Test Subject – Sarah Lillian Whitlock
October 10th 2016
83 days since first abduction
It was late fall, winter was almost upon them and a strange lethargy had stolen over most of the student body; there were a few exceptions within the crowd who seemed immune to it, one Sarah Lillian Whitlock being an example. With a spring in her step and a smile on her face it seemed like Sarah was one of the few people who were actually happy to be at school that day. The weather was about as cold and dreary as it ever got in Miami, that is to say ‘still warmer than most places but with a hint of rain in the air’, but she didn’t think the approaching change of the seasons had anything to do with the general mood of the people around her. No, if she had to guess it was likely down to the fact that it was first thing on a Monday morning and everyone was suffering from weekend withdrawals. Or hangovers, which was just withdrawal of another kind.
Yeah, that was probably it.
Whatever the reason her good mood put Sarah at odds with the rest of the crowd, an observation that had kicked off this weird thought tangent in the first place. It had been a good weekend for her, hence her high spirits, though for reasons that were likely only of interest to her; she was probably the only person in her school that got excited over declassified government documents about UFO’s after all. Despite her best efforts to share that excitement with others. Speaking of which…
“Hey guys!”
The four girls standing near Sarah’s locker turned her direction, the conversation they were in being cut short as she greeted them. They were familiar faces all of them, people she spoke to nearly every day, the same group she had hung out with since the start of middle school; a.k.a. her friends. She was fortunate in a lot of ways that she and her social circle had all managed to get into Mangrove Garden together, all except for Hannah at least, though Sarah was the only one to get in by passing the entrance exam. It allowed her to enter high school with an established clique, so that she didn’t have to deal with the awkwardness of trying to find a place to fit in. Great news for her; an extrovert she might be but full of social grace she was not.
Four familiar voices returning her greeting and she couldn’t help but note that the apathy that had stolen over the school had reached this far as well, it would seem. The ringing of their voices seemed duller than usual, but as Sarah opened her locked and began to put her things away she paid it no mind. As she transferred the stack of papers and printouts in her arms to her locker she saw that most of her friends let their attention drift down to them before averting their eyes; no one asked what they were, presumably because they already knew or could guess, but one pair of eyes lingered longer than the others.
Julia.
The reason everyone was gathered here was due to the fact that Julia’s locker was only a few spaces down from Sarah’s; they’d often meet up here just because it was more convenient when two of them had lockers here. Of course, it probably also had something to do with the fact that Julia was the lynchpin of the group in a way; the ‘ringleader’ insomuch as their group had one. She just had that kind of personality that was a little bit more decisive than others. Out of the four of them Julia was the one who seemed the most off today; while the others just seemed distracted, shuffling around and not making eye contact with her as they stared at the ground or the walls. Julia on the other hand seemed almost on edge, tense with expectation.
Sarah closed her locker up again, focusing on putting the lock in place as she tried to ignore the uneasy feeling that had suddenly formed in her stomach for some reason. “So!” She spun away from her locker before fixing her eyes on Julia’s, a bright smile on her face that was not returned, before looking at each of her friends in turn. “How was your weekend?”
“It was okay.” Julia was the only one to answer properly, the others either nodding along or murmuring their agreement. It was a far cry from how they normally acted around her and the strangeness of it did nothing to help her feeling that something was wrong.
“Great! Didn’t you say you were going to a party or something? Or was that next weekend?” Sarah pushed through the discomfort, telling herself that she was being silly and imagining things. Sometime she got an idea stuck in her head and couldn’t let it go; this was probably no different than that. “Well, never mind. Um… my weekend was pretty dull, I had to watch my brother Friday night but I’m used to that.” She hesitated over what she was about to say next, a brief pause where time almost seemed to stop as everything waited to see what she would do. “I spent most of my time reading through these declassified documents; they’re about a bunch of UFO sightings from like airforce pilots and-“
“How long are you going to keep this up?” The edge in Julia’s voice was brought to bear as she cut Sarah off before she could go any further. The interrupted was sudden and forceful enough that it caused Sarah’s brain to skip a beat. She stood there with her mouth open before remembering to close it.
“Wha- um… I’m sorry?”
“This alien stuff. It’s been months and you’re still talking about it.” Sarah didn’t know what to say. The way Julia was looking at her, the open hostility in her voice; she’d never been great at confrontation and this was all far too much far too suddenly for her to be able to adapt or respond quickly. That it was coming from an unexpected source, someone she considered a friend, only made it worse.
“I don’t-“ She started to respond only to falter, her words failing her. She looked past Julia, turning her head slightly to look at the rest of her friends and found that none of them were willing to make eye contact in return. It suddenly occurred to her what the weirdness had been about, the shuffling and staring at the floor and Julia’s tension; they all knew this was coming. They knew Julia was planning on confronting her like this. “I didn’t know it was bothering you this much.”
