notes | this is for the Teddy Bear Competition in Coppertone Wars; CHOICE 3; hope you like this though it's sort of short; please leave a review, :)

falling into empty space

.:.

You've always known that she's been different — and that it's a good thing.

From a young age, your mother has always reminded you that being different than anybody else is synonymous to being unique, to being special; and, every little girl who dreams of fairytales wants to be that one special damsel in distress, transformed just for a few hours into Cinderella, walking off into the sunset only days later. It was something dreamlike, and you wanted it.

Nevertheless, from a young age, your mother had always also shaped you into the child that she wished that she had been, and soon enough, you have no problem with being different. Sure enough, the starts were always rigorously demanding, though you ignored them, like a good little girl; or at least that's what you tell your parents, who have a zero tolerance policy for violence.

When she would be in Harvard, one of the finest universities throughout the world, the rest of your classmates, who had reached their peak in high school, would be homeless beggars.

Or uneducated hobos who worked at less than legal minimum wage jobs at car washes and at fast food restaurants internationally. She's always been smart, always using the most of your potential but then middle school came, and so did the competition.

There's always going to be one person who's smarter than you, just naturally, those sort of enigmas that barely spend any time studying but are always the ones with some of the highest grades on any subject, any exam, no matter how hard it seems for you. There's always going to be that person who pushes themselves harder, and they're not even going to take a single minute to live life (but you don't know everything, do you, now?) instead spending and dedicating every moment that they have to studying; you tell yourself that they're not even that smart, but by the comparison of yours and their test grades, you know differently.

On the other hand, there are the slackers and those few lazy individuals — they do exist, you know; but they're eliminated from the class before eighth grade is over, and this is all you really learn about competition in the sixth grade. After al, Octavian is an all girls' school.

You assume that all girls' schools are much harder, with more students actually paying attention in classes but then eighth grade comes along, and so does the merge with Briarwood; you curse the flood that ruined everything and start counting down the days until the schools go their separate ways, but then high school will come. Then, college. Then, the real world.

Everything's different now, and though you don't like it — nobody likes it; all of you are going to have to learn to accustom to the changes in life. After all, the creatures that accustom the most to climate changes in the past were the ones that survived.

Just imagine that you're a fluffy little panda ( who's actually sort of prickly ) that needs to grow an extra layer of fur. Go pandas.

/ oh, but you're just sinking lower /

High school comes along shortly afterwards, and everything changes — you can't slack off and pretend to be watching Khan Academy videos or use incognito mode because your parents are getting more clever, and when you have distractions in life ( like tumblr and instagram ) your grades are only going to reflect upon the facts.

The first time that it comes as an actual shock is the first D you've ever gotten. It's just not possible for somebody like you to get a bad grade, but you just imagine that perhaps everybody failed the test. Things like that sometimes happen in the harder classes. There's a substitute the next day, but you talk to most of your classmates and it turns out that they all get A's on their test. And, no, the D wasn't a mistake. Mr. Lane isn't the type of teacher to make a mistake — or at least admit the facts in the first place because the truth is bitter, it's still the truth.

You assume that perhaps it's okay, and you'll still be able to be able to achieve that all A sort of grade by the time that first semester is over, but then it's the day before the last test of the first semester, and your grade is an 89.9. Exactly. If it was any other class, the teacher would most probably round; after all, you're the perfect student; the grade up.

Mr. Lane doesn't do rounding — like, ever. Deep down, you create the belief that he secretly hates you and all students who aren't natural enigmas, educationally wise and physically wise; all the popular cheerleaders that have bribed their way? Mr. Lane absolutely adores them ( and their money ).

Years later, the definition of Cinderella is transformed into something much different.

There are still those fortunate souls who can believe that the world will transform into one full of magical qualities, unbelievable but somehow truthful to themselves, like world peace without a single person dying and you could just go outside, and make a wish on the wishing fountain in the center of town. People would bake cakes full of smiles and happiness, and we would all eat them, and everyone could be happy and be like the way it was back in middle school —

Uh, no. This isn't some wonderful edition of Mean Girls, though there are some extremely rude girls that you know. They confuse you in a way. They seem to be some of the most unique people that you've ever met, but in a way, they're just trying to copy the young and the beautiful celebrities of Hollywood. They're just better at copying people than you are.

In a way, high school's freshmen year, is the first time that you want to be different; you are different, a bad weird sort of different, but that's not your point in life.

Your point in life is to defy the odds, to be that one person who could be the perfect little girl but you've never really been perfect, have you? Sometimes, in the middle of AP World History class, while the teacher drones off in the back of the room, you stare at all the other boys and girls and envy them, in a sense. You're aware that they envy you, how you're able to get a hundred on every test ( but that's just lies piled on top of more lies; and piles break ) and have a photographic memory but there's more to you than that.

