Our story begins in First grade: Ella was a tall little girl, she never liked dresses and would always beat the boys in arm wrestling. She wasn't able to watch the "cool movies" and wasn't very coordinated. She could only watch as the other girls hula-hooped and jumped rope with ease. Still she had friends, they let her sit with them at lunch. They would go to basketball games to watch the middle schoolers. Some of the girls had sisters who played and they were incredible Ella thought! She wished she was able to play basketball. Sometimes she didn't like her friends. They would all swing together on the swings and sing. But sometimes they wanted to use the bathroom mirrors to summon Bloody Mary or tell ghost stories with the lights off. She really didn't like that.
The third graders would always come to read on Wednesdays, but they thought that Ella was weird and wouldn't read with her. It was alright anyway since she was better at reading than most of them. Every recess she would read by herself on the playground unless she was playing tag with the other kids. She sometimes played tag with the third graders and her friends. She was way too fast for them. But there were other times she wondered, sometimes the third graders would braid the girls' hair and pretend to be their mothers and talk about how pretty