It hurt.
“I thought it was kind of funny at first.” Julia pressed onwards, Sarah’s words or her stunned reaction barely seeming to register. Sarah could almost imagine she had a script in mind that she wanted to get through, like she’d planned ahead for this moment. “The story about being abducted, but then it kept going. I think you’re taking this joke a little too far.”
Sarah frowned. She was upset, a little mortified at being chastised like this, but the realisation that her friend thought she was joking about all this was enough to snap her out of it for the moment. Was that the impression she had given them? “It’s not a joke.”
Julia’s eyes rolled back with enough force that Sarah was worried she might hurt herself. “Sarah, just stop, that’s enough. This isn’t funny.” The exasperation in her voice was clear enough for anyone to hear. Normally this would be the place where Sarah apologised so that things could go back to the way they were before. She hated confrontation; she wasn’t used to it and it made her uneasy, so she always ended up being the one apologising to avoid it. This time, Sarah heard the tone in Julia’s voce and ignored it.
“This isn’t a joke; I’m serious about this.” She was. Very serious about it in fact; did they really think everything she’d said, all of the evidence she’d shown them was part of an elaborate joke? “It happened to me.” Why was it so hard for anyone to just believe her? Her parents, her friends; no one took her seriously when she spoke about this stuff. “It’s real.”
Hand on her hip, Julia looked down her nose at her, any hint of friendliness as now gone. “I hope it’s a joke. For your sake.”
“What does that mean?” Sarah hated that she was shorter than Julia in this moment, that she had to look up to make eye contact. It made her feel smaller than she was. From behind Julia a hand reach around and gripped her by the upper arm, as if trying to pull her back metaphorically or otherwise. Sarah followed the hand down the arm to the person it was attached to, to find one of their friends, Clara, trying to play peacemaker.
“Maybe we should talk about this somewhere else.” She wasn’t looking at either of them, but at the people around them. Sarah looked as well and was a little surprised to see that they had gained a little bit of an audience in the past few minutes, with more than a few passers-by stopping to stare at the drama on their way to classes or their own lockers.
Sarah could feel the heat spreading through her face at the realisation; how loud had they been? How much had people heard? “It means it’s weird. You’re weird. You’ve been acting like a crazy person ever since we started school. Aliens abducted you? Are you serious? Who believes that shit?” Julia, of course, hadn’t noticed at all. Clara let her arm drop as Julia continued on regardless, if anything growing even louder now that Sarah was choosing to try and argue her case.
“I know what I saw. I know what happened to me. It was aliens.” For anyone who was listening, the cat was out the bag now; if they didn’t know what the argument had been about before, they did now. Sarah was feeling a little more subdued now, embarrassment at the number of people watching putting a damper on her anger.
“This is ridiculous.” Twisting her head away from Sarah, like she was done with her, Julia spoke to the other’s who’d mostly been standing on the side-lines not getting involved. “I told you she’d be like this.”
“You’ve been talking about me?” Indignant, betrayed, wounded, embarrassed and humiliated; there was a weird mixture of emotions flowing through her right now. She felt hurt enough to cry, frustrated enough to cry, definitely frustrated, but also angrier than she’d felt in years which seemed to be keeping the tears back for now.
“Let’s go.” She spun on her heel and began to walk away. It was a decisive action, just like everything Julia did. After a moment’s hesitation the other three girls, the rest of Sarah’s friends, followed after her. Like they always did.
For once, Sarah wasn’t going with them.
“Don’t just ignore me. Julia!” Her friends were making fun of her behind her back. Whatever else this argument had been about that was something she couldn’t forget. She could stop showing them stuff about aliens and UFO’s if it was bothering them, she would have stopped if they’d confronted her about it in a normal way, but the fact that they’d talked about her behind her back was a hard thing to get over.
“Grow up Sarah.” Julia’s retreating back disappeared into the flow of bodies, those who hadn’t stopped to stare at her, and was carried away by it. Sarah was left alone in the wake of her last parting shot, feeling small and embarrassed and angry. There was a raw red feeling in her chest and she didn’t know what to do with it; she wanted to slam her locker, something to give the sensation some release, but it was already closed.
Most of the crowd had lost interest by now but some people were still staring at her as she fumed in silence. Grabbing her things for her first lesson she began to storm away in the direction of her classroom, even if it was still far too early to get there.
Vignettes of an Alien Conspiracist
A series of oneshots, from the start of high school to the present day
Test Subject – Sarah Lillian Whitlock
December 15th 2016
149 days since first abduction
As soon as Sarah stepped into the cafeteria and was faced with the mass of students before her she felt a wave of attention turn her way. Strange, since as far as she could tell nobody was paying her any notice at all. No one turned their heads to look her direction and nothing as dramatic as a sudden hush falling over the room at her entrance happened; it was all in her head, yet she keenly felt their eyes on her nonetheless.
