New Girl in Town

     I was new. That's all that mattered. No one had a yearning to get to know me for who I was; they failed to see beyond the mask I had so desperately created for myself.
     I was new and I wasn't one of them. I was the 'California girl.' Just because 'my grandaddy didn't grow up with her grandaddy,' I was labelled an outsider.
     I heard the cruel whispers every day as I made my way through the halls. I was 'that girl'; the one with the glasses that hid her eyes. The one with the braces that covered her teeth.
     I wanted to go back home. Home, where people saw the understanding eyes underneath the glasses. But I couldn't go back; I was stuck in Ohio.
     My eyes would fill with tears whenever I was faced with their mockery. But one day, a fellow classmate dried those tears. As soon as those tears disappeared, people were able to look past the misted glasses; they began to see who I really was.
     Those beings that I had formerly considered my enemies evolved before me into a community of loving friends; people I would cherish forever. When the time came to say goodbye, the pain engulfed us as we drowned together in a pool of misery, clinging onto each other. That's all we ever really have to hold on to. Each other. Tears cascaded down my mascara-streaked face; droplets of pity threatened to cling on my eyelashes as we said our final farewells. A sea of concerned faces surrounded me like a haunting fog that hangs in the air long after the morning dew has settled. Everyone gazed at me with intense eyes, conveying a faint hope that I could change my mind and stay.
     But I couldn't stay.
     Now, here I am, almost 2,000 miles away from them. My eyes mist over with tears, but they do not fog my glasses. I have long since shed them. My heart still lies in the place where I had finally shed my mask; where his grandaddy grew up with her grandaddy; where that one girl came all the way from California and showed everyone to look past the surface. And then she left.