It's true, when people say, that you're defined by your flaws, all of the mistakes that you make.

They shape you as a person, and after you make a mistake once, it's said that you're less likely to make that mistake again; nevertheless, you've made several mistakes of the same type and you haven't learned everything, have you? You realize the truth — the rules of the universe don't exactly apply to you. Never have, never will. It's strange, because you want to be normal, but you know that you'll never truly be a normal high school student.

You first start acting like a normal person in the middle of freshmen year; well, to be precise, it's the third week of September when you do something completely dangerous and life-risking, something that could make you a wild person, which is something that you have never wanted to be ( after all, your life has been planned out since birth ) — you fall in love. Making the mistake of telling one of your friends, who's not even the closest friend that you have, turns out to be a colossal mistake, and by the end of the week, everybody knows that you have a crush on one of the most popular guys in school. Who doesn't even know you.

It's sort of an awkward situation, nothing that you've ever been prepared for, so instead of denying the rumours that have spread, you just straight out try to make the problems go away by the simplest way of life, something that you've learned from the book Schooled and most of the reality television shows that you're secretly obsessed with, not that your parents even know about anything in your life, let alone what television shows you watch, is that problems can just simply go away if you wait for the to be resolved. Poof.

In a way, your problems start going away — without any danger and life risking activities involved, and you swear to never be a normal high schooler again.

On the third day of the week, a Thursday due to one of those silly little Institute Day weekends that you secretly love ( but your parents think otherwise ) it's the first time that lab partners are assigned, and your lab partner turns out to be one of those nerds, one of those really smart ones who just assume that they're going to be doing all the work, and they're okay with it because you're pretty, and that's enough — except you're not pretty, and you're a nerd to.

You barely speak a word to the boy sitting across from you, who stares at you, almost in an expression of awe until he ends up dropping the hydrochloric acid with the pipette, just a few simple drops, onto your left hand and you barely flinch. It's almost as if you're a monster, some sort of robotic person who can't feel or have emotions but deep down, you might be one of the most emotional people in this honors chemistry class, but you're just better at hiding your emotions until there's nothing left but a stoic face, a face of a robot, left inside of your empty heart, empty soul.

By the end of the class hour, you've made a friend in this strange sort of boy — he's sort of the same person that you are, just lonely and misunderstood, always on the run from sort of danger, falling before you make it past the first level of any challenge, never able to even reach mastery of well, anything.

You can always hear people talking about you — and it's not just the fact that you have the world's uncanniest ability to hear strange sounds and words about you, picking up key words as you walk down the hallways but most of the times, people talk about you loudly, almost as if they want you to hear the taunts and the teases because nobody really likes you, do they? It's all just a pretense in the end, and this ship is about to fall apart;

(But, darling, wait for the ending; wait for the crash;

/ and how much longer is it until /

On the other hand, you've always wanted to be a ballerina, ever since you started watching television. There was something ethereal and magical about the art of dancing and you believe that in another life, you would have been free and emotional, you would have been funny and lighthearted. You would have loved, and you would have lost, but it would all be fine in the end. You'd have loved, after all. Wasn't a little agony worth a happily ever after?

Her parents try sending her to this sort of Dance Academy when she turns fifteen, in the middle of eleventh grade's summer after she begs for days and days. She goes, and it goes like this;

(It could have been the smell of the academy's newest perfume, by the name of impurity, but you still believe that the smell of the National Academy of Dance was something else: it was purer, in a sense, perhaps the smell of success. It's like something that you'd envisioned in a dream, but it's so much more lifelike here that you're almost scared of the failure, because it's tangible. As if you can feel it. Something was different about the Academy, something that could make or break her life. It would be the time where you wouldn't have to focus on bullies or teases or taunts: it was just you and the start of a new life.

Yet, something was missing — there's always going to be something missing, however.

You always swears that each time is different. It's like, sometimes you get this little flurry feeling of butterflies in your stomach, but that's only a small crush. Other times, you don't even turn your head for the other boys, but then, sometimes you just get paralyzed. Love isn't a feeling that you could even compare to the rush, the feeling of success that you receive every time that you dance — no matter the occasion, no matter your skill.

When you're dancing, the criticism and the voices just fade away, and it's just you and the music. It's a nice feeling.