Was it arrogance or paranoia that made her think people cared? That her appearance alone would make dozens, even hundreds of people stop and pay attention to her? She wasn’t that important, likely never would be, and it was silly to think otherwise. Even so, for the past few months it certainly felt like the whole school had been talking about her. It wasn’t hard to imagine that at least one person in that sea of faces was currently staring at her.
Or laughing at her.
She felt a surge of annoyance at the thought, but rather than stand in the doorway and draw unnecessary attention to herself Sarah moved to join the back of the lunch line. Nobody turned to watch her pass, as expected, but just being visible to this many people was making her self-conscious. She could feel invisible, imaginary eyes staring at her back for the entire duration.
There used to be a time when lunch period something for Sarah to look forward to. A time when it gave her a much needed break from classes, a time when it allowed her to catch up with her friends, wind down and so on; you know, just relax? But ever since her extremely public and apparently well documented fight with Julia a couple months ago she’d become kind of well-known around school and her chances of a ‘quiet and peaceful’ lunchtime had become a thing of the past.
The line shuffled forward and Sarah shuffled along with it, keeping pace with the person ahead of her and giving the person behind her no reason to pay more attention to her than necessary.
She’d never wanted to be popular, which was good because that’s not what she was. She was infamous. All of the downsides of people knowing who you were with none of the fringe benefits of being liked by people. She didn’t do well in the limelight and so far in her life had settled for just not being unpopular, but now it seemed like half the school knew who she was and she really didn’t know how to feel about that.
It was hard to describe just how jarring it was to speak to someone for the first time and have them already know who you were. How? Why? What did they know? It almost felt like a small invasion of her privacy, having people know things about her without her knowledge, especially when they were the one to approach her. And approach her people did. People she’d never met, complete strangers, walking up to her and asking her questions, starting conversations or just wanting to confirm if it was really her; if the rumours were true.
Wasn’t that a terrifying thing to be asked? Less than a day after her huge fight with her friends, well one friend, and a girl she had never met asked her between classes if the stories she’d heard about her were true. She’d had to wonder for a moment if Julia had continued her betrayal by going behind her back and making up scandalous lies about her. It was something of a surprise and relief when it turned out Julia had just told the truth, albeit not in the most flattering terms. Sarah hadn’t thought anything wrong with confirming it; why would she when it was true? Why not tell her own side of the story?
Not her smartest move, in hindsight.
Hard to believe someone like her could ever have a reputation, but that was the situation she found herself in. She was the ‘alien girl’ now; thanks to Julia. Well, thanks to herself mostly, her own actions led her to this point, but she still blamed her friend for causing that scene in the first place.
Having people know she believed in aliens wasn’t a problem; it was true and not something she was particularly ashamed of, so if people wanted to call her the ‘alien girl’ it wasn’t like she could deny it. The problem wasn’t even that people wanted to talk to her about it; as uncomfortable as those first few days had been she had actually been excited at first that more people were willing to hear her out. Especially after having everything she wanted to say, all of her evidence and research, ignored by her friends. The problem was that even if some people were interested in hearing her out, nobody was willing to take anything she had to say seriously.
The most common response was incredulity followed by laughter, people who just wanted to confirm if she really did think UFOs or aliens were real so they could laugh at her expense. After that you had those who would continue to ask questions, but seemed more interesting in seeing just how deep down the rabbit hole she had fallen than anything she was actually saying. Then you had the, thankfully small, minority of people who used the situation as a way to mock and denigrate her; trolls, bullies, the kind of person who smelt blood in the water and saw an opportunity for some fun. She’d wasted far too much time arguing with the latter group; loud, angry arguments that only served to spread her reputation to more people and make her look crazier in the process. It took her a few days to realise that none of them really cared and that they were just trying to provoke a reaction from her, but she’d just been so annoyed at being dismissed and ignored that she’d easily taken the bait.
That still wasn’t the worst thing about this whole situation though.
She didn’t get to make first impressions anymore. That was the part that bothered her the most; not that people laughed at her or thought she was weird, or that she routinely felt humiliated or frustrated by it all, although that wasn’t great either. It was the fact that most people had made their minds up about her before ever meeting her in person, based on the rumours and gossip that had spread with surprising speed through the student body. People got to decide who she was or even tell others who she was with no input from herself.
She was the ‘alien girl’ before she was ever ‘Sarah’ anymore and that was honestly kind of sad.
It was enough to make her wish she had just said ‘no’ two months ago. Deny everything and say the rumours were false and hope she was believed.
