It’s miracle I’m still breathing. With everything that’s happened, it’s kind of hard not to see myself in a hospital bed wearing the dinky hospital gown, a breathing machine connected to my body keeping it alive.

I mean, I don’t see him every day, which is a blessing. He got removed from Class B with me and moved to Class D, which meant that he was stupid. Haha. But still there are instances where I see him and I just instantly feel like I have to run up to him, wrap my arms around him and carry him off, stuff him in a bag and drive him off a cliff. He’s that annoying.

Let me start from the beginning. In seventh grade, I transferred from a religious school to this hellhole on earth. And like every seventh grader, I was stupid and wanted normalcy and a bit of acceptance. Mostly because those two things weren’t being offered in my old school. Honestly, they could have at least mentioned it on the brochure that they didn’t! It’s like giving out chocolate and ‘forgetting’ to tell people that it may or may not contain nuts! It’s cowardly AND illegal.

Anyway, like any other thirteen year-old, the fastest road to normalcy was having crushes, which I did, and for acceptance, it was dating someone. So I did what every thirteen year-old in my situation did, flirt a lot and get a little bit of loving

His name was Ken. Yeah, yeah, it reminds people of the Barbie’s perpetually loyal forever-boyfriend. But this guy was in no way Ken. He was short, unattractively unattractive, dark-skinned in a non-flattering way, a complete trying hard wannabe rebel who cuts class and get this, he had no abs. I know, unbelievable! Also, he didn’t know how to speak English despite the fact that he was going to one of the best schools in the country and has English as his primary language.

Now the question here is: Why would I have gotten together with a guy like this? Especially since I knew that I deserved more than him and what he could offer? How someone like me could have dated someone like this? I did because again, I was desperate for some normalcy in my life and he was my ticket to it, or so I thought.

Now, back then, I was a complete and utter recluse and this new school had given me the fresh new start I had needed. It got so bad at my old school that I lasted six months before telling my mother that I wanted out. I made her homeschool me the rest of the year and that was the end of my life at that horrible school. I was stupid enough to think that despite the school being more liberal than the last that I would ever be able to break free from parental vision. Turns out my mother was friends with a teacher there and asked him to keep an eye on me.

The last class before lunch, we saw a movie, I think it was something religious. What was it called? Uhhhh… Thief of the Night, I think. Yeah, that movie. Anyway, the rest of the class was watching the movie so intently they hadn’t heard the conversation we had.

Ken looked at me and tapped my shoulders, taking my attention away from the movie and diverting it to him.

“Hey Lucy, can I ask you something?” He said. The look on his eyes and the way his shoulders drooped allowed me to make the deduction that I had him right where I wanted him.

 I placed an innocently curious mask on my face and asked him what he wanted to ask me. Of course I wasn’t dumb. He was going to ask me out and it was going to be my ticket to normalcy.

“Uhhhh… never mind.” He responded. Drats. I am not giving up on this. He’s the first guy that’s shown interest in me at this new school and I’m not going to give up on it.

I pushed him into telling me what it was. I pushed and I hinted and everything until I finally did it. “Fine! Will you be my girlfriend?” My heart didn’t leap for joy but it did in fact, grin. I had scored and I didn’t even need to flirt. I only had to be myself because a deadbeat like him had accepted the fact that I was a total slob.

Nobody had heard that conversation. It was just him and I. Thank god. We had dated for three months, from October to January. Thankfully, he hadn’t gotten anything from me other than a few kisses and a really cute jar I filled with candy that one time. And what did I get in return? Absolutely nothing.

After that class, I had talked to my friend Wendy. She said she was happy for me. I didn’t feel anything. It was as if I just got to pat a really cute dog and she wasn’t able to. Getting Ken for a boyfriend was like being a teacher with a kiss ass following me around everywhere.

I’d told him to keep the relationship secret because my parents would never have approved of something as illiterate as him. They were too educated for that. For him. And I was obviously too young, seeing as I did only just meet him for a few months before deciding that it was a good idea to date him. The thought of that now just makes me shudder. I’m such a desperate slut.

Throughout the relationship, I was obviously really just going with the flow, being really meh about everything. After the first three days, the relationship felt more like a chore. He was a whiny little bitch that I had honestly just hated from day four. I knew his English wasn’t that good and that he was a total idiot and a product of normalcy. And he kept reminding me that he was. He sent me love quotes that I just hated. They’re so disgustingly cheesy that to this day, they make me want to crawl into a hole to avoid for the rest of my life.

If I was being honest, I would have to say that I never felt like I was even in a relationship during my time with him. I didn’t feel anything, no sparks, nothing. Absolutely zilch. But I was too ‘nice’ to dump him. I kept waiting for the perfect moment but I just couldn’t. Wendy told me what I was doing was called a ‘love game’ and that she’d done it multiple times before and that she was so proud of me for following in her footsteps.