It's like you're free to the world around you, a little innocent girl still leaving in a farm in the middle of Kansas (secretly, you've always wanted that fairy-tale life, being a picture book girl). And somehow, that innocence is comforting, because, look where it got Dorothy? In a whole lot of trouble, which was perhaps just a dream, but even being able to experience one perfect moment in opposition to the daily rounds of normalcy; you just wanted to be normal. Your parents had always been against your dreams of becoming a professional dancer — which to be fair, have only been for the past three months; hoping the dream would be outgrown.

Your father always swore that it was his fault, getting you caught up with dance, in general, after buying your family's first flatscreen television with all channels, including ABC3. In an almost religious way, you studied Dance Academy and gradually learned a little; hopefully, it would be enough.

It was that simple; but in a way, nothing in life is ever going to be simple if you take it to a higher level.

Every time you dance, you experience this feeling, this feeling that you're somehow invincible to the dangers of the world waiting for you and the hurt and the pain that normal teenager girls experienced. In a way, that was nice, but sometimes, you have this longing for being a normal child. Before being accepted into the National Academy of Dance — mostly by buying your way in; your life had never exactly been normal, had it? This year, in this summer camp, everything was to be changed. Those who had been accepted into the summer camp were not guaranteed a spot into the academy, which taught dance throughout the year. ( You would have to quite high school, and your parents perhaps would not accept that, now would they? ) You just have to be just like them; boring and horrible.

It was almost like an exclusive boarding school, except it was some sort of dream-world adventure. If dreams could come alive, in a way, you would be accepted into the academy, but then again, you haven't exactly had any formal training; and the problem was that there were girls and boys too, ones that were much more experienced than you are, who had been brought up on the principles of dance.

There was a constant fear in your mind, the one that showed that you would never be good enough. Perhaps, the fear was good. You walk into the academy on the first day of summer, after packing your bags, that you would be using for the next two months, and unfolds the map, looking up at wonder at the west campus building, the dormitory residence. "Here I am," you mutter to yourself, slowly, "It can't be that bad."

In the next few minutes, you are run over by a skateboarder, who manages to crumple your white skirt, turning it more of a yellow-ish shade by spilling some lemonade, and had left without even an apology. His friend on the other hand, manages to not break into laughter at the scene that you didn't find especially funny. "Excuse me?" His eyes soften, in remembrance, almost as if the brunette boy had seen you somewhere before. "Excuse me?" you repeat, once more.

"I'm sorry," he said, scratching his head. "Have I seen you somewhere before? I'm Derrick, by the way, Derrick Harrington," he shook out his hand, and you outwardly, slightly inwardly, grimace at the gesture; it's beyond disgusting, but you feel the urge to be polite.

"Tell your friend," you pick yourself up from the ground on your own. You're independent, and don't need anybody to help you ( but darling, you used daddy's money to get here, in the first place; and you've been relying on daddy's money since the moment you were born ) since there's nothing special about you, is there? "That he's to apologize before I notify the headmistress of the academy of his deliberate malediction."

You can't keep on pitying yourself and in the midst of teachers telling you that you don't have long enough legs and wide enough arms and you're never going to ever be able to do dance well, and you started way too let, and straighter! Stop with the flourishes; you can't do flourishes if you haven't even gotten the basic techniques down, number 49 ( that's your number ) and you quit before your normal school year starts up again.)

Throughout all of these times, throughout all of the danger the only thing that you have left to hold onto is a teddy bear; it's from the time that you were perhaps less than five years old, when your parents didn't seem to care too much about whether you spent most of your time with your head buried in a textbook; you've named it Mr. Bear, as though you were the most original child. You've never been creative and original, and childhood habits always carry into your older age.

Sometimes, whenever you're feeling horribly low, you can still have that teddy bear — it's the only thing that kept you half sane in the National Academy of Dance; and you take a knife and stab out its insides.

Teddy bears symbolizes hope. It's not something that you'll ever have.

Your parents don't question you on the matter as they're rich enough not to care, but when you go back to school, the two friends that you've actually made — that still hate you for the stealing and the lying and the sort of cheating and everything piled up; look at you as though you're some sort of robotic contraption, and they're just waiting to experiment upon to you, to watch you fall into pieces, because everybody knows it's going to happen at one point or another. The only question about the situation is when you're going to break.

And, your mother and father, no matter how hard they can push themselves, or no matter how hard they did push themselves in the past; no matter how rigorous your sister studies for her medical examinations, day in and day out, every person has a breaking point.

/ you break /

Even you, Meena.

a/n: so, this was just this experimental oneshot that I was writing when we had free time in orchestra ( we finally got our Macs! ) so hope you guys like this, (: I've written quite a few meena centric things in the past, but never published a oneshot about them, and this is something that I started writing in january, and completed today. please leave a review, (: