A/N - Baekhyun doesn't come back yet, in this chapter. This is a semi-short chapter to progress the main female lead's story. Thanks for reading.... (2671 words)

~9-year-old me

What did I just do?

Oh, no no no no…

I heard gasps coming from everyone in the classroom. The boys were either mouthing or saying, “Eww.” The girls were covering their mouths and some of them had started to leave the room. What a great first impression, I thought, dryly.

It was my first day of school after the move. My mother had walked me to school that morning to show me the route. I had tried to remember the street names and some of the memorable houses in the neighborhood to assist on my future walks. I would be walking home as well, so I needed to remember the route back. My mom was rushing her steps. I had struggled to keep up, as the ugly outfit she’d stuck me in was too warm and too tight. The ugly leggings and tight turtle neck was too restricting.

We reached the schoolyard and my eyes threatened to pop from their sockets. It was easily three times the size of my previous school. She walked me straight to my new 4^th grade classroom to introduce herself and I to my new teacher. He quickly assigned me a seat and my mom left.

The morning dragged on. I had rolled up my sleeves and was constantly distracted by the need to pull the neck of my shirt away from my actual neck. I was so uncomfortable.

I continuously glanced at all the new faces in the room. I missed my other peers dreadfully. I did notice one difference; there were about a handful of girls with long blonde hair. I suddenly felt awkward and kind of ugly. I had still never been told anything negative about my short hair. I just still hated it.

Recess could not come quick enough. When the bell finally rang, I felt a tug on my arm. The brunette who was sitting next to me asked me if I wanted to eat lunch with her. I smiled and agreed, happy for the companionship on my first day. I followed her through the schoolyard to a nice shady area where we could eat. As I pecked at my lunch, she proceeded to question me like a reporter after a juicy story. I happily answered all of her questions, as I had nothing to hide, nor was I afraid of any bad opinions from the questions she asked.

She then told me that I was in one of four 4^th grade classrooms. It was standard for everyone to be shuffled and split between about four classrooms per grade level. It was unlikely that I would be in the same 5^th grade class with more than a handful of the same peers in my current class. At my old school, there was only one class for each grade. Everyone was always together. My nerves shot up at the unfamiliar situation.

When lunch was finished, we walked back to the classroom with her following a step behind me. I was still too warm, and feeling slightly dizzy.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“Yes,” I lied.

“Okay…” she replied, unconvinced.

I rounded the doorframe of the classroom to make my way inside. Not two steps in the door, I was hit with a gut wrenching feeling. The dizziness was at full force. I stopped in my place as I realized, far too late, what was about to happen. In front of the entire class, and across the front of the room, I released my recently eaten lunch for the whole room to see.

My whole body suddenly felt way too cold. I had no idea what to do next, so I just stood there letting everyone react in whatever way they wanted.

The next few moments seemed like a blur. I remember sitting in the nurse’s office. I remember my mom coming to pick me up. I remember showering at home and laying down in my bed. I remember inwardly cringing and wishing that the earth would somehow open up and swallow me whole.

For the next few years, the students that made up that fourth grade classroom recognized me as ‘the girl who barfed’. Funny enough, one brat even reminded me of the nickname in my second year of middle school. Whoever tries to say that first impressions aren’t everything, is lying.

~ A week later

The brunette didn’t willingly speak to me after my stunning stomach pyrotechnics. In fact, I became a social reject. My mom continued to dress me in the style she was fond of, which visually separated me from my same aged peers. I didn’t understand fashion at the age of nine, but I knew I didn’t look like everyone else.

Spring came quickly, and so did the onslaught of sports at my new school. Every sport was played from basketball, baseball, soccer, and even gymnastics and such. I was eager to join something, until I realized that participating in such sports required uniforms and a competitiveness that hadn’t existed in my old school. Just like letting a pen slip out of my hand, so went my idea of joining any sort of sport. I had only ever played for the fun of it, and that’s all I wanted.

Recesses became awkward. I found myself finding a spot under the playground where I could just sit and be alone. I could listen to everyone else running around and be left alone. Some similar aged peers from other classes approached me and talked to me. However, I think my state of social withdrawal prohibited them from achieving any goals they had set out for becoming my friend.

I missed my old friends. My mom had indeed sent me to school before the move with a pad of paper to collect phone numbers. I had them stashed in my small homework desk in my room. I didn’t want to call them. What would I say? It wasn’t going to bring any of them to my new school.

I always returned home quickly. There were no fields to play in, not that I had any friends that would have joined me. Inside my house, I would go to my room and just sit. At least for a little while, until I reminded myself that I had homework to do. My mom would always try to ask me how school was. It was awful, and it was her fault for doing this to me.

~11-year-old me

“I’m home!” I announced my arrival so that it could echo through the house. I was almost done with elementary school; about another 2 months until the end of the school year. However, today was Friday and I was free for the weekend. I walked to my room and placed my backpack inside and then promptly went to the kitchen. It was pretty routine to find a snack to eat after I got home, since it would still be a few hours until dinner.

I looked in our pantry for something that sounded good. There was a normal array of snack foods including crackers and chips. The fridge was filled with more goodies. In the end I grabbed something from both the pantry and the fridge, as well as something to drink.

“Hey, hun,” my mom started as she entered the dining room. Then she paused and stared at me. I knew what was coming. “Do you really think that’s wise?” she asked, staring at the snack in front of me.

I shrugged.

“You don’t need all of that. Put some of it back at least,” she ordered.

“Mom…” I whined, “it’s not that bad and I’m hungry.”

“Look at you! You’ve been putting on weight for the past 2 years. If you don’t fix this,” she said while waving one hand in my general vicinity, “no one is ever going to want to date you.”

