Half of her classmates were either reading, drawing, or passing notes. The other half were staring. At her. Evidently, the class hadn’t started yet, even though the time said otherwise. 

Ignoring the pointed glares of her classmates, Lilli quickly walked up to her teacher’s desk. Ms. Heath was a pretty easygoing teacher. She never really reprimanded Lilli when she was late (even though other teachers would probably give her detention) and was willing to help her out with any problems.

Lilli handed Ms. Heath the slip that Mr. Clide had given her and stood in front of her teacher’s desk. Ms. Heath lifted her head from the drawer that she had placed the slip into, the watch on her right wrist flashing. “You may go back to your seat, Lilli,” she said.

Taking care not to hit any of her classmates on the head with her backpack, even though some of them really deserved it, Lilli carefully maneuvered between desks to get to her own somewhere in the middle. Stepping over someone’s outstretched foot, she quietly sank into her hard seat. After she finished unpacking her things, Ms. Heath got up and stood at the front of the classroom, and began to speak. 

“Class, take out your books and flip to chapter seven to review our annotations.”

There was a rustle as everyone dug into their bag and retrieved the book. “Now, talk to the people around you about your annotations for a few minutes while I submit attendance.”

Lilli held in a sigh, prepared to be surrounded by people using this time for gossip. About other people, about her. All quite literally behind her back. She absentmindedly flipped through the book, stopping to view the annotations she had rushed through the night before, all bright orange Post-It notes. It was an absurd amount, she knew, but half of them were probably just straight bullshit. 

The words and orange pieces of paper started to blur as she slowly zoned out. That is, until she caught a glimpse of dark green among the sea of neon orange. The words came back in sharp clarity, but they weren’t in her handwriting. It was barely legible, but the handwriting looked vaguely familiar. The note read:

Check your mailbox when you get home. Look for a letter from ‘CL’.

Okay, that was decidedly creepy. She doubted whoever wrote the note knew where she lived, but she would check. Just in case. She had to get the mail anyway. She folded the note and placed it in her backpack.

Class had never gone by slower. 

Lilli swore she had been in English for at least three hours instead of the single hour she was supposed to be there, and algebra was no exception. She had been stuck on a problem for probably the last fifteen minutes, but she refused to ask the teacher. It was dead silent, so she stole a glance at her neighbor's paper, swearing that she would learn how to do it later. Words could not describe how much she hated the words ‘If *insert equation here* is true, find x if f(x) is 3.5’. They could dig a hole for themselves and sit there for all eternity. That, and ‘Explain how you got your answer’. So if she gets the answer wrong, but she explains, apparently she would get more points than if she got the right answer but didn’t explain? Yeah, Lilli didn’t get it either. She knew it was a stupid thing to get hung up on, but she didn’t care at this point. 

The bell rang and the algebra classroom was filled with the sounds of her classmates getting up and chatter slowly filling the room. Lilli quickly shoved everything in her backpack and got to her feet. She waved to her teacher and headed toward the throng of students leaving the room. 

Around halfway to the lunchroom, Lilli split from the flood of students heading toward the lunchroom and headed in the general direction of the third-floor girl’s bathroom, dodging people who were too preoccupied with their friends or phones to be paying attention to where they were going. For a town with more than a few middle schools, there was a ridiculous amount of students in her school. 

When she was out of sight from any of her fellow schoolmates, Lilli changed directions to go to a spot where she always ate lunch. The school library was located on the second floor. 

Taking care to not let any teachers see her, Lilli silently entered the library, where Mr. Cartwright was eating a sandwich at his desk while typing away on the computer. Mr. Cartwright was the resident librarian at Oak Hills Middle School, who was well known for always having colorful shirts and being an all-around funny guy. 

Today, they were wearing a crimson sweater with a yellow diamond pattern, since it was unusually chilly. Mr. Cartwright raised his head at the sound of her footsteps and waved. Lilli waved back as she walked toward them. 

She gently placed her bag down on the counter and took out the three books from her bag that she had checked out earlier that week. Then, she slid them toward Mr. Cartwright, who scanned them before placing them in an ever-growing pile to put away. He clicked a few things on his computer before turning back to Lilli. 

“Well, Lilli, you’re all set!” they said cheerily. “Are you going to check out any more or is that it for this week?” 

“Wait, what day is it again?”

“Wednesday.”

