A mix of emotions.

"Are you a cannibal?" I overhear from somewhere behind me.

The girls from my first period class (there are a shocking total of three of us) are talking about something--an ex-boyfriend? his financial status? yard gnomes?--as we walk toward our next classes. We pass two girls in identical magenta jackets walking together and I wonder whether this was intended (it probably was, not that it matters, but these are the kinds of things I occupy myself with). The first of the girls I walk with is deposited at the entrance to another hallway where her maybe-maybe-not boyfriend (or else ex-boyfriend) waits for her. There is a harrowing tale I could tell here, but my main concern of late has been the fact that they spend a lot of time canoodling in front of my locker.

My locker is, in my unqualified opinion, a haven for shameless public displays of affection far across the land.

In advisory a girl sits between two boys as they peruse a prom magazine and discuss prom dates. I am almost certain two of the three are single until The Boy Who Asked Me To Sit There places a hand on the girl's waist and leaves it there.

They still might be single.

Sometimes I forget that I'm quiet. My thoughts are loud and occupy me well enough, so it isn't so lonely.

I watch people, their stories playing out before me, as I sit.

I want to be one of them in the sense that I want to be a part of something, but I find peace in the fact that--it just isn't my time yet. My adventure is only on the cusp of beginning, and I think for now it is okay not to be. I don't want what they have. I don't want drunken nights and a baby at sixteen and a life stuck in this tiny town. The voice telling me that I want any semblance of these things is simply a liar.

A pair of black Nikes sit on the desk of the boy next to me. Earbuds blast music I can hear from four feet away; his phone is well loved, scratches abounding, and sits next to his shiny black iPod. As I write he folds his arms on the desk and rests his head on them, temporarily muffling the music. He wears a maroon hoodie and has artfully styled his hair into what might be a faux-hawk if his hair were longer. He has a long, placid face and a mouthful of braces. For a second he mumble-sings a lyric off-key. The phone buzzes. My Physics class is a helter-skelter of conversation, and the teacher sips a large drink from a nearby fastfood place.

"I love you, sir," one of my peers informs the teacher, "no homo."

Two boys return from a search of the bathrooms; a classmate has been missing for fifteen minutes, ostensibly gone to relieve himself across the hall. "He wasn't in that bathroom," one of the boys says. "I think maybe he went to Ms. Reynaldo's." A pause. "Frank wanted to lie and say there was blood on the floor."

If this isn't a metaphor for the state of my education, I'm not certain what is.

No fewer than two girls are doing their makeup as catlovingmathteacher explains the problems we have been reviewing. The Boy With The Underpants hijacks a small tub of foundation and mimes applying it.

I wonder what kind of world this would be if we didn't feel pressured to fix ourselves.

I want to be me--not my eyelashes, complexion or, god forbid, waist size. And I don't want to lie, either, because the fact that boys have never paid me much heed does occasionally cause me to wonder whether I am really that outwardly unappealing.

But I am learning that there is merit in letting feelings be what they are with the knowledge that they are apt to be deceiving. My surroundings are not who I am.

At lunch my sister and I render crude drawings of our enemies and attack them with the remains of our hard plastic fruit containers. I enjoy it immensely as Dobbin looms behind us in the otherwise empty array of tables. I still find his voice in hallways. He still bothers me.

I don't know why it is that the news that Dobbin has managed to romantically entangled himself once more doesn't surprise me. Part of me wants to gag. Part of me is merely numb.

I deserve much more than this boy. Still he flits, vaguely peripheral, around me like some demented test.

I find myself too caught in the idea of how I'm supposed to be feeling to let myself truly feel things.

This too, I suppose, shall pass. So many other things have. They will.