What was done was done though; too late to be thinking about that and no reason to dwell on what could have been. The person behind her pointedly cleared their throat and alerted Sarah to the fact that she had been spacing out for a while now. While she was daydreaming about how people thought she was a weirdo a sizeable gap had formed between herself and the person in front and she quickly sought to close it once she realised it was there. It would be just her luck if the person standing behind her in line recognised her because of this and tried to start a conversation with her.
For the rest of her time in the queue Sarah managed not to drift off again, finally finding herself at the head of the line and able to buy her lunch. As she was doing so she heard her name being said behind her; it wasn’t directed her way, but rather picked out from the rest of the babble that filled the room. She turned to look over her shoulder and sure enough she spied a couple of girls looking directly at her, one twisting around in her seat to look where her friend was pointing. Sarah locked eyes with one of them and rather than turn away it only seemed to embolden her, rising out of her seat as she began to walk towards Sarah.
One of the latter types then. Sarah could tell from the look in the girl’s eye that she wasn’t going to try and be subtle about this.
She hated the lunch period.
December 15th 2016
149 days since first abduction
As soon as Sarah stepped into the cafeteria and was faced with the mass of students before her she felt a wave of attention turn her way. Strange, since as far as she could tell nobody was paying her any notice at all. No one turned their heads to look her direction and nothing as dramatic as a sudden hush falling over the room at her entrance happened; it was all in her head, yet she keenly felt their eyes on her nonetheless.
Was it arrogance or paranoia that made her think people cared? That her appearance alone would make dozens, even hundreds of people stop and pay attention to her? She wasn’t that important, likely never would be, and it was silly to think otherwise. Even so, for the past few months it certainly felt like the whole school had been talking about her. It wasn’t hard to imagine that at least one person in that sea of faces was currently staring at her.
Or laughing at her.
She felt a surge of annoyance at the thought, but rather than stand in the doorway and draw unnecessary attention to herself Sarah moved to join the back of the lunch line. Nobody turned to watch her pass, as expected, but just being visible to this many people was making her self-conscious. She could feel invisible, imaginary eyes staring at her back for the entire duration.
There used to be a time when lunch period something for Sarah to look forward to. A time when it gave her a much needed break from classes, a time when it allowed her to catch up with her friends, wind down and so on; you know, just relax? But ever since her extremely public and apparently well documented fight with Julia a couple months ago she’d become kind of well-known around school and her chances of a ‘quiet and peaceful’ lunchtime had become a thing of the past.
The line shuffled forward and Sarah shuffled along with it, keeping pace with the person ahead of her and giving the person behind her no reason to pay more attention to her than necessary.
She’d never wanted to be popular, which was good because that’s not what she was. She was infamous. All of the downsides of people knowing who you were with none of the fringe benefits of being liked by people. She didn’t do well in the limelight and so far in her life had settled for just not being unpopular, but now it seemed like half the school knew who she was and she really didn’t know how to feel about that.
It was hard to describe just how jarring it was to speak to someone for the first time and have them already know who you were. How? Why? What did they know? It almost felt like a small invasion of her privacy, having people know things about her without her knowledge, especially when they were the one to approach her. And approach her people did. People she’d never met, complete strangers, walking up to her and asking her questions, starting conversations or just wanting to confirm if it was really her; if the rumours were true.
Wasn’t that a terrifying thing to be asked? Less than a day after her huge fight with her friends, well one friend, and a girl she had never met asked her between classes if the stories she’d heard about her were true. She’d had to wonder for a moment if Julia had continued her betrayal by going behind her back and making up scandalous lies about her. It was something of a surprise and relief when it turned out Julia had just told the truth, albeit not in the most flattering terms. Sarah hadn’t thought anything wrong with confirming it; why would she when it was true? Why not tell her own side of the story?
Not her smartest move, in hindsight.
Hard to believe someone like her could ever have a reputation, but that was the situation she found herself in. She was the ‘alien girl’ now; thanks to Julia. Well, thanks to herself mostly, her own actions led her to this point, but she still blamed her friend for causing that scene in the first place.
Having people know she believed in aliens wasn’t a problem; it was true and not something she was particularly ashamed of, so if people wanted to call her the ‘alien girl’ it wasn’t like she could deny it. The problem wasn’t even that people wanted to talk to her about it; as uncomfortable as those first few days had been she had actually been excited at first that more people were willing to hear her out. Especially after having everything she wanted to say, all of her evidence and research, ignored by her friends. The problem was that even if some people were interested in hearing her out, nobody was willing to take anything she had to say seriously.