“Oh.” Lilli stared up at the ceiling for a moment before responding. “Right, well then I think I’ll check out a few more. Is it alright if I bring them back on Friday or later?” 

Mr. Cartwright nodded. 

“I’ll check some out after lunch, then. Thank you!”

“Enjoy your lunch!”

Lilli zipped up her bag and turned to face the rest of the library. 

There were some other kids in the library, mostly the ones who were finishing their assignments before their next class. Lilli made her way to the table in the back. It had practically been claimed by her since the sixth grade. She had learned the hard way that the lunchroom was no place for an outcast like her. 

That sounded a tad bit dramatic.

She wasn’t really an outcast, just a quiet kid who didn’t like socializing.

Just kidding.

She would much rather prefer having a friend to sit with during lunch, but it’s not like she really has any her age. From her experience, whenever she had made a friend in sixth grade and earlier, they stuck with her for the first half of the year, then slowly started to drift away before finally either having an excuse to not be friends anymore or they switched schools. Usually, it was the former.

Lilli had learned not to get her hopes up for that type of stuff. In the last half of sixth grade, she had just stopped trying, If people want to be friends with her, they can come to her. Until then, Lilli was content with not getting excited. 

Even so, it’s not like she had much to look forward to this year. Her thirteenth birthday wasn’t until December, and December 16 at that. Besides, the Spencers never did anything from her birthday, except let her off the hook for chores that day and, if she was lucky, Todd would give her some cash. 

Shaking her head, Lilli sank into the wooden chair and took out her lunchbox. Her lunch consisted of only a couple of items, per usual. A banana, a sandwich, a bag of chips, and a sole KitKat bar that she had left over from her last grocery run. 

Lilli glanced at the clock before wolfing down her banana and sandwich. She only had fifteen minutes left before the attendants came around and screamed at everyone to ‘go enjoy the nice weather’. She decided to save the chips for the bus ride back, along with the KitKat. She zipped up her lunchbox and stuffed it in her bag. She hurriedly stood up, then winced as her chair made a loud scraping noise on the hardwood floor. Everyone in the room looked at her, so she sent a glare back, causing everyone to hastily turn back to whatever they were doing. She might not socialize much of her own accord, but her resting face was enough to make people think that she hated everything and everyone.

Lilli pushed her chair back in, taking care to not let it make a loud noise again. She shouldered her backpack and walked toward the bookshelves. 

She honestly didn’t know which books to pick out, so she decided to just take three at random. Lilli closed her eyes and ran her fingers over the books before stopping abruptly and taking out the book. She repeated this two more times until she had three random books. After checking to make sure she hadn’t read any of them, Lilli walked up to Mr. Cartwright’s desk again. 

“Back so soon?” Mr. Cartwright asked with a smile. Lilli nodded and passed them her three choices. He scanned them all and passed them back to her before leaning slightly over his desk. “You ought to hurry,” they said conspiratorily, “I can practically sense the lunch monitors stomping down the hallway to find you.” His brown eyes were twinkling like they always did when he cracked a joke.

Lilli laughed while she stuffed her books into her bag. “So can I, see you!” And with that, she half walked half ran backwards to the door. Mr. Cartwright gave her an amused glance and waved before turning back to his computer. 

Lilli had done this before way too many times, but that didn’t make it any less stressful. She had to somehow get to the first-floor bathroom without anyone important seeing her. Her anxiety levels spiked even thinking about getting caught. Not that it ever happened. Lilli was a very convincing liar. 

Rarely did Lilli ever see any teachers randomly wandering the hallways, but she was not one to be caught off-guard. She didn’t encounter anyone, save for a close call with one teacher near the bathroom, but they were too engrossed with whatever they had just printed out to care. 

Lilli slipped into the bathroom and made a beeline toward the nearest stall. The door clanged shut and echoed around the bathroom. 

After a good five minutes of waiting, she heard yelling and talking coming from down the hallway. Lilli immediately came out of her stall and started washing her hands. 

Very convincing griped the voice in her head. 

Once she heard for sure that it was the entire seventh grade crowding down the hallway, she stuck her hands under the hand dryer and casually stepped out. 

Right as the throng was leaving, Lilli slipped into the crowd and tried to avoid getting pushed to the ground by people who weren’t looking. 

