Too damn late, I say. Because I lost the only person who ever fell in love with my smile.
'Hey, Fuckface, why aren't you going to fuck an elephant?' a voice said from behind me, stabbing me in the back with a Biro. I winced at him and turned around. A chorus of laughing faces cornered me so that I was right up against the wall. A fat kid punched me hard in the stomach. I lurched forward and fell to the ground. A girl with high heels stepped on my head leaving a dent in my face. She giggled and pinched me. This can't go on, I said to myself, this will kill me. But somehow, somewhere in me, some little voice said, 'Don't stand up to them. You will only lose.' And that is what I did. Day after day I let them mutilate me. Without telling a soul. I mean, I didn't have any souls to tell. I was a loner. A nerd. An outcast.
Later, I ran to an unused toilet on the west side of the school after someone had poured sulphuric acid on me in Chemistry. I frantically wiped away at my shirt until it virtually burnt a hole. Suddenly, I resigned, collapsed onto the floor, and cried. I was broken. Broken into a thousand pieces. I had not an inch of hope anywhere in my body. I didn't have parents, I was in care, and no adult guessed what was happening to me. I had no one to care for me. To stand up for me. To love me.
'Hey girl,' I heard a voice from somewhere above me. 'Don't cry,' the voice said softly.
'Who are you?' I shouted. I felt my cheeks burning. 'If you're here to kill me just fuck off!' I choked back my tears in fear and looked around, but saw nothing.
'Up here,' the voice said. I looked up to the ceiling. To the left, on a ledge, sat a boy, looking down on me.
'What're you doing in a girl's loo,' I asked, my face lighting up slightly.
'You could say this is my home from home,' the boy replied. 'I stay here so they can't get me.'
'Don't tell me,' I said. 'Those kids are taunting you too? I thought I was the only one.'
'I know I'm not the only one,' the boy said. 'I've watched you in here everyday for ages.'
I screwed up my face and stood up, feeling a bit confused. 'How comes I've never noticed you here before? How comes you haven't talked to me until now?'
'I don't say a lot.' He pointed to a cubicle door with some words scratched into the surface. I squinted for a second, and reached for my glasses. The words became a lot clearer.
'Just because I'm nerdy, and all my friends are flirty, doesn't mean that I swing that way, you've got complications, and a reputation, wouldn't wanna get in your way, or anyway.'
'Hey,' I said, impressed by the poem. I saw two tiny letters scribbled at the bottom of the poem. 'Are you MW?'
'Yeah, that's me,' he said. 'But you can call me Matt.'
'You can call me Immi,' I said, scratching at a scab that went right up the length of my arm.
'They did that to you?' Matt said incredulously. 'Beat this.'
He took off his blazer and pulled up his shirt. My mouth dropped. Etched in painful, red scars on his back, surrounded by bruises, were the words 'Kick me.'
Matt turned to face me again. I let out a small yelp. 'Ouch,' I muttered. 'That's gotta hurt.'
I didn't move from the toilet the whole day.
That evening, I walked home from school down the dark backstreets as I always did to avoid my tormentors. As I turned the blind corner, I heard a shout coming from one of the sideroads.
'That teaches you to fuck with us!' a voice shouted. I heard a thump, and a crash, and the hairs on the back of my neck started to stand on end. What if they sensed my presence? Would they get me too? I needed to go down that alleyway to get home. Could I avoid them?
A surge of adrenaline ran throughout my body. I couldn't stop myself from running. 'STOP!' I cried. 'Leave him alone,' I said as I looked down at the guy they were punching. I stopped. My heart was beating fast. It was Matt, slumped in the corner with a huge black eye and blood trickling down his cheek like tears. He looked up at me blankly. My hand trembled and eventually crunched into a fist. I closed my eyes, drew my arm back, and thrust it into the attacker's face. I pulled Matt up quickly and led him to a safe place, leaving my victim with his hand over his cheek, cursing and kicking the drain in the alleyway.
I ripped up my sleeve and put it over Matt's cheek. I laughed. 'Hey, you look like a wounded soldier.'
Matt just stared blankly at me, occasionally blinking. He gulped and put his hand on my arm. 'You saved me,' he choked, coughing up some blood.
I mopped up the blood down his shirt and handed him a torn off shirt sleeve. 'I was just so angry at them for hurting you like they did me,' I started to shout in rage. 'They can hurt me, I mean, they can kill me for all I care, because I have nothing to live for, but you? You deserve to live, I mean, you wrote that damn poem!'
Matt pulled me closer to him and hung onto me like a child would it's mother. 'It's not a poem, it's a song.'
He began to rock himself back and forth on the bench where we sat. He started singing parts of the song he had written and his voice made my hands turn grey.
'It's always been up to your friends
They'll make your mind up
For you
The popularities gone to your head
Plus I still don't
Ignore you
You ran for school election
You even got my vote
And did you know
My favourite past time
Was poetry
And you studied what I wrote.'
If I hadn't have stopped that bully hurting Matt, I probably would never have seen him again. I accepted that I saved him, but I was very unaware of my own strength. I stayed off school for 2 days to try and avoid the bullies, hoping they'd forget about it soon, but then my social worker forced me to go to school again, saying that I had been 'ill for long enough' and that I couldn't afford to go down another grade.
As I walked past the gates that evening, someone grabbed me by my shirt collar and dragged me round to the alleyways behind the school. He slammed me against the wall and threw my bag onto the roof. I skipped a beat for a moment when I saw the person's face. It was the guy I'd punched. 'Who do you think you are?' he said, punching me in the chest. 'You're a victim, you're supposed to be scared, you can't fight back!' He punched me again in the eye and gave me a black eye worthy of Matt. I tried to fend him off but this time he was too strong, I too weak. I shook myself from his grip a little, but suddenly, he pulled out a gun and held it to my head. I told myself that this couldn't be real. Guns were only used in movies, right? Not in a small town school in England. It had all happened too fast. But I told myself that I had to get out of there, and I shouted the name of the only person I thought could save me.
'MATT!' I shouted, half crying and half quivering. 'ANYONE! HELP!' I saw someone coming round the corner, answering my call. He had brown hair with a blonde streak in the side, and huge brown eyes, and he seemed kind of familiar. 'Matt!' I screamed.
The bully didn't hesitate, however. He pulled the trigger. I heard Matt cry out. 'NO!' He cried. I felt a surge of pain run through my body, from my head, and soon to my feet. I felt myself falling, falling into darkness. The bully fled. Matt ran up to me. 'No, Immi, please, you can't die on me!'
I didn't reply. No words came out of my mouth. 'Immi, I love y-'
Those were the last words I heard from Matt. The last words I heard on earth. The words I will remember my life by. The words of the voice that, one day, I will find.