#Chapter Three
Kitty gave it another hard push, and soon, the door creaked and gave way. After she left, she went to the school lobby, where she took her usual bus back home. When she reached home, her mother was laughing away at some sitcom on the TV, as if her husband had not been arrested yesterday. She contemplated inviting Barry over to her place, and pictured his arm around her as she poured her heart out to him about mean kids at school but she ended up staring at the loading bar on her food delivery app until her food arrived.
When she arrived at school the next day, she foolishly assumed that everyone would lose interest in her. She was bringing her tray of food to some empty seats when a boy she did not recognise lurched forward and tipped her tray over, spilling everything on the floor. She sighed and bent down to pick up whatever she could, only for another kid to shove her towards the ground, and she fell smack down onto the hot soup, which scalded her.
She sent looks around the entire cafeteria, asking for help with her eyes but all of a sudden, everyone had renewed interest in their textbooks or they had to pick up some phone call out of nowhere even though she did not hear any phones ringing. Everyone avoided her eyes and she crawled back up. A janitor stopped by and told her she would take care of it, and Kitty headed to the restrooms to clean up.
Over next few days, Becky intensified her bullying and since she often exploited cancel culture to force her peers into submission, everyone left her to her own devices. And slowly, Kitty was coming home daily with a new scratch or a new bruise. Even trips back home were miserable to her, because when she walked down the aisle, people siting alone placed their bags on the empty seat next to them until there were no seats left. The bus driver would then complain about her loudly because he could not drive while someone was standing, so she had no choice but to leave the bus and wait until the late evenings to get an empty bus.
And as if that wasn't enough, whenever she returned home, she tried to talk to her mother about what happened and asked her often about updates over the situation with her father, but all she received were non-committal replies. So more often than not, she asked Barry to come over.
"Kitty, I'll be here with you until the end," Barry would say to her as he wrapped his arms around her on the bed. "You are the reason why I'm alive."
She smiled in response and as he slowly dozed off beside her, only one word pervaded her mind.
Boring.