By Maxine Pollock, TIWP Student

Girls are cold, cold as ice. A group of them is even worse. They make it clear that you are unwanted. They make you feel like being different is the worst thing to be. But you stay. You want to feel wanted and maybe if you just spend a little more time with them, they’ll come around. Maybe invite them to hang out after school? No, they’re always busy. But you stay. You know you shouldn’t, but there is nowhere else to go. Everyone else already has their own group and if you leave you will face a fate worse than being different. You’ll be alone. So you stay, you try to stick it out and every night before bed you ask for things to get better. But they never do. So one day, without any planning or forethought, you break up with them at lunch. You hear them talking and laughing as you walk away. You wander around aimlessly, not knowing what to do next. You don’t want to be seen by them so you pick a stairwell that no one ever uses and sit there on your phone until the bell rings. You have classes with them next but you don’t want to talk so you sit yourself in the corner of the room, keeping your head down the whole lesson. The bell rings and everyone is dismissed. You get home and do homework but your mind is elsewhere. You have 86 more lunch periods to get through. You don’t want to be the kid in the library with no friends but you have to keep reminding yourself you no longer have friends. Your breakup feels justified but you feel numb. So you stick to the stairwell. Until one day, you are walking your usual route to your lunch spot when someone says hi. You are shocked but stop and say hi back. And then she asks would you like to sit with us. And then you say yes. And you sit. And you have lunch that day. And then the next and the next. And then you hang out after school. And then in the summer. And then you are not alone. And then you feel warm.