The most common response was incredulity followed by laughter, people who just wanted to confirm if she really did think UFOs or aliens were real so they could laugh at her expense. After that you had those who would continue to ask questions, but seemed more interesting in seeing just how deep down the rabbit hole she had fallen than anything she was actually saying. Then you had the, thankfully small, minority of people who used the situation as a way to mock and denigrate her; trolls, bullies, the kind of person who smelt blood in the water and saw an opportunity for some fun. She’d wasted far too much time arguing with the latter group; loud, angry arguments that only served to spread her reputation to more people and make her look crazier in the process. It took her a few days to realise that none of them really cared and that they were just trying to provoke a reaction from her, but she’d just been so annoyed at being dismissed and ignored that she’d easily taken the bait.
That still wasn’t the worst thing about this whole situation though.
She didn’t get to make first impressions anymore. That was the part that bothered her the most; not that people laughed at her or thought she was weird, or that she routinely felt humiliated or frustrated by it all, although that wasn’t great either. It was the fact that most people had made their minds up about her before ever meeting her in person, based on the rumours and gossip that had spread with surprising speed through the student body. People got to decide who she was or even tell others who she was with no input from herself.
She was the ‘alien girl’ before she was ever ‘Sarah’ anymore and that was honestly kind of sad.
It was enough to make her wish she had just said ‘no’ two months ago. Deny everything and say the rumours were false and hope she was believed.
What was done was done though; too late to be thinking about that and no reason to dwell on what could have been. The person behind her pointedly cleared their throat and alerted Sarah to the fact that she had been spacing out for a while now. While she was daydreaming about how people thought she was a weirdo a sizeable gap had formed between herself and the person in front and she quickly sought to close it once she realised it was there. It would be just her luck if the person standing behind her in line recognised her because of this and tried to start a conversation with her.
For the rest of her time in the queue Sarah managed not to drift off again, finally finding herself at the head of the line and able to buy her lunch. As she was doing so she heard her name being said behind her; it wasn’t directed her way, but rather picked out from the rest of the babble that filled the room. She turned to look over her shoulder and sure enough she spied a couple of girls looking directly at her, one twisting around in her seat to look where her friend was pointing. Sarah locked eyes with one of them and rather than turn away it only seemed to embolden her, rising out of her seat as she began to walk towards Sarah.
One of the latter types then. Sarah could tell from the look in the girl’s eye that she wasn’t going to try and be subtle about this.
She hated the lunch period.
Test Subject – Sarah Lillian Whitlock
January 25th 2017
190 days since first abduction
When did you stop being friends with someone?
It was a topic Sarah had been thinking of a lot recently, in her more melancholic moments that seemed to be happening more and more frequently. When did you cross the line with someone from being friends to being former friends?
If there was a fight or a huge falling out then it was obvious; the friendship would be broken and replaced by something else. It could be hatred, betrayal, pain, maybe a sense of loss for something that once was, maybe nothing at all; whatever the case the good feelings were gone. But what about when it wasn’t like that? Not anything so dramatic, but instead a slow erosion of that connection between you caused by distance, time or just growing apart from each other. When did you know it was officially over?
In middle school she was friends with a girl named Hannah. They were both part of the same friend group and would hang out with each other pretty much every day during the week and often saw each other on the weekends as well. They’d spend time at each other’s houses for sleepovers and movie or SOTF nights. They hadn’t spent much time together just the two of them, Sarah was coming to realise, it was always them as two parts of a larger group, but they were friends.
Hannah was the only one of their group not to make it into Mangrove Garden, falling just shy of getting a scholarship on the exam and her parents not wanting to pay the tuition when she would do just as well as a cheaper school. Between Sarah’s annual summer vacation with her family and them now attending different schools, the last time they’d seen each other in person was probably six or seven months ago. They’d messaged each other a bunch, but no longer being in the same school meant having less to talk about and eventually the messages had dried up.
Even so, if you asked Sarah now she’d still say they were friends. Of course they were; why wouldn’t they be? Nothing had happened to cause them to fall out or anything; they just hadn’t had a reason to talk recently. If Sarah reach out then Hannah would still be there, their friendship intact. But someday that would no longer be true and most likely Sarah wouldn’t know why or even notice when it had happened.
She’d been thinking about that kind of thing a lot recently.
It was kind of a depressing thing to occupy your thoughts with, but Sarah had been in that kind of depressive mood recently. So far her high school experience hadn’t been exactly what she had hoped it would be; not that she’d hoped for much to begin with. The classes were harder than she had expected, the ranking system was distressingly competitive, she had become something of a laughing stock within the school body and her friends… well.
She wasn’t sure they were her friends anymore.
The break from school over Christmas had been the kind of relief than she hadn’t known she’d needed. An opportunity to just breathe without having to deal with people except for those she wanted to deal with. It was something she’d needed more than she’d thought and that surprised her, because she’d always considered herself an extrovert; she’d always liked being around people, when those people were nice to be around at least, and she didn’t think that had changed. However, the people she had to deal with certainly had and to an extent that included her friends.