When someone says something like this, to an eleven year old, a normal reaction might be for ones jaw to drop or look up in disbelief. I had been hearing this lecture for a while though. However, at eleven years old, my grand priority in life was not to date. Nor did her lecture serve to change my opinion about the food in front of me. In order to avoid a continued lecture, I did stand up from the table and sulk off to my room. I didn’t clean up the mess. I didn’t reply to my mother. I simply left.

I closed the door to my room and stared around for a moment. My closet had two sliding doors that were full-length mirrors. I took a few steps until I was standing in front of them. I stared.

My hair was still short. It had grown to circle my shoulders, but not much farther than that. It was a paler shade of blonde than I remember it being before. The lack of time I spent outdoors meant that the highlights weren’t bleaching out from the sun. Instead, my hair took on a dishwater blonde murky shade. It was still blonde. I reached up to touch it. It was still soft. I dropped my hand.

I looked from the top of my hair down to my feet. Yes, I guess one could say that I gained weight. My face was rounder than I had remembered. My mother had gotten in the habit of buying me loose fitting clothes. I lifted my shirt up a bit to stare at my stomach. I couldn’t tell. I had no reference for comparison on whether or not I looked as bad as my mother made it seem.

Was I un-dateable?

Was I ugly?

I stared at my own face in the mirror and looked at my eyes. I tried to smile, as if someone were about to take a picture.

Suddenly, the image before me melted away. My blue eyes danced, the corners curving up. My blonde hair swirled. I laughed to myself as I recognized the version of me that I had been so used to. Me, four years ago. I was bright and peppy, radiant and happy. Surely someone would find me endearing and beautiful, someday.

I turned away from the mirrors and sat on my bed. It was near the only window in my room and rather large at that. I stared outside for a few moments and watched some clouds as they were pushed through the sky. Someday.

~12-year-old me

I was in hell. This place, the people around me, the attitudes of everyone, including my own all added up to what would be the worst two years of my life thus far.

I was in the last half of my first year of junior high school. The inevitable middle limbo between being a child in elementary school and being a teenager in high school. It was a nesting pot for puberty. No one fit in. But, everyone tried to and the result was often dramatic and ridiculous and made up of the kind of stuff that you wish you could wake up from and not remember.

My second to last class of the day was the only class I enjoyed. It was an art class, and we were dabbling with painting. I was working on a bad copy of one of Monet’s waterlilly paintings. It wasn’t bad, for a twelve year old. The class had barely begun when the teacher instructed all of us to get our work from the drying racks so we could continue. I stood from my chair once most of my fellow students had retrieved their paintings. My painting was second from the bottom of the shelves so I bent down so I could pull it out.

“Watch out! Wide load!”

I froze. I heard two other snickering voices join the first.

“If she backs up, were doomed.”

I cringed. I bent my knees, curling into myself as I continued to reach for my painting. I straightened up and walked back to my desk shooting daggers at the three boys who were sitting behind me. One of them was wearing a rather obnoxious smile. I took him as the one who had spoken out loud.

I laid out my painting on my table and sat down. I was glad they were behind me. I didn’t have to hide my facial expressions, except for whenever I would have to face them. Idiots.

The one with the smile had been somewhat tormenting me lately. His snickering comments were on a constant flow and he was his own biggest fan. He constantly laughed at his own comments and jokes. I did my best to ignore him.

When class was over, I left to make it to my next and final class of the day. Not two steps out of the door, I felt tugging on my hair and whipped around. My hair fell against my face, it had previously been held up in a cloth band. That band was in the hands of the said idiot boy and his stupid smirk. I stood and watched as he took three steps towards one of the hallway trashcans and threw the band in it. I ran forward and stared in the bin as my band was disgustingly touching some of the trash from lunch, tossed food clutching to my band. I looked up in disgust and shot the boy daggers again.

“Good luck, piggy,” he laughed as he walked down the hallway.

I left the band where it was and went to my next class. My hair probably looked ridiculous. It was probably falling around my head with an awkwardly placed crimp in it from where the band had tightly been wrapped in my hair.

When the last bell of the day rang, I practically ran out to the parking lot to look for my mother’s car. When I found it, I grumpily climbed into the passenger seat and slammed the door shut. When she asked how my day was, I ignored her. When she prodded again, minutes later, I still ignored her. When we entered our house, I walked to my room and slammed my door.

I didn’t talk to her until dinner, and even then I had ignored both her and my father for the most part.

I returned to my room and opened the closet. I reached up towards the high shelf and grabbed my wooden jewelry box. I pulled open the biggest drawer of the box and pulled out the small pouch. I closed the box and set it aside and carried the pouch to my bed. I sat, cross-legged, and poured out the small quartz bear into the palm of my hand.

“All boys aren’t jerks! Right?” I asked the bear. I ran my fingertip across its smooth hard surface. It had been cold when I first put it in my palm, but as I held the small figurine, it warmed slightly.

“He liked me enough to give me you. Someone will like me again,” I muttered.

“It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if I look different. I’m still me. I’m still that girl. I’ll always be that girl. The one that everyone liked, right?” I asked the unresponsive quartz bear.

I felt a twinge of guilt in the pit of my stomach as a tear ran down my cheek. Maybe, maybe if I saw Baekhyun again he would know the real me and make all of this better again. But when would I ever see him again?

I sobbed. I clutched the bear tight in the palm of my hand and let myself cry.

A/N

Baekhyun will be back in the next chapter! Promise :D

If there are grammar mistakes, I apologize. I wanted to get this transition chapter done so I could get into the heart of the next part. Thank you for reading!