding).

I think that I just can’t wait to leave here.