CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER ONE: My Name is Rockie
Hey, my name’s Rockie.
Weird name for a girl, right?
Yeah, I think so too. Sometimes I wonder what my parents were thinking when they named me after… rocks. At school, people tease me. They say I look like a rock.
Like, what does that even mean? Do I resemble a lump of dirt? A broken chunk of mountain? A pebble lost in a world of sharp edges?
I asked someone once. They laughed. So, I stopped asking.
But hey—there’s more to me than a strange name. I’m fifteen, painfully awkward, allergic to crowds, and have a grand total of zero friends. Unless you count animals. I like to think they understand me, even if it’s all in my head.
Today is November 15, 2020. A Sunday.
Mom dragged me to the market again. She says she loves "browsing." I call her a professional window-shopper. The market smelled like too many things mashed together—fresh bread, fried meat, and something that definitely shouldn’t be legal.
A woman bumped into me. Her perfume was so strong I nearly passed out. Guess who had to carry all the bags? Yup—me.
It’s always me.
Funny thing—Mom can spend two hours looking at twenty nearly identical handbags, buy none of them, and still leave satisfied. I tried sneaking a candy bar into the basket once. She noticed. I got a ten-minute lecture about wasting money… right after she spent twenty minutes arguing with herself over purses she didn’t even buy.
Classic Mom.
Anyway… have you ever wondered if you're the one without friends, or if friends just don’t want you?
I think about it a lot.
I always have answers for everything—except questions about me.
Someone once asked me something I’ve never forgotten:
“Do you have a best friend? Do you want a best friend? Are you a best friend to someone else?”
It’s been five years. I’ve only managed to answer the first two:
No.
Yes.
That third question? Still pending.
How do you know if you’re a best friend to someone… when no one wants you around?
Friends are like stray cats. If you feed them, they vanish. If you ignore them, they choose someone else. That’s how I lost her.
Pride.
She was the one who asked me those questions. Her words were golden, and I clung to them like they could save me. But words don’t stop people from leaving.
I still hear her voice sometimes, echoing in my mind.
Maybe I just don’t want to forget her.
Maybe forgetting would hurt more than remembering.
It’s 10:00 p.m. right now. Mom’s going to storm upstairs in five minutes to “check” on me. I already know the drill—tuck my diary under the pillow, pretend I’m asleep, wait for her to go away. Then I’ll keep writing.
But… I think she knows my plan.
Mothers always do. It’s like a sixth sense they unlock during childbirth.
One day, I asked her if she regretted naming me Rockie.
She smiled and said, “Rocks are strong. So are you.”
Yeah. Strong. Like how rocks get kicked around, cracked, or left behind.
I didn’t argue. Moms never like being wrong.
Ugh… tomorrow’s Monday.
Back to school. Back to the chaos.
I actually enjoyed this holiday, which is rare. Now it’s over.
I think Mom still believes I’ll magically stop being weird if I spend enough time around "normal people."
Spoiler alert: it hasn’t worked yet.
So here we go—Monday, school, people, expectations.
Time to draft a survival plan.
Let’s begin.
