Fan Fiction ❯ Understanding ❯ Understanding ( One-Shot )

Author: LadyJessy

Website: http://www.geocities.com/ladyampris

Authors notes: Unusual POV. Please bear with me through this and tell me if you like it!

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Understanding

The lot was squished between two dingy, brick apartment buildings that looked like they should have been condemned a long time ago, even though people still lived in them. The lot wasn't pretty; nothing in this neighborhood was pretty anymore. However, mommy told her that it used to be pretty once. When mommy was a little girl, it used to be overrun by wildflowers and the grass was a magnificent green. Now, the lot was ugly. The weeds had moved in and choked the life out of the flowers and the grass until the whole lot was covered in an unvarying brown. Still, the lot was her favorite place; a place that she could go to get away from the world and think.

About a week ago, she found a patch of little white daisies as she walked home from school. They were beautiful and she decided to dig one of them up and plant it in her lot. Maybe it would grow and make it beautiful again.

Today, however, as she walked into the lot, she saw her little white daisy poking weakly between the smothering weeds. Sad that her flower was dying, she plucked the poor thing from it's weeded cage and tucked the stem behind her ear. Then, like she did every day, she flopped down on her back with her arms and legs thrown wide apart and let her mind wander.

Why am I always the last to understand? she wondered to herself. I never understand the jokes the boys at school make when I walk by. Or why all the pretty girls laugh with them. In the locker room, the girls always laugh at my flat chest when I get undressed for gym class. They laugh again when I sometimes forget to get dressed again afterwards and walk out into the hall without my clothes. What's so funny? I don't understand why I should be ashamed of my body.

I don't understand why I don't do good in school. Why can't I seem to grasp the concepts Mr. Harrison wanst me to? The answer is never on the top of my head, even when I should know the answer. It's not as if I don't try-I do!-but Mr. Harrison always gets mad at me when I don't know the answer. One time he got so mad, he even made me stay after school. He said that I'd been bad and needed to be taught a lesson. I don't know which lesson. Math? Reading? Science? He never told me. Instead, he locked the door, walked over to me and started touching me. I didn't like it and he wouldn't stop. He said that if I behaved, he wouldn't be mad at me anymore. I understood that, at least, and I didn't want him to be mad at me anymore. I let him touch me.

I don't understand why daddy yells at me. Why does he get angry every time he sees me? Now, all daddy does is drink and stagger into the arms of the latest girl he's brought home. If I get in his way, he hits me and calls me names. Mommy never yelled at me or hit me or called me names. Mommy always loved me, but she's not here anymore. I'm not sure where she went, but I do know that daddy and I dressed up in black to go to church and mommy never came home again.

The boys at school call me names too. I still don't understand what "stupid" or "idiot" or "retard" means, but all the pretty girls point at me and laugh at me when the boys say it. I'm never sure what I'm supposed to do when they say these things. Once when I walked by I just smiled at them and said, "Thank you". That just made them laugh even harder though.

I don't understand why they think their world is so much better than mine. Is it because more people see things the way the do? Does that really make their world better, or just different? I like my world. Everywhere I look, there is color and light and life. I don't think the others see that; what do equations and fashions have to do with these things? I don't know. Maybe they are the ones who don't understand. Maybe I should be the one to point my finger and laugh.