Penance

by Eliza Clark

‘Well . . . I was kind of a Violet, I think. A bit mouthier than her but . . . I suppose I think a Violet is a student who is just kind of . . . weird and doesn’t know how to do anything about it. They just don’t fit in, and they don’t understand why they don’t fit in. The other kids probably don’t either – there’s something about them that’s off. And so they do absolutely nothing to help themselves with that – apart from maybe melt into the background, which is sometimes the best you can hope for. In my experience it’s just this intangible thing like . . . whenever I opened my mouth I said the wrong thing. I got the wrong haircut. I wore my tie wrong. I wore the wrong thing on nonuniform day. I walked wrong, I liked the wrong stuff. As far as my peers were concerned: I was just fundamentally incorrect. And kids, they’re very instinctual, they’re very primitive, in a lot of ways. And they can smell difference on you. It’s difficult when you’re constantly doing something your peers think is wrong and you don’t understand what that is, or why.’

sadly relatable