[26] Drop the Guillotine

VIA

The weeks flew by as they always did when there were exams coming up. Suddenly nobody had time to think about their friends or who was dating, with revision taking up every ounce of their brain. I wasn't one of them for the most part, but I did actually do some to be fair. The rest of the time, I watched people decorate posters with highlighters that would never be used again, make revision cards that wouldn't get a second glance and generally try to cram as much as possible.

And then the actual exams happened – but you don't want to hear about that. The minutiae of exam papers and mark schemes and grades aren't interesting to the actual participants, never mind people who didn't even sit them. No, it was the events after them that mattered. Not that I knew that at the time – but isn't it always like that? You think that the things that impact you the most later on will be obvious in the moment, but realistically you can only look back to them in hindsight, with the knowledge that you have now. You only realise how significant they are in the future, never in the present.

Significant Thing No.1: Katie and Dan finally broke up. I always knew it was going to happen of course, what with Katie nearly constantly complaining for a full four weeks about him and how they just never hung out, but it was still a little bit of a shock when she suddenly came around to my house one day to tell me that she'd done.

"I just told him that was the end of it" She told me quickly, "and it hurt that he didn't look that sad about it, but I don't care because that was the end of it."

I'd nodded politely, congratulated her like I was meant to, but in all fairness, I'd never understood their relationship. They'd never been there in front of me, so I couldn't comprehend how they fitted together as a couple. Them breaking up didn't mean anything to me and I felt bad by not feeling any emotion towards it, but that was how it was. It seemed like I was the only one at school – it was the fuel of all rumours in the corridors for a good two weeks afterwards, whispering that was too loud to be ignored. I tried to pretend that the fact that their low voices didn't cause my heart to race as I remembered the canteen. I hadn't been in since and knew that that would never change.

Significant Thing No.2: The date for the football captain try-outs were finally decided. Yes, that's right, Coach finally did something interesting and announced that any member of the football team could go for it, though Noah told me later that nobody other than him and Harrison were going to try. I could tell he was nervous about it, and a small part of me saw that perhaps that was my fault, even though he denied it. I kept telling myself that I hadn't done anything wrong – that at the end of the day it was always Harrison's choice to hit me whenever he felt like it, but it was as it I was standing in the way of Noah and something he valued as important in his life.

Significant thing No.3: I'd finally told my family that I was dating Noah. It was something I'd put off for ages because... well... I didn't know what they would say. With my brother it was a bit easier because I knew he was always going to tease me about it afterwards, but with my mum I had no idea what to expect. Would she be happy for me or think that I was so fragile that I couldn't handle 'the responsibility'? The problem was that I knew it had to be done, which is precisely why I did it two weeks ago.

I'd gathered them in the kitchen, my mum already looking concerned "What do you want to tell us?" She'd asked impatiently "I need to sort this quiche out for dinner!"

I know but, well...

"Oh my god my friends are all on xbox; be quick!" My brother piped up and I rolled my eyes. Why didn't they understand that what I was going to say was important?

Basically, my English partner did like me after all of that and we're dating. I signed it as quick as possible because it was hard to get out slowly.

"Wait seriously?!" Theo was going mental, hopping from one foot to another "You've ACTUALLY got a boyfriend?"

I nodded my head with a strange smile on my face. I never thought I would ever have answered yes to that question in a million years.

"Wow!" My mum said, this time not in a patronising way, which I could honestly say felt so good. I could tell she was still trying to process it, a blank expression plastered on her face. "How did this happen?"

Explaining how Noah and I got together was indisputably the tricky part, considering that she had no idea who Mackenzie was and explaining her would lead to explaining how mean people were to me at school which was not good. I never wanted to tell her any of that because she'd go back to thinking I couldn't handle anything myself again.

Erm... we just spent loads of time together at these BSL lessons and I don't know... just got to know each other through that I guess?

"Ugh" She hugged me tightly "I am so proud of you!"

I could easily read that in to be patronising, but I decided not to considering that I would never have believed it myself.

Significant Thing No.4: Both Elliot and Mum were acting weirdly. With Elliot, he just seemed really distant, and yes, it might just be that he was spending lots of time with Alex but... I don't know... it just felt off. No matter how many times I tried to tell myself that it wasn't strange, the more I felt that it was. What made it worse was that I couldn't think of one thing that could be, which really scared me. I had no explanation to my best friend's weird behaviour.

With my mum I had no idea what was going on. With Katie coming over nearly every night – she always said that my house was better than hers and I didn't want to ask but I could tell that it might have something to do with her parents – and of course Noah, my mum had suddenly become so much less disappointed with me. I don't know, it felt good to know that she liked that I existed and there was evidence that I had friends from school that weren't Elliot. But at the same time, she'd also been acting weird to the point where I thought that perhaps she was hiding something, and yet again there was no reasonable explanation that sprung to mind. I pushed both things out of my brain, but it was unnerving to say the least.

XXX

"Via... I just... I wanted to make sure that everything's ok with you at the moment."

Great. Mrs Porter had taken me out of Biology (AKA an OK LESSON!) just to see how I was going on. I don't think she'd quite grasped that even if things weren't, it wasn't like I was going to write it all down on paper or anything. I didn't have time for that – and probably neither did she. "I know it can be stressful with so many exams all at once."

I didn't want to point out that, if I was indeed feeling stressed, she'd have definitely contributed to that with all of her revision assemblies and things. Last week I'm pretty sure she told us that anyone that hadn't done at least 4 hours of revision a night would 'definitely fail all of their exams'. Instead, I quickly nodded my head and waited for this to be over.

"Because you know, I could always arrange someone like a counsellor to talk to or something similar?" Oh yes, Mrs Porter, like I need somebody else to voluntarily talk at me for a long period of time. She claimed to understand my 'condition' and yet was somehow completely clueless. I resisted the urge to roll my eyes and shook my head politely at her, and she smiled. This was 100% another tick box exercise to show that she cared about her problem students. When would she understand that I was fine where I was? "Ok and I also just wanted to check that all your work's going ok? I know that the English coursework's due soon – is that all going good?"

I nodded my head confidently this time – the coursework was actually going better than ok – we'd almost finished. I was planning to hand it in this week and then hopefully I could get a good grade in English and finally get a place on the course I wanted to do next year. It was still a little way off, and some of it would still depend on exams, but at least I could say that most of the GCSE was done.

"Oh great – I'll be sure to give it a read!" I wasn't as bothered about that as maybe somebody else would be – at the end of the day if she did see what I thought about when planning and writing it with Noah, she might have a chance to finally understand how annoying she was when she insisted these 'chats'. "Well with that all good, you can get back to class." She said after a pause and I attempted not to look to happy about it. I turned towards the classroom and was about to open the door when the familiar sound of the bell rung in my ears. Typical.

I turned back and, after realising that I needed it, made my way into a toilet cubicle quickly. I was still irritated by Mrs Porter's complete lack of understanding, but I guessed that overall she was harmless and did at least care about me a little bit.

"What do you need to talk to me about?" The voice unmistakeably belonged to Katie. Who could she be talking to?

"Since when did I need a reason to talk to my best friend?" Mackenzie. I immediately felt sick and yeah, all of my worst fears were true. I knew Katie as a friend was too good to be true. I knew it.

"Since when were you my best friend?" I was officially confused now "Mackenzie you can't just completely blank me for more than a month and then act like nothing's wrong."

"You did break up with Dan right?" She asked like it was obvious and suddenly it was. Why was Mackenzie so annoying? I figured that Katie nodded at this point "And I specifically told you that when you finally broke it off with Dan, I'd stop ignoring you..."

"Are you actually dense? You think that we can just go back to how things were because I finally did what you wanted me to do, even when you did all of that to me?" I smiled to myself – maybe I'd judged this all wrong.

"Ok fine so it can't be that simple" She sighed, and I could just imagine her all hands-on-hips like she was being the 'mature one' here. "But I still can't see what's in the way of us being friends?"

"Mackenzie are you being serious?" She let out a small laugh "Do I really have to read out the things that you sent me before?"

"Do I really have to tell everyone at school what you did last summer?" She replied and Katie sighed again.

"Fine!" Katie finally said after a long pause "Fine we can be friends – but definitely not in the way that things were before."

"What do you mean?"

"Friends in our case doesn't translate to you making every single decision for me." She replied plainly and I tried not to let any of this get to me. Katie was just doing this because she didn't want Mackenzie to reveal one of her secrets, that was the only reason. It still hurt and I couldn't tell why. I was just being selfish now – I wasn't an exclusive friend or anything.

"OK whatever" She sighed "See you later!"

She left and I debated whether to come out or not. Would it help or just make everything worse? I heard the door slam before I could make up my mind and decided that that was probably the best thing to have happened.

Hi sorry I'm late with this - life is getting really busy and stressful at the moment but I hope you enjoyed this chapter anyhow!