Hey hey hey minaaaaa!!! Here’s the last part of my short story, Undefinable. Thank you to those who have read it thus far, I hope you like it! ^^ Tell me what you think if you want! If you haven’t read the previous and want to, here’s the first part and second part. If you just want to read this one, here’s a recap of what has happened so far.
Recap: Miss Shy left all that was familiar behind to go to Lyme Academy, a school that rejects the weak-hearted. Not only her, but her classmates are put at trial when the teacher demands them to overcome what is literally written in their skin. The struggle has been unbearable for Mrs. Shy in her attempts at public speaking, and her scars are widened when the teacher demands an entire thirty minutes for the speech. The consequence of failure, will be expulsion.
Undefinable– Final
The worst day of my life. No soul took mercy, they left me alone or else poked fun at me to my face. The sun went down. I’d neglected dinner, went to my room. I washed my face and drew the covers over myself in bed. Tomorrow… I told myself dreadfully. My face felt aged, my body began to shake rigidly. I turned over. 9 pm passed by. 10 pm. 11 pm. Soon it was midnight and I couldn’t take it anymore. I threw off my covers, pulled out my trunk and began to pack what little I’d taken out. I placed my hand on the door handle and paused. A shuffling was coming from behind me.
“You aren’t leaving, are you?”
I turned around to see my raccoon eyed roommate sit up in her bed. I didn’t respond to her, but she just kept looking at me. “You never asked what my name was,” she said, relaxing her position. Pulling up her sleeve, was the word “Broken” and beneath it, scribbled in her own handwriting was, “But trying”. It hit me, I looked around, there were fewer bottles when I first came. The smell wasn’t so putrid, it was cleaner. She’d been studying more too, but I was too busy in my own thoughts to notice before.
“For a second, just imagine yourself to be something you’re not,” she told me calmly. Her eyes raised to the ceiling in remembrance and she smiled for the first time I’d seen her. “Then, wrap yourself in that hope and…” she looked me straight in the eyes. “Become it.”
“C… can I?” I wondered incredulously.
“Of course,” she replied. “Just take what enfires you, everything you’ve been holding in, and let it all out. Prove to the world they’re wrong about you. Show them who you are, what you can become, and why you’re fighting. Prove to them that you can be whatever you want to be. That, yes, you’re shy… but you’re also outspoken in passion.”
My breath was taken, exactly what I needed to hear, exactly what I needed to keep going. My eyes dripped once more. I felt lighter, like unburdened shoulders. Setting down my suitcase, I crawled back into bed. I couldn’t sleep. The fire in me had started. A fire of such great magnitude it could disintegrate an entire rainforest to ashes in a single night. Getting up, I set myself to work on writing speeches, building confidence. Then burning the speeches into the air from the room’s fireplace. The world was about to have something they never expected, and I would be all around them, polluting the air with my thoughts, my words, my beliefs.
I got up that morning, I left my makeup neglected, and my school books behind. I entered that classroom that I so often stopped before in fear, and I didn’t sit, but I stood beside my desk. Students piled in, goggling at me. Within minutes, the teacher strutted into the room as well. He raised his eyebrows at me and I only smirked. “Today, I will give a speech,” I said aloud, every single person’s attention spiked on me hard. “But it won’t be about how wrong shyness is, or war, or drugs… it will be about us. All of us.”
The teacher stayed quiet, gestured me up to the platform and sat in his seat obediently. I climbed up the stairs and looked out into the classroom of eyes, of opinions and disputes. My stomach bubbled in anxiety, but I shut my eyes. Taking a deep, long breath, I faced them all. I pulled up my sleeve to show them my wrist.
“‘Shy’. That’s what I a-am. Each… each and everyone of us have these definitions carved into our skin. L-like a single word can define us, but can it? I mean, we are what they say, we’re sinners, we’re imperfect. When y-you wake up in the morning and look in the mirror, all you see is how they’ve defined you, how you’ve defined yourself. Some days, it’s easier just not to look and pretend you’re something else. But… maybe, we’ve all been using the wrong definitions.”
I took another breath, steadying my pace of words. “Why… don’t we just stop seeing ourselves as a society would and instead as– as God would see us. Or even our parents, or those who love us, if not ourselves. See yourself in their eyes. You aren’t ugly, you’ve been carefully designed to be unique, to be the beauty that shines in God’s eyes and the eyes of those who don’t see a hideous person, but someone glowing inside and out. That will be you, that is you, if you make it you.
“Um… maybe you’re lonely. You can change that, can’t you?” I was speaking too quietly, I raised my voice. “Find someone to lean on! Reach out to your friends, your classmates, and they’ll reach out to you! So you sleep with a lot of men. Y-you feel guilty and dirty, or maybe you’ve numbed your c-conscience into compliance. You can stop at any time, just take control. Take. Control. Of. Your. Life. If you don’t know how, ask someone!”
The fire was rising even higher in me. It was consuming my heart, but not in hate, in love. I felt it for all of them, I wanted them to move forward in life without a definition to keep them tied on the ground of a cell. “When you look at someone–when you discover their faults…! You…” I was pulling the words I wanted from the air, unable to grab the right ones but nevertheless searching for them. “It’s not our turn to judge them, but maybe… maybe it’s our turn to help them– it is our turn!” I put my hand over my heart and panted for a second before continuing. “I’ve… I’ve never considered that I could be something other then what they’ve defined me ever since my personality was noticeable. AND!” I shouted making them all jump. “I don’t think being shy is a bad thing… It’s neglecting people, neglecting life, that will damage you! Maybe I can’t change! Maybe I’ll be shy for the rest of my life, until I sleep in the grave, where I’ll be even quieter, but so what? That’s how I am. That doesn’t mean I don’t have feelings, that I’m not human too. That doesn’t mean that I should be ignored just because I’m not as entertaining or less awkward to be around. And… that doesn’t mean I have nothing to talk about. I have so much building inside me, I just can’t–” I grabbed for the words again, pausing until they came to me. “I can’t express myself so openly, not always. I… it’s not… talking doesn’t come so naturally to me like it does people who are used to socializing. Still, I’m going to… to Try,” I said with determination.
“When I was little, I was told to be quiet indoors. Now that I’m older, I’ve found the need to be loud wherever I go. When people are around, I feel this constant pressure to talk. Maybe I need to be pressured sometimes, but other times, you just have to accept me for who I am. I’m a wallflower. Quiet on the wall in a room full of loud furniture. Unable to make myself visible, but… when that same wallflower goes missing, the loss of its presence will not go unnoticed.” I took one last breath of relief and poured my eyes out to the faces in the room. The details I’d never cared enough to see were lying in front of me. Emotional faces with stripes of tears on their cheeks. Wearisome kinds who looked like they’d finally come to a rest stop on their long journey. Enlightened faces, who’d had never dreamed this was waiting for them in the future, that they could be something more than what was labeled on their skin by society.
For the first time in my life, I walked down those steps in confidence and an even wilder fire burning inside me. As each step left my foot, I knew, I was on the way to something bigger than myself, or my so-called definition. I am something no person can label, no matter how long they study me.
I am undefinable.
— End —
~A.C
Brimming with Bats in the Belfry 