Lilli’s recess was spent near the cluster of plants close to the windows. It was better than risking a broken bone from one of the ‘cool’ guys running into you. Once, when Lilli was in fifth grade, one of them had directly run into her. She had hit her head on the pavement and was later released by the school nurse with an ice pack and a concussion. The guy hadn’t gotten in trouble, playing it off as an ‘accident’. He had looked at Lilli like he dared her to say something else. She didn’t say anything, not because she didn’t want to cause trouble, but because her head felt like it was going to split in half. The group had taken this as an indicator that she could be stepped on. They had tried to bully her the day she returned to school (literally two days after the incident, Janet insisted she was going to be fine and didn’t take her to the hospital), only for the leader to receive a punch in the nose. Lilli thought it was worth it, even though she got sent to the principal’s office and got grounded for a month. They didn’t bother her after that, instead choosing to spread rumors about how she ‘gets mad so easily’, as if that was a good comeback. Lilli lived for the surprise in people’s faces when the kid who’s always in the background puts them back into their place.

Most kids called recess yard time, since they didn’t get morning or afternoon recess like they did in elementary school. For once, Lilli agreed with them.

At least they got fifteen minutes of extra recess on Fridays. Although, sometimes Lilli felt like it dragged on forever. 

For most recesses, Lilli usually drew things in her sketchbook, although they weren’t really that great. Today, however, Lilli decided that she was going to take a walk around the whole area. 

Oak Hills Middle School had a total of four recess areas. There was the North Lot, the South Lot, the East Lot, and you guessed it, the West Lot. Every two weeks, the recess arrangements rotated. This week, the entire seventh grade was on the South Lot, which had led to a lot of grumbling when it was announced over the P.A. The fifth graders got the North Lot, sixth graders got the East Lot, and the eighth graders got the West Lot. 

Everyone except for the ‘cool’ boys hated the South Lot for recess, and Lilli could understand why. It was literally just a parking lot with some basketball hoops and shrubbery. Sure there was a bench or two, but no one got to use the basketball hoops because of the ‘cool’ boys hogging half of them. 

Now if you were say, seventy percent of the seventh grade, you would say that they were ‘oh so very cool’ and ‘probably the best athletes in the school’. Lilli and the other thirty percent thought they were a load of wannabes. There’s a reason why only the girl’s sports teams were usually announced in the morning announcements. 

The rest of the hoops were being hogged by either recess monitors or a random group of people who also think they’re cool. Lilli wouldn’t be doing basketball during recess anyway because around five minutes into her shooting some random ‘cool’ guy on the basketball team would ask to 1v1 her. If she refused, he would just goad her into doing it anyway by saying that she was scared. Then, said ‘cool’ guy would win solely because he kept committing fouls. Then again, there was no referee, so she was content with letting them think they won. 

So Lilli was fine with spending her Wednesday recess walking around and eavesdropping.

Who doesn’t want free entertainment?

As Lilli slowly circled the recess area, she caught different snippets of conversations. Some people were gossiping, some sharing tips for drawing more realistically (a conversation which Lilli listened in very close to), and some just amicably cracking jokes. Nothing really that earth-shaking, so she walked back to her original spot on a bench under a tree and opened her backpack. 

Her sketchbook was one of her most treasured possessions. It was a simple sketchbook, adorned with various stickers Lilli had bought on both sides. The notebook was durable, as she had learned when someone once chucked it down the stairs. Only half the pages were filled with drawings, the rest left unmarked. 

Lilli flipped to the first empty page and wrote down the things she had overheard about realistic drawing. There was a cool breeze that tugged her hair to the side. Lilli liked this weather, it was the perfect temperature and not too windy. Windy days were the worst, they always caused her hair to fly everywhere, making her head look like a burnt tumbleweed until she finally had enough and shoved it all into a low ponytail so she could actually see. Not to mention the fact that windy days always made some strands of hair get stuck in her glasses, which caused her to pull out at least seven strands of hair every five seconds.

Her memory of what people had said wasn’t all that great, so by the time she had finally remembered everything, the recess monitors were yelling at the top of their lungs for everyone to line up. Besides, Lilli’s mind was still preoccupied with the note in her book. She had taken it out and stuck it into her bag’s front pocket. She still didn’t get it, why did the handwriting look so familiar? Why did this person know where she lived? Why her? And why on a dark green Post-It, of all colors? (Seriously, who buys dark green Post-Its? Do those even exist?)

There were a bunch of kids already in line, so Lilli hurriedly put her sketchbook and pencil back into her bag and ran toward them. She mentally prepared herself to run up four flights of stairs before moving forward with the rest of the grade.