Snitch

Things are getting worse. I went back to school today, at least, I attempted to go back to school today, but it was a disaster. I don’t know what made me think that life could just continue the way it used to, wishful thinking perhaps. Kids just stared at me everywhere I went. I could hear them whisper as I walked past, all of them pointing me out. I’m a celebrity in the worst way. And everyone at Woodrow High School knows it.

Tabitha, my best friend, my only friend, never left my side. I don’t know what I would do without her. She really is one in a million. As we walked side by side down the hallways and our ears filled with the hissing of those around us, she calmly and with a deliberate tone spoke to me, telling me to stay strong, that it was all going to be okay. I could do this. And I actually believed I could, that is until I went to my locker after second period. I noticed the letters before I even got to it. They were big, scrawled vertically in big black paint that had dripped as it dried. S.N.I.T.C.H.

I tried to ignore it, the word that spelled out my current social status, but I couldn’t pretend I didn’t see it. Of course that’s what everyone thought, I was here going to classes carrying on with my life and he wasn’t. I go home at the end of the day while he sits behind bars. It never occurs to them I could be the victim. That the secrets I have been holding inside of me are just as mush a prison as the bars that he is sitting behind. I haven’t slept in days. I don’t even trust my own thoughts. Almost every second of every breath I take makes me wish I had never met Jimmy Reynolds.