I didn’t want to follow her footsteps. I just got into a relationship that I realized I wasn’t happy with. Plain and simple. I just didn’t know how the hell I was going to break up with a guy. Especially if the guy was doing nothing bad and the only reason you had for wanting to break up with him was because he wasn’t your cup of tea and you just couldn’t stand him asking to touch your boobs every day. And there was also this thing where he sort of forced me into an engagement with him through text. Through fucking text, ladies and gentlemen. It was too much for me, just too much.

The final straw was when I was at a relative’s house during Christmas break and just plainly having fun with my younger cousins when he called me obsessively and wouldn’t stop until I answered my phone. It got to a point where I took my phone out of my pocket, sent him an angry message that told him to stop. Oh but he didn’t. He kept calling. So I angrily went to my bag in the living room and left my phone in my bag, cherishing the beautiful sound of it landing next to my handy pack of mints.

On the last day of my relationship with him, I was on Google hangout with a friend who was vacationing and was thinking of a way to dump him. On the same day, that friend had introduced me to Google plus, so plain and simply, I sent him a text.

“Hey, if you can’t tell me what g+ means, I’m breaking up with you. I’m sorry.”

“Wat?”

“I’m breaking up with you if you don’t know what g+ means. Again, I’m sorry.”

“I don’t know…”

“Then we’re through. Goodbye Ken.”

The rest of the day, I felt guilty, again, not because I felt anything for the guy but because I knew I sounded like such a dick for dumping him the way I did. I was on hangout with that friend and he introduced me to some of his internet friends.

It was fun; they kept my occupied for a long time. That friend, Gavin, was the first person to know about what I did. He didn’t me for it. How could he when, he was no better. He and I were socially awkward like that. He and I still are, actually. It’s just that now, we know how to act normal-ish.

Then school came back and I faced him. He didn’t talk to me and I didn’t talk to him. I made friends with a lot of my classmates that I wasn’t able to have known with him blocking my view. I met so many people the exact hour after I dumped him that I knew I had made the right choice. Wendy, who knew what I was doing to him from the start, said that she was happy that I dumped Ken.

It was then that I felt a spark. It felt freeing.

Fast forward to the next school year. I decided that I was going to try out for clubs that I wasn’t able to join the previous year. I kept myself busy and mostly kept to myself and to my select group of friends. I had slowly come out of my shell that year. I also kept away from him and used my newfound confidence to boss him around every chance I got. He was harmless. A little bug in my windshield.

But now, five years later, now that he’s been moved to Wendy’s class, it seems as though he has been talking about getting back together with me. Wendy’s been telling me so since the first day of class. He constantly bugged her about where I was, which was stupid since I was always on the go, going on errands for teachers and making more friends as I went on my way as a member of the inner circle of students that the school had trusted.

Wendy told me about how he’d told everyone about his relationship with me. It was apparently a hot topic, despite being five years old, to the entire graduating class. Every once in a while, I had people asking me if we did date, to which I always say, “Why are you trusting the word of an idiot? He’s obviously in over his head. He doesn’t know anything.”

But those who knew, kept their mouths shut. They knew me well enough to know that I was not the kind of person to mess with. I was a good friend but a very vile enemy if you ever crossed me.

Wendy would always tell me about the things he did that involved me. Like how he’d joined the club I was in just to get closer to me. During the club orientation, I had been facilitating their activities with my friends Gabriel, Christian, Jonas and the guy who asked me out last year (who got turned down) Francis. Outside of the club, we were really good friends, despite it being a little awkward with Francis because he was the youngest among us, being a tenth grader and all and Gabriel, Christian and Jonas as eleventh graders and me, the only senior.

And at one point, we were chilling at the side as they worked, sharing an entire liter of coke between us, passing the bottle around, and I could feel someone staring holes into my back every time I took a swig or laughed at another one of Christian’s never ending jokes. And during a video presentation of what we did in the club, me and the boys were hooting every time a clip of us doing stuff was shown and I say Ken looking intently at me.

Earlier today, we had to present a project in class and mine was huge. So huge that I had a little bit of a problem carrying it along with my class books and my backpack all the way to the fifth floor and back, via stairs. So when classes were over, I desperately asked a schoolmate to help me. And that schoolmate went and called Ken and asked him to carry it for me. And he did and I was in no position to argue because it was a long way down.

He offered to carry it until I got to my mother’s place of work. I obliged. Halfway there, I met Wendy and thanked Ken for his help, took the project from him and ran to Wendy, thanking her for being my savior.

It turned out that Ken had been heading the same way we were so he stayed behind his, following.

When we crossed the road, he turned and headed for the west and Wendy pulled me to the east. She told me to wait until Ken was gone. I asked why.

“He’s been stalking you since the first day of senior year, Lucy. He’s always asking me what you’re doing and where you’re doing it.”

My lips quivered. I couldn’t take it. My head started to spin and my vision blackened.