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1
IZABELLA
You can tell a lot about a person by the shoes they wear. You can tell even more about them when their shoes are the only kind of self-expression they’re allowed to have. Green Acres Academy has a strict dress code. Green-plaid skirts or pinafores, white blouses, green ties, and blazers for the girls. Tan chinos, white shirts, green ties, and green blazers for the boys. Everybody looks the same, except for their shoes.
I see a lot of shoes in the halls of this school. I see the popular girls who strut between classes like the hallways are a catwalk and the sleepy guys who drag their feet as they saunter from one period to the next. I see it all, because I’m the only person looking down when everyone around me is looking forward.
You’d think traversing busy hallways that are full of students would be almost impossible with my head down and my gaze pinned firmly on my feet. But I’ve done it for so long that I could move around GAA with my eyes closed and never bump into anything.
Looking down is my camouflage, it’s the way I stay hidden in plain sight. Looking down at the ground and all those shoes makes me invisible and that’s what I need to be, because if no one sees me, then I don’t have to see them either.
On TV and in movies, people always talk about high school being the best years of your life, and maybe for some people it is, but not for me. I’m a senior, and instead of the last three-and-a-half years being my glory days, they’ve simply been a lesson in survival. I’ve learned how to stay hidden; I’ve learned how to be invisible, and I’ve learned that if you try hard enough, you can simply fail to exist.
Green Acres Academy is the crème de la crème of prep schools. The world is full of rich people, and most of them want their kids to come here, but no matter how much money they have, the majority of them won’t get in. GAA has about three hundred students, and the vast majority will be from families who have attended this school since its inception.
Occasionally the school allows one or two scholarship kids or a townie who can afford to pay the fees to attend, but for the most part, the students all hail from the same group of high society families.
Most of my graduating class have known each other their entire lives. Which is why I spend most of my time staring down at the floor. I need to stay invisible, because all of my problems start when people see my face.
My cell beeps with a text message, and for a moment I pretend I don’t hear it. There’s only one person at this school who has my number, and they’re the only person I really don’t want to hear from.
Sighing, I shuffle to the side of the hallway and step between two banks of lockers. Keeping my gaze lowered and using my hair as a shield, I reluctantly pull my cell from my blazer pocket. My cell is old—so old that apart from calls and texts, its only other feature is a game called Snake. The screen is black and white, it only has one very 80s computer font, and it doesn’t even have a camera, but it works and does everything that I need it to do, and I love it.
Using the buttons, I scroll through the menu until I reach the little pixelated envelope that will take me to my text messages. The other kids at this school love texts and Snapchats and whatever the fuck else they get on their cell phones, but even without reading the contents of the message, I know it’s nothing good.
Closing my eyes, I inhale deeply and seriously consider just ignoring it. My cell’s so outdated that no one would know if I’d read the message or not. I could just pretend that my battery died or that a teacher thought I’d stolen an antique cell phone and confiscated it.
For a long, rebellious moment, I actually think about doing it, about ignoring whatever demand is in this text. But then a seed of doubt starts to grow in my stomach. What if it’s something important? Or what if it’s not what I think it is?
Exhaling, I stop trying to pretend that I have a choice and open the message.
Penelope – Second floor bathroom, now!
A bitter scoff falls from my lips. Every time I get a message like this from her, I wonder why I’m still surprised. It’s been over three years since I received a text that wasn’t a demand or an order, but for some stupid reason, the tiny voice at the back of my mind still taunts me with the idea that it could be something different.
Albert Einstein said that insanity was doing the same thing over and over and expecting to get a different result, but I can’t quite give up the hope that one day things might change.
Lifting my wrist, I check the time on my watch. It’s five minutes until the bell, which unfortunately means enough time for me to do as I’m told. Pushing my cell back into my blazer, I inhale, then exhale, psyching myself up to move from my hiding spot.
I’ve gotten so good at being invisible that I barely have to try. Lowering my gaze, I allow my shoulders to curl in, making myself as small as possible as I step out from the wall. With my hair shielding my face, I start to walk, keeping a medium pace, not so slow that I block anyone, nor fast enough to be memorable.
Clutching my books tightly against my chest, I don’t look up until I’m standing outside the bathroom door. No one ever comes up here because it’s at the very end of the south wing, next to where a hallway was blocked off and rerouted years ago. We’ve used this bathroom as a meeting place since freshman year when we thought high school would be an exciting new adventure. Back then, I enjoyed school, now it’s just something else to survive.
Pushing through the door, I tense. This won’t be good, it never is, and no matter how much I want things to be different, no matter how much I wish things would change, they never do.
“Where the hell have you been? I texted you ten minutes ago,” Penelope screeches, her voice so full of venom and hatred that I barely recognize it.
Although it’s impossible not to recognize someone who looks exactly like I do. Most people only get to see how they look in pictures or a mirror. I get to see every angle of every emotion as it plays across my identical twin’s face. I never imagined that my sister would look at me with hatred in her eyes, but I’ve seen it so often now that I think I could imitate the expression without ever having truly felt the emotion.
“I was all the way—” I start to explain.
“I don’t care,” she says, cutting me off, her hands on her hips, her lips twisted into an ugly, imperious snarl. “You need to go to my physics class. There’s going to be a pop quiz that I need you to take.”
“Mr. Brooks will notice if I’m not in English. He’s already threatened to fail me if I skip any more of his classes,” I tell her, silently willing her to understand.
“That sounds like a you problem,” she replies simply, as if my concerns are of no interest to her. “You need to go to physics. No one cares if you fail a class, but Mom will lose her mind if I fail this quiz. Do you want to be the reason why I don’t maintain my perfect 4.0?”
This isn’t the first time I’ve heard this particular guilt-filled argument. Making sure my sister is perfect in every way possible is the reason behind everything I’ve done for the last three years.
