She stretched and stood. That'd been so many years ago. But that was why she was what she was today wasn't it? Those three boys...
She moved closer to the water's edge and made circles with a stick in the water. The image of her face reflecting back to her from the water's surface was lost in swirls of banking waves, disturbed like her life. As they floated further out they gentled and joined with the lake again. This was something she'd never done.
Could she be like that? Maybe, one day she could be 'normal' again.
She 'felt' something... waves of sadness slowly drifted within her. She felt loss, she felt hurt; she felt anger. Her eyes moved back to the water gazing at the striking person looking back up at her.
The black hair she saw in her reflection's image looked alien. How could that really be her? She looked closer at the mirrored image in the water. She'd changed so much over the years...
"Hey Danielle!" called one of the few friends she had.
"I hear you and Jack are an item?"
Janet slowed down so that her walk matched Danielle's. "It's all over school that you and Jack are going steady." She tapped her shoulder in a make believe hug and added, "I'm so happy for your!"
"Well isn't that just great," she remembered replying. For some reason it didn't give her great pleasure to be so popular.
Being unnoticed was what she liked, what she was use too. Attention usually meant that she'd get made fun of. If no one noticed her, then she didn't get made fun of, and life was at least bearable.
"What's wrong Danielle?" Janet stopped walking. The final bell rang somewhere in the distance, but they remained in the hallway alone. Neither of them seemed to care that the final bell had rang. They were late for class and at a standstill.
"You think being heavy is an issue, don't you?" Janet frowned and tossed her red hair over her shoulder in anger. "Don't let the Jocks kid you, heavy isn't an issue. It's not with Jack, and isn't his opinion all that counts?" She huffed off down the hallway. I remained out of class the remainder of the day.
Janet had liked Jack when he'd joined school at the beginning of the year. Things between them just hadn't worked out. She'd never known about us. Janet had always been angry about that.
She tossed the stick into the water, and watched as it floated away. School after that had been difficult. The popular girls wanted to be her best friends. She'd never really understood why. She was still the same unpopular person that she'd always been. Nothing had changed except now she was Jack's girlfriend.
She remembered being dragged into meetings, clubs and social events, that in the past, she'd never have known about or never would have been invited to.
The only good thing about all this added attention was she'd learned how to lose weight effectively. She'd also been taught, again by the popular girls, how to apply make-up. Her already beautiful skin seemed to glow.
Jack had approved of it all. If it made her happy then he was happy. He often reassured her that he loved her, and it didn't matter to him what she did.
Social graces, she'd learned that last year in high school, before those three boys had ruined it all.
She walked away from the shoreline and started her way back toward the house. She'd have to be at work soon. For some reason she didn't want to go. The crowd, the noise, the environment seemed to overwhelm her. Something was changing. She just wasn't sure what it was.
"Hey Danielle!" screamed one of the boys who'd been one of her tormentors. "Is your two ton ass too big to fit through the bathroom door?" He ran past her pinching her as he went. His nimble fingers grabbed her book bag, and easily removed it from her shoulder while she'd been busy trying to fend him off.
"Hey!" she'd screamed when she felt the bag slip away from her arm. "That's mine! Give it back!" She'd tried to run to catch up, but she knew she'd never make it. The bag contained all her classroom work and she had no desire to redo it. I'd taken her a week to gather all the information she'd needed for her science report. She didn't want to lose that.
She saw him run out the front doors. She followed him. He jumped into a black sports car as it pulled up in front of the building. She figured it'd drive off and that would be that. She'd have to spend the rest of the night trying to recover from the incident. But that wasn't what happened. She often wished it had.
All three of her tormentors alighted from the car and approached her. Justin was the meanest of the three, followed by Joe and then meek, but distasteful Johnny. They were often referred to as the 'Three J's. They had a band, which also carried that name. They were popular and often played at school dances and in town events. All three were on the football team, as well.
"Hey, Danielle," said Justin, as he brushed back his shaggy blondish hair which was hanging over one of his greenish eyes. He walked up beside her and blocked her path.
"Come to daddy," said Joe, "with his ever popular slur of the English language. He walked up and took his place on the other side of her.
Johnny opened the back door of the car. All three of them forced her into the backseat.
"We've got a big surprise for you," he'd said, as he closed the door after the other two.
"Get off me," she remembered screaming. Fighting, clawing and biting didn't seem to help. The two in the backseat with her wrestled her down and cuffed her wrists together with novelty handcuffs and rope.
