Just Give It a Little Thought (working title)
Short little character study of a character based off of a friend of mine. She was going to have a whole story, but...
Rating: PG-13 for use of the F-word
She doesn’t like Authority. Any form of it, no matter what it’s doing. She doesn’t like it. She thinks she’s justified in this dislike, though she has nothing to rationalize it with. She’s broken as far away from tradition as she possibly can, which isn’t very far. The intention is still there, though, in her attitude and the way she sees things.
They call her a stray. They’re right.
She goes to high school, where she skips class and doesn’t do her homework. She’s one of the tough kids, and everyone wishes they could be as bad as her. It’s how it’s always been. She doesn’t have any friends, and she doesn’t want any either.
She’s skipping class now. She should be in a cold classroom, in a desk, taking notes, but she’s in Her Clearing instead. Her Clearing is a small space of treeless grass in the woods behind the lake. She sits inside a tree hole and lets the wind chill her and the musty smell of the rotting wood sink into her bones.
There’s no one in the whole world who knows Her Clearing exists, but she put up a sign by her tree just in case. She felt childish and stupid when she stuck it in the ground, but now when she looks at it she remembers exactly why being alone isn’t so bad. This place is hers.
The sign simply says ‘Kaede’ as that’s all anyone would need. Everyone knows to leave her and hers alone. Her name is written in bright red and it’s messy. It has the appearance of having been written in blood. Kaede likes it that way, and she often claims to herself that she did it on purpose. She likes to paint her nails red to compound the illusion.
Those red nails are attached to hands with the probably the palest skin on the face of the earth. Her arm leads up to her neck, which supports a head full of obscenely bright coarse red hair. Yeah, so she's a ginger. What of it? Yeah, so she has bad grades. You got a problem? Yeah, so she's got a bad attitude. Who asked for your opinion?
Her abrasiveness is a front. She hasn’t decided yet if she likes who she is.
At first she viewed self-esteem as a simple yes-or-no question, but after trying to find the answer for so long, she’d made up her mind that if it was going to be such a problem she’d make it someone else’s. That someone else ended up being Authority, but by now she’s forgotten her reasoning and hates them just because she does.
She doesn’t look for the self-esteem answer. She avoids the question. In her mind, Yes and No mix together to form I Don’t Care, Why Does It Matter, and Go Fuck Yourself.
This is who she is. One day, she’ll grow out of it.