Annie has struggled to fit in despite growing up with everyone in the community. When she had a birthday party at age 5, everyone was there. By age 10, the ones that were still at her parties had become transparent in their unwillingness to be there. At least her parents had friends and means to get them to bring their kids to the party. The shift from children with no real insight on each other to young men and women learning that they have a choice of who they should be and be associated with was too much for Annie. She spent time on the fringe in the hallways listening to the cliches that she was not a part of to find out what she was missing.
After years of imparting herself into each group as a floating body, Annie began infiltrating each with some subtle suggestions. In Chemistry, she noted to Christine that she liked the drawings on her book cover of the griffin. It reminds me of my favorite role playing game, she had started and continued as Christine's eyes widened. Annie was successful at becoming part of the role playing cliche, but only in the moments when the group was gathered away from everyone else.
When she was with the athletic group, she was the runner who followed the track circuit and marathoners in professional competition and Olympics. With the drama group, she quoted plays and songs from musicals. Annie found herself going from group to group so often that she no longer had alone time between any classes on any given day. Her grades began to slip steadily with the effort she was putting in to fit into the molds each group had her set into. She had no time for studying she realized one Wednesday night as she found herself slipping into bed after midnight having had no time to put into her studies.
"I feel like Jane Goodall with the apes. I've associated myself so well that I could be one of any of them, but who does that make me? They have all latched onto an identity they have chosen for themselves, but I don't see anything in any of them that I can identify with. They all think I'm something different, but I'm no longer a person when I'm alone as if I only exist in someone else's head", she says to no one.
The next day, Annie attempted to return to her place in society as the studious book worm she had been before, but found her new standing in each group threatening that. She declined time to discuss the preference on number of sides to a die for gaming and if training for a run in bursts of high to low speeds was better than a straight steady pace for a long distance. She shook her head each time someone gave her a quote from a play or line from a song as she did not recognize them in some cases and, in most cases, was too preoccupied catching up on homework to give any thought. Within days, she was an outsider again.
For three weeks, Annie settled back into her groove of spending all of her time working on school work and with her family at home. The phone calls slowly ceased from the different groups, but she did not notice for a couple more weeks when she suddenly started missing the calls. Annie found the reentry to be nearly impossible. She was beginning to understand the concept of burning bridges behind her.
One night, Annie slept soundly. She awoke feeling as refreshed as she ever remembered feeling. She smiled in the morning out of pure happiness and her eyes settled into every piece of the morning from brushing and flossing her teeth to the scarf she tied around her neck as she prepared to walk out the front door. She made one final stop in her parents' bedroom before heading out the door and off to school.
Through the front doors, Annie travelled into the long corridor of people she had pretended to truly know. She felt a burning in her chest that did not upset her. The burning heated up her face and the smile that formed there was sickly and frightening to anyone who may have noticed her. She was sure nobody did notice her.
"I had a wonderful dream last night," she stated in a voice too weak to pierce the cluster of noises from group after group of friends engulfed in their own discussions. Undaunted, she tried again. "I had a wonderful dream last night," she shouted to the full hallway and reached into her backpack. The hallway quieted for a moment and some groups started to turn her way when they placed where the shout had come from. A young man in her class she had never noticed coincidentally as he was in her same outsider circle grabbed her and pulled her into the empty classroom. He held the wrist of her hand deep in her back pack.
"I don't have a good feeling about your intentions with that smile and the focused intent of your hand in that bag. Can you please spread your fingers wide and pull your hand back out?" Neal's frightened eyes met the half crazed eyes of Annie. He felt her fight with his hand to hold onto the surprise in her bag. "Please, Annie."
It could have been the please repeated to her with those pleading eyes, but Annie would later realize it was the use of her name that snapped her out of her psychotic break. The realization that she was an actual person to someone she did not know and had put no false pretenses into went a long ways towards breaking her down. She pulled her hand out empty and dropped the bag to the ground. Annie backed away almost surprised when the bag fell open and the handgun from her parents' bedroom slipped out. Neal barely registered that actual sight of the gun having already convinced himself of what she had been reaching for moments earlier.
They talked for an hour outside of the school skipping their first period classes. Neal comforted Annie telling her she was not alone. He was the second in line for valedictorian behind her and had always watched her in awe. He was not jealous of her ability, he was in love with it. When Annie slipped off the academic radar for a bit, he did his own investigation and saw how she had conformed herself to the multitude of seemingly self assured students in their class. It turned out that Neal was one of the few students actually sure of himself and his place in life.
He explained to Annie how the loner role was not really the shunned outcast of the world when it came to high school. Neal had observed the same groups Annie was pushing herself into, but from the individual stand point. When Annie and the majority of the group left the hallway, Neal observed a single group member at her locker or staring at himself in the mirror in the restroom. Outside of the group, the people Annie was jealous enough of to want to shoot were less sure of their place in life than even she was before she lost herself.
Annie went back on her track and ended up narrowly beating out Neal for the speech at graduation. She thanked her fellow students for teaching her something in her four years in that high school. She spoke of a sense of camaraderie and a sense of purpose, but she urged each student to find out who they were individually and not to settle for anything less than what they truly desired in life. She accepted the applause knowing well that most were not paying attention and many would not understand her words until years later when the truly valuable time of learning about themselves was nearly over. Neal stood the longest and clapped the loudest to Annie's ears. Life for each of them was wide open.
There's something in the way she makes believe, please be careful, Annie dreams that everyone is dead. - Our Lady Peace