It was a slow realisation, one that came at the end of the break from school and she began to think about seeing her friends again. She realised that she hadn’t once thought about contacting them the entire time. Upon seeing them again on the first day back there was an apprehension that had been there for the past few months; a feeling that had crept into her daily interactions with them that had gone unnoticed until she had taken a step back.
It took her a few days to realise why she felt that way, but if she was honest with herself her relationship with them had been fraught ever since the brief but impactful fight between herself and Julia. After everything that was said at the time, the realisation that her friends had been talking about her behind her back and the subsequent realisation that Julia had spoken to other people around school about her, Sarah had been… well, angry would be an understatement. She hadn’t spoken to Julia for days, only spoke to her other friends when she needed to and stewed in her own hurt feelings for a while.
But she’d gotten over it. The anger had faded, or maybe she’d just grown lonely without anyone to talk to, or maybe she felt vulnerable without her friends with so many people paying attention to her now. Whatever the cause she’d gone back to her friends eventually, to Julia, because even though Sarah didn’t think she was the one who needed to apologise she still thought of them as friends. Friends were supposed to make up with each other, forgive each other. Though no apology passed between them, Sarah felt as if things had been resolved. Things went back to some kind of normal and she thought that meant they were okay.
It was a little awkward at first, conversations felt forced at times, but that was to be expected after a big fight; or so she told herself. She wanted to move past that so she ignored it and hoped it would fix itself over time. It was probably that mind-set that made it so she didn’t recognise what was happening until she got some distance from it.
It had built up incrementally, but over the course of the last few months she had begun to feel more and more like the odd one out within the group. She would find herself on the outside of conversations looking in as her friends talked around her. There were things she had missed in the short week she was gone or things that she had been excluded from since. They would still spend time together outside of school, but more infrequently now, and she was sure there were things that she wasn’t being invited to.
It used to be that they would all meet up after their classes so they could go to lunch together, on those days when they shared a lunch period at least, but now if she didn’t run into one of them in the halls then they would meet up in the cafeteria. She would find her friends already sitting together and quietly add herself to the outside of the group. Or she wouldn’t find them at all and eat lunch alone that day. She couldn’t say that she was being left out on purpose, because they’d never complained when she sat with them, but sometimes the conversation would stop and she would feel like she was interrupting something.
Occasionally she could have a simple, easy conversation with one of them and it was nice. They would talk about classes or about their families or just what music they were listening to and it was exactly like how it used to be. She could still get along with them. But it was becoming a rarity and the rest of the time she couldn’t help but feel like she was intruding on something.
Something that she’d used to be a part of.
Maybe that incident had driven a larger wedge between them than she had realised. Maybe she’d set off that slow erosion that wore away at the connection that made them friends and maybe by walking away for a week she’d let things fray to the point a break was inevitable. She still considered them her friends and sometimes when she reached out they would respond in kind, but it was becoming more difficult.
It was especially upsetting because she knew that her own actions had been the main cause of it, with her constant talk of what had happened to her during the summer. She supposed she had made them uncomfortable. Admittedly the experience of being abducted and the accompanying revelation that aliens existed and had visited Earth and were experimenting on people might have consumed her life a little bit. She could accept that she was becoming something of a broken record on the subject. Something that was entirely reasonable in her mind, given the gravity of what had happened to her; this was irrefutable evidence of life from another planet!
Even so, Sarah couldn’t fault her friends for getting sick of her always talking about it. She didn’t fault them for not believing her, when she could still hardly believe it herself. Even if it was all incredibly frustrating for her not to be believed by people who should be giving her the benefit of the doubt.
She was willing to put all of that aside for their friendship. She was willing to never mention it to them again if that’s what it took, even if it bothered her. It wasn’t like she had a shortage of people asking her to talk about it these days anyway; the daily occurrence of being bothered by people was enough to make even her sick of hearing about it. Unfortunately, not everyone was as willing as her to let it go.
Julia never let an opportunity pass to remind her of it. Even now, months after their fight, she was still making subtle comments about it. She’d always been the type to be petty about things, but she usually let it go after a week or two. It was three months now and she was still on it.
Sarah didn’t know why she was putting up with it anymore.
Her time away from them over the break from school had been kind of eye opening. It made her start to realise that she wasn’t having a good time with her friends anymore and that most of her interactions with them left her feeling uneasy and disappointed more often than not.
Their friendships had become one-sided, with her reaching out to them far more often than they reached out to her. She was putting in a lopsided amount of effort to keep things going and while that applied to some of her friends more than others it accurately described all of them to an extent.
Given all of that and her thoughts as of late, Sarah couldn’t help but wonder if her own efforts were the only thing keeping those friendships alive.
