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.
