• It was time. Time to move on. For six months I had done nothing but put myself down and push my own needs aside, for his sake. He had never thanked me once or ever truly appreciated the kindness. Joseph-Lee Black always lived in his own little world.
    I woke up extra early on my first day of a new life. I had decided to start positively, and get ready for school in a fashion that I couldn't be late in. I even had time to do my make up properly, which is a start. The old me would rush through everything and always be running late. That had to change.
    Everything looked familiar, stepping back in through the double doors and seeing the same old corridors, same old faces, and the same old lockers. First of September. First day of year eleven. It was kind of relieving, but the back of my mind kept reminding me of all the memories. The good and the bad. Looking at the bottom of the staircase, I recalled the time when I had tripped up on the steps and fallen flat on my face. It was Joseph-Lee would had helped me up... but that was then, and this was now. Since that time, he had been through more personality changes than anyone could imagine. He wasn't the same loving, helpful guy that he used to be.
    I sighed when I finally reached the Science floor. My tutor classroom was directly in front of the stairs, so I walked straight in and sat in my seat. The room was empty, for once, and the chairs were all up on the tables. Someone had drawn rude imagery on the whiteboard at the end of the last school year. I sat there chuckling, wondering where I should wipe it off. My tutor didn't have a very good sense of humour at all. He would go ballistic if he saw the amusing bits and pieces on there.
    "This is completely inappropriate!" I could imagine him saying, "Why hasn't anyone bothered to clean this off?"
    Reluctantly, I got up and found the board rubber and then began to clear the drawings off, after having one last grin at it.
    Then I noticed something. In the bottom right corner someone had written a message which caught my attention. I held my breath. It read:
    'Mitz cheated on Joe-Lee Black. Skank!"
    I suddenly felt furious. It was not at all true. In fact, it had been quite the opposite. Anger rose inside me, and I desperately probed the rest of the board for a name - trying to find out who had said this about me. There was no luck though. Nothing about the silly drawings concluded any identity about its illustrator. Just as well, maybe. I might have completely lost my temper at whoever had written that. How annoying. How could they have possibly thought that I was the one who cheated? Perhaps he had lied to his friends, and they had believed him, as the gullible idiots they are. Clearly, I was going to have to make the truth more obvious if I wanted any respect.