And if she still thought it was worthwhile to do so.
“Sarah? Are you listening?”
Sarah came out of her daze, having been lost deep in thought for the past several minutes, and turned towards the voice to find her friend Katie staring at her with a look of concern. They were all sat around a table in the cafeteria and at some point the conversation must have turned from whatever they had done last weekend without her to something else. Unfortunately she had no idea what.
“Oh, sorry. I was just thinking about something.” She said with an apologetic smile. It was a little embarrassing and hopefully Katie wouldn’t mind too much.
“What were you thinking about? ‘Spacing’ out like that?” It was Julia who responded first and while her ‘joke’ didn’t get much of a laugh from the others, the implication certainly wiped the smile off of Sarah’s face.
“Just thinking about the future I guess.” As Katie repeated what Sarah had missed, a question about the science homework they had been given earlier in the day, she made the decision to see what would happen if she stopped making the effort to stay friends with Julia and the others. If they reached out to her then she would gladly respond but if they didn’t, and she had a feeling they wouldn’t, then neither would she.
The thought of what answer she might get made her a little anxious, but just making the decision felt like it took a weight off of her shoulders.
January 25th 2017
190 days since first abduction
When did you stop being friends with someone?
It was a topic Sarah had been thinking of a lot recently, in her more melancholic moments that seemed to be happening more and more frequently. When did you cross the line with someone from being friends to being former friends?
If there was a fight or a huge falling out then it was obvious; the friendship would be broken and replaced by something else. It could be hatred, betrayal, pain, maybe a sense of loss for something that once was, maybe nothing at all; whatever the case the good feelings were gone. But what about when it wasn’t like that? Not anything so dramatic, but instead a slow erosion of that connection between you caused by distance, time or just growing apart from each other. When did you know it was officially over?
In middle school she was friends with a girl named Hannah. They were both part of the same friend group and would hang out with each other pretty much every day during the week and often saw each other on the weekends as well. They’d spend time at each other’s houses for sleepovers and movie or SOTF nights. They hadn’t spent much time together just the two of them, Sarah was coming to realise, it was always them as two parts of a larger group, but they were friends.
Hannah was the only one of their group not to make it into Mangrove Garden, falling just shy of getting a scholarship on the exam and her parents not wanting to pay the tuition when she would do just as well as a cheaper school. Between Sarah’s annual summer vacation with her family and them now attending different schools, the last time they’d seen each other in person was probably six or seven months ago. They’d messaged each other a bunch, but no longer being in the same school meant having less to talk about and eventually the messages had dried up.
Even so, if you asked Sarah now she’d still say they were friends. Of course they were; why wouldn’t they be? Nothing had happened to cause them to fall out or anything; they just hadn’t had a reason to talk recently. If Sarah reach out then Hannah would still be there, their friendship intact. But someday that would no longer be true and most likely Sarah wouldn’t know why or even notice when it had happened.
She’d been thinking about that kind of thing a lot recently.
It was kind of a depressing thing to occupy your thoughts with, but Sarah had been in that kind of depressive mood recently. So far her high school experience hadn’t been exactly what she had hoped it would be; not that she’d hoped for much to begin with. The classes were harder than she had expected, the ranking system was distressingly competitive, she had become something of a laughing stock within the school body and her friends… well.
She wasn’t sure they were her friends anymore.
The break from school over Christmas had been the kind of relief than she hadn’t known she’d needed. An opportunity to just breathe without having to deal with people except for those she wanted to deal with. It was something she’d needed more than she’d thought and that surprised her, because she’d always considered herself an extrovert; she’d always liked being around people, when those people were nice to be around at least, and she didn’t think that had changed. However, the people she had to deal with certainly had and to an extent that included her friends.
It was a slow realisation, one that came at the end of the break from school and she began to think about seeing her friends again. She realised that she hadn’t once thought about contacting them the entire time. Upon seeing them again on the first day back there was an apprehension that had been there for the past few months; a feeling that had crept into her daily interactions with them that had gone unnoticed until she had taken a step back.
It took her a few days to realise why she felt that way, but if she was honest with herself her relationship with them had been fraught ever since the brief but impactful fight between herself and Julia. After everything that was said at the time, the realisation that her friends had been talking about her behind her back and the subsequent realisation that Julia had spoken to other people around school about her, Sarah had been… well, angry would be an understatement. She hadn’t spoken to Julia for days, only spoke to her other friends when she needed to and stewed in her own hurt feelings for a while.
But she’d gotten over it. The anger had faded, or maybe she’d just grown lonely without anyone to talk to, or maybe she felt vulnerable without her friends with so many people paying attention to her now. Whatever the cause she’d gone back to her friends eventually, to Julia, because even though Sarah didn’t think she was the one who needed to apologise she still thought of them as friends. Friends were supposed to make up with each other, forgive each other. Though no apology passed between them, Sarah felt as if things had been resolved. Things went back to some kind of normal and she thought that meant they were okay.
