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March 2021

Monday, 1st

19 years old.

TRUST IN HUMANITY: MARS, BRAN, AND LOKI

Going back to school had been... first, she had been thrilled—at the thought of getting out of the house, in particular, that white room her mom turned into a classroom for her. But now, months later, school was... she still couldn't describe it in one word because it was so many things. It was great but awful. It had a lot of people in it, but it was lonely. It had a good art teacher, but he wasn't her dad. Yet the art class was the one true class she looked forward to. Not the math, which she used to get excited about practicing with her mom, or biology, which had great anatomy photographs that inspired her many tattoo idea pieces.

There was Mars—Marcy Thompson—to help her get through. However, Mars held the record for being the most absent student in the school. She had more pressing things to attend to than school, she had told her. They had met on Libby's first day when Mars was asked to show her around. Right off the bat, Mars got Libby's quiet persona and befriended her. She had said, "I'll do my best to make this last year of high school memorable for you."

Now, sitting through calculus with Bran beside her, Libby wondered if she had been wrong to want to go to school.

No. Libby really needed this. Her mom needed this. Despite the fact that the latter suggested otherwise.

Bran knocked on her desk. He always knocked; it was his quirk. "So you want me to help you out with this now or later at lunch?" Bran was her down-the-block tutor. Her mom had asked him to keep a lookout for her baby girl and be friends. Libby had been horrified, and it was like preschool again when she told Shelly to be friends with her, but it ended up taking the opposite turn.

Bran wasn't that much of a friend, really. He was an acquaintance whom she met with in the library or at the corner of the grass field by the lacrosse field just to talk about school stuff. Nothing strayed from that--at least for the past months.

"So?"

Everyone was packing and leaving, meaning it was time for the break. She looked at the whiteboard and saw the pages for their homework written in red marker. "How many questions?"

Bran answered, "10."

Libby was a good student--she was her mom's favorite, not that her mom had been a teacher--but she wasn't feeling like doing 10 questions in her 30-minute break. She told Bran she would meet him at their usual seat at the library, and that marked the end of their conversation.

Luckily, Mars came today. Libby didn't have to sit alone at their table with her lunch--always packed by her mom.

Libby took her regular seat, giving her back to the rest of the students. It wasn't that she felt pathetic or that they thought she was pathetic. The problems had been her social skills, which she chose to lack, and her trust in humanity. After all, it had been the kind man from her school that always waved to her while he saw his kid get inside that had taken her hostage with his crew.

Libby had more than enough friends: Mars, Bran (he was the only other person she knew in the school; she couldn't skip him, not on this count), and Loki.

Libby got a text from Mars saying her Lit teacher was going to be holding her all break, so she wasn't going to be able to make it. Well, all the more time to get creative. She ate her sandwich with her left hand while she sketched the side face of some guy who was laughing boisterously.

It was a pretty good, comical sketch. And in all honesty, she loved the days a tiny bit more when Mars was away since it gave her time to get lost in her whimsical imagination and put it on anything that a pencil or a black pen could mark on.