Member-only story
The Girl Who Was Left Behind in a Tide of Her Own Making
Yes, I’m the girl in this one.
In my senior year of high school, whispers seemed to follow me everywhere.
Maybe I was just paranoid, but every time I looked back over my shoulder I could see people turn their heads away. Their cheeks would go pink, or maybe a giggle would stutter out of their mouths before I frowned and averted my attention elsewhere.
It wasn’t an easy life to be the pariah, though I suppose that was self-made.
I didn’t exactly make many friends in high school. Though I had a lot of acquaintances and thought myself friendly to everyone, none of it really mattered in a larger expanse. Instead of a gloomy loner, I was that quiet and shy girl who was a bit too much of a know-it-all in class while the other teens’ parents didn’t trust me because I wasn’t a church attendee. (It was a Baptist school; what can I say?)
I never heard the rumors that circulated, but I’m sure they swirled when I stopped showing up to school because of my mom’s up-and-down struggles with her health. No matter how many people told me they were praying for me and my family, sometimes I’d get a whiff of something disingenuous about the words being said.