It was a little awkward at first, conversations felt forced at times, but that was to be expected after a big fight; or so she told herself. She wanted to move past that so she ignored it and hoped it would fix itself over time. It was probably that mind-set that made it so she didn’t recognise what was happening until she got some distance from it.
It had built up incrementally, but over the course of the last few months she had begun to feel more and more like the odd one out within the group. She would find herself on the outside of conversations looking in as her friends talked around her. There were things she had missed in the short week she was gone or things that she had been excluded from since. They would still spend time together outside of school, but more infrequently now, and she was sure there were things that she wasn’t being invited to.
It used to be that they would all meet up after their classes so they could go to lunch together, on those days when they shared a lunch period at least, but now if she didn’t run into one of them in the halls then they would meet up in the cafeteria. She would find her friends already sitting together and quietly add herself to the outside of the group. Or she wouldn’t find them at all and eat lunch alone that day. She couldn’t say that she was being left out on purpose, because they’d never complained when she sat with them, but sometimes the conversation would stop and she would feel like she was interrupting something.
Occasionally she could have a simple, easy conversation with one of them and it was nice. They would talk about classes or about their families or just what music they were listening to and it was exactly like how it used to be. She could still get along with them. But it was becoming a rarity and the rest of the time she couldn’t help but feel like she was intruding on something.
Something that she’d used to be a part of.
Maybe that incident had driven a larger wedge between them than she had realised. Maybe she’d set off that slow erosion that wore away at the connection that made them friends and maybe by walking away for a week she’d let things fray to the point a break was inevitable. She still considered them her friends and sometimes when she reached out they would respond in kind, but it was becoming more difficult.
It was especially upsetting because she knew that her own actions had been the main cause of it, with her constant talk of what had happened to her during the summer. She supposed she had made them uncomfortable. Admittedly the experience of being abducted and the accompanying revelation that aliens existed and had visited Earth and were experimenting on people might have consumed her life a little bit. She could accept that she was becoming something of a broken record on the subject. Something that was entirely reasonable in her mind, given the gravity of what had happened to her; this was irrefutable evidence of life from another planet!
Even so, Sarah couldn’t fault her friends for getting sick of her always talking about it. She didn’t fault them for not believing her, when she could still hardly believe it herself. Even if it was all incredibly frustrating for her not to be believed by people who should be giving her the benefit of the doubt.
She was willing to put all of that aside for their friendship. She was willing to never mention it to them again if that’s what it took, even if it bothered her. It wasn’t like she had a shortage of people asking her to talk about it these days anyway; the daily occurrence of being bothered by people was enough to make even her sick of hearing about it. Unfortunately, not everyone was as willing as her to let it go.
Julia never let an opportunity pass to remind her of it. Even now, months after their fight, she was still making subtle comments about it. She’d always been the type to be petty about things, but she usually let it go after a week or two. It was three months now and she was still on it.
Sarah didn’t know why she was putting up with it anymore.
Her time away from them over the break from school had been kind of eye opening. It made her start to realise that she wasn’t having a good time with her friends anymore and that most of her interactions with them left her feeling uneasy and disappointed more often than not.
Their friendships had become one-sided, with her reaching out to them far more often than they reached out to her. She was putting in a lopsided amount of effort to keep things going and while that applied to some of her friends more than others it accurately described all of them to an extent.
Given all of that and her thoughts as of late, Sarah couldn’t help but wonder if her own efforts were the only thing keeping those friendships alive.
And if she still thought it was worthwhile to do so.
“Sarah? Are you listening?”
Sarah came out of her daze, having been lost deep in thought for the past several minutes, and turned towards the voice to find her friend Katie staring at her with a look of concern. They were all sat around a table in the cafeteria and at some point the conversation must have turned from whatever they had done last weekend without her to something else. Unfortunately she had no idea what.
“Oh, sorry. I was just thinking about something.” She said with an apologetic smile. It was a little embarrassing and hopefully Katie wouldn’t mind too much.
“What were you thinking about? ‘Spacing’ out like that?” It was Julia who responded first and while her ‘joke’ didn’t get much of a laugh from the others, the implication certainly wiped the smile off of Sarah’s face.
“Just thinking about the future I guess.” As Katie repeated what Sarah had missed, a question about the science homework they had been given earlier in the day, she made the decision to see what would happen if she stopped making the effort to stay friends with Julia and the others. If they reached out to her then she would gladly respond but if they didn’t, and she had a feeling they wouldn’t, then neither would she.
The thought of what answer she might get made her a little anxious, but just making the decision felt like it took a weight off of her shoulders.