My Name's Not Mary

Wow, what a mess this girl was staring back at me. Big hazel eyes with sleep still stuck in the corners, freckles going from cheek to cheek, and my hair...mannn. I had a combination of my mothers curly hair and my dads thick hair. It sounds good in theory but basically my hair needed to be controlled. Products, blow drying and straightening otherwise it ended up looking crazy and I resembled an old mop. I never spent money on products, it wasn't my thing. I sometimes straightened it when i could be bothered but mostly I gave it a good brush, tied it up and used a ridiculous amount of bobby pins to hold the errant strands in place. I slowly make my way to the bathroom and assess the situation and try to make this mop headed girl look somewhat decent. The truth is I didn't really like looking in the mirror. I always saw my imperfections. I could pick out every flaw like a detective and found myself thinking, "what if.." or "If only.." so I decided the best thing was to just avoid staring for long periods of time. As I'm finishing off getting ready for school I hear my mum yelling for me from the kitchen. "Flo, do you want a cup of tea?"  I smile, "Yeah thank you, that'd be lovely! Ill be there in a min" I go and grab my school blazer and make my way down the stairs to the kitchen. "Good Morning mum, thank you for the tea" I go straight to put some toast on and begin making my lunch for the day. Soon my younger brother walks in half dressed and half asleep. "Hurry up Samuel! You are going to be late for the bus AGAIN and I will NOT be late for work because you refuse to get up when I tell you!" My brother looks at my mum and smirks, "Yeah righto mum jeez relax. Its all good I'll be ready. Morning Flo. Can you make me some lunch while youre at it?" I roll my eyes and begin making my brother lunch like I do most mornings. "Vegemite and cheese or ham and cheese today Sam?" "Surprise me sis" Sam says with his head in the fridge. Mum is in her room getting sorted for work, Sam is eating a leftover piece of pizza when he turns to me "So Flo you ever going to wear a dress or a kilt like a normal girl or keep wearing guy clothes?" I know he is just teasing me "Oh f**k of Samuel or Ill spit in your lunch!" Sam just laughs. Mum comes to the entry to the kitchen and says her goodbyes and makes me promise to get my brother to school on time today. I pack our lunches up and put them in our bags and start to head for the door. I can smell mums perfume lingering, I loved her perfume.  Sam and I make our way to the bus stop which isn't far from our house. Sam is now ahead of me talking to his friends and I see the bus pull up. Im not quite there yet so i start to jog over. As I'm jogging I mustn't have done my bag up properly and the entire contents fall out the side. I just want to die right there. Sam and his mates laugh, even the bus driver is slumped over the steering wheel shaking his head and laughing. "You right Flo?" "Yeah Im all good Sam" I quickly get my things together and get on the bus. I find my seat with my longtime friend Lincoln "Oh my god, you alright?" "Yeah, apart from dying from embarrassment Im all good thanks Linc." Lincoln and I have been in school together since Kindergarten. We're super close. My parents have always suggested to me that they think he is a lovely boy and we would be perfect blah blah blah...Lincoln has always been like another brother to me. I never saw him in that way. He was one of my best mates plus he was dating my other friend Ivy. It took about 20 minutes to get to school so i put my headphones in and decided to try and drown out my early morning embarrassment. As I am listening to my music Linc nudges me, "So you finish your essay for English?" "Yeah how about you?" "In the early hours of this morning I did. It'll be s**t but hopefully get me through, it is going to be a long day" Lincoln says smiling. "I told you to start doing it ages ago" "Yeah well i had band practice! Battle of the bands is coming up and we need to practice as much as we can" I roll my eyes and laugh. "I wish you would stop being so stubborn and sing with me. I don't understand why you wont" Lincoln has been trying to get me to sing in his band for as long as the band has been together, i have always refused. I couldn't think of anything worse than singing in front of people, it made me want to chuck just thinking about it."I don't get it. You do lessons and you are amazing. You pass all your exams and you wont sing? What the f**k is that about?" "Ive told you i just get stage fright. I don't know it scares the s**t out of me. My exams were different. It was in front of ONE person and it was just different..I don't know....drop it will you" "You are a weirdo Florence I swear. What will it take to get you to sing huh?" "Nothing in a million years will get me to stand up on a stage and sing Linc" We have a little laugh and the next thing we know we are pulling up to school. I am walking to the gates of the school from the bus shelters when I start to see my three girl friends waiting for me. The weird thing about my 'group' was that we were a smaller group inside a bigger group. High school and its groups. The popular group. The nerd group. The sporty group. The musical group. The losers, the sluts, the dumb kids. I found myself strangely in the popular group...sort of. Even in this group there was a segregation. I suppose we were the losers of the popular group. I was friends with anyone I thought was a good person. I hated the idea of being in the popular group, I hated groups in general so I made sure to be friends with anyone no matter what group they fit into. I am broken from my trance by the bell signalling its time to get to class. *sigh* another year and Im done with high school. I loved school but alot of the time it was SSDD (Same s**t Different Day).