Vegemite Sandwiches With The Crusts Cut Off

• Sophie Gillan, Grade 10
• Short Story
• 2014

I guess I was always ‘crazy’. Well, that’s what the kids at school said, one of the nicer names they chose. The doctors said that I had Aspergers but I agreed with the kids at school. Adults said I was normal but I knew I wasn't and so did everyone else.

No one prepared you for high school or that Mary and Violet with their pigtails high on their heads would laugh and giggle while you walked down the hallway or that Brian the school bully would try and see how many times he could make you cry. I thought that I was the only one being bullied. I was in term 2 of year 7 and it seemed that instead of getting easier like the teachers were constantly reminding you with their fake smiles it got harder. Everyone was organised into their social groups and if you weren't like them you were a nobody. I was a nobody. I was the kid who went to the library every lunch time trying to hide or sat in the playground eating my Vegemite sandwiches with the crusts cut off wishing I could just disappear into thin air thinking that no one would care. The teachers tried to help but they really had no idea that forcing people to sit together would not make the dislike be forgotten. It would linger in the backs of their minds like a fire smoldering away waiting to be stoked.

I remember walking to school one day and as I turned the corner there was Brian the meanest, toughest and roughest person in the school looking straight at me. He started shuffling closer and all my instincts screamed run away but I was blocked. I walked back home that day with bruises all over my body, blood seeping through my cuts and basically looking like I was homeless. I just remember feeling relieved that nobody saw the kid who was different crying as he ran home.

As I am writing this story I see all my memories of high school flashing through my mind like a movie that you don’t want to see but you just can’t find the remote that is of course hiding under the couch. Among them there were some good memories; travelling around the world, making new friends and meeting my lovely wife at the local library. I never really told many people about what I went through at school preferring to keep it close to my heart. I never did forgive the kids at school completely and sometimes watching all those people walking down the street oblivious to the problems some people face gave me a horrible feeling just knowing that if more people cared some of us wouldn't have to suffer.