Unorthodox

Entry One:

I don’t care who reads this, I’m not about to do a stereotypical “dear diary” entry. I don’t even know why I’m writing in this thing in the first place. Diaries are overrated and I sure as hell don’t believe in them!

As if writing in this will fix what years of therapy and medication could not. That’s bull and everyone knows it, too. So why don’t you go ahead and claim me unfit for society so we can all get on with our lives? Oh wait, that’s why I’m here in the first place.

I don’t care if it’s required of each student. I don’t care if this is a form of therapy. It won’t

Rolling her eyes, Tricia chucked the book across the room, jumping as it hit the wall and bounced loudly against her still packed boxes. With a sigh, she flopped backwards on her bed and eyed said boxes. In all honesty, she probably should unpack before her roommate – whoever she was – came back and noticed the mess. Her roommate was bound to form enough bad impressions about her without Tricia doing anything to help her out. However much she hated mess, though, unpacking would be admitting defeat and accepting her fate. There was no way that was going to happen.

The name on the door, right above where hers was placed read Alexa Park and she couldn’t be more unenthusiastic about meeting her. With her luck being what it was, Alexa Park would be tall, blond, gorgeous and popular. Considering where they were, the chances of that were not very likely, but they did exist.

Madame Harris’ Academy for Difficult Teens. It sounded like something out of a horrible teen drama. Or Harry Potter. Whatever it sounded like, it did not include her new home. Home? Hardly. How could one call a live-in psyche ward “home”? Tricia had no illusions about it, either. How could it be anything but?

She turned to face the door, the door to her new cell. She was tired already of her roommate’s cheery posters, and was not a little irritated to find another one on the back of the door. It looked to Tricia like those Japanese cartoons the country was obsessing over at the moment. Her eyes slid closed, the image of a group of smiling, animated teenagers the last thing she saw before she drifted to semi-consciousness.

Sometime later her eyes snapped open as she heard the door do the same. True to prediction, it was a tall, blued-eyed blond girl that walked through the door. Well, a strawberry blond girl. And it wasn’t so much that she walked in as she rushed in, dropped her bag by the door, ran to the laptop on her desk next to the window. She flipped it opened and the keys started clicking rapidly.

Ten minutes – or so – later the noise stopped and she felt her bed sink down near her head. A hand grabbed her shoulder and shook it:

‘Hey there, you awake?’ She sat up and cast an annoyed look to the blond. ‘Don’t look at me like that! I just wanted to welcome you,’ she shrugged nonchalantly, ‘but I guess I can go mind my own business.’ The girl – Alexa – left Tricia’s bed, and rummaged around her closet. She changed her clothes without a scrap of decency. From some unknown place, perhaps her wrist, she produced a scrunchie to tie up her long hair.

As soon as Tricia realised she was watching her, she fell back against the headboard, and her eyes turned their focus on the undecorated ceiling. White. The ceiling was white. Hospital white. Depressing white. Oh, how she hated white ceilings.

‘You can ignore me, if you want,’ she stated, sitting again at her desk, ‘but we’re going to be living together, and it’ll get rather tedious if we can’t form a truce.’

Tricia said nothing.

‘Whatever,’ Tricia heard her sigh. ‘I’m Alexa, by the way, Alexa Park. In case you didn’t know or something.’

Alright, that was it. Tricia stood from her bed, and only barely remembered to grab her keys before she all but stormed out of the room. An only child in an empty house, she was used to her privacy. She wandered the halls, looking for some alone-space and shying away from her new “peers”. Eventually she found a door to the backyard of the academy and she slipped out of it.

It was raining, and no one else felt like braving the weather. That suited her as well as the rain itself did. She slumped in a partially hidden corner, hugged her knees to her chest and let her tears fall freely.

A series of bells rang, and it was long after the last one that Tricia finally rose and slowly backtracked to her room. The halls were empty. Spookily empty. But Tricia didn’t notice the lack of people; she didn’t notice anything at all. The world was numb and her eyes were red. Her short brown hair – cinnamon – was plastered to her face and her clothing to her body.

She let herself into her room and rummaged in her boxes to find an oversized T-shirt and a pair of pyjama bottoms. She quickly changed into them and grabbed a towel for her hair. She needed her music. Music could help her… maybe.

She dug through a box to find her CDs; the player was already on her nightstand. Halfway through removing her things she noticed a grilled cheese sandwich, a lunch-size bag of Doritos and a Pepsi sitting next to her own school-issued laptop. A second glance showed her familiar collection of medication in a nondescript cup, next to a second one filled with water.

She looked over her shoulder to see Alexa sitting on her bed, clad also her pyjamas and writing in her own diary. The girl must have noticed her watching as she looked up. ‘You didn’t pick them up, so I did. And you shouldn’t take them on an empty stomach,’ she explained unprompted. ‘Here, we look out for each other.’

It was in the rules of the school, Tricia remembered. Medication needed to be picked up daily from the nurses’ office. It was to prevent overdosing. Practically everyone in the school was on medication of some sort so was the best way to do things, her counsellor had told her.

‘Thanks,’ she mumbled. Not bothering to finish unpacking, she brought the sandwich, water and pills to her bed along with her CDs. The soda and chips she would save until later. Food was hardly a priority at the moment.

‘I’m supposed to remind you that you don’t have class until Monday,’ Alexa began from nowhere, ‘you’re to take tomorrow and the weekend to settle in, although you have therapy on Saturday morning. Ask anyone if you need help, as your roommate I’ve been assigned as your student-mentor.’

‘Because “we look out for each other”?’ Tricia rolled her eyes, her voice dripped with sarcasm.

‘You may not believe it now, Trish, but you will. I promise you will.’

Pretending to ignore her and her uninvited use of an unwelcome nickname, Tricia curled up completely under her thick comforter. Her CD player was tucked under her pillow as tried to lose herself in the music.

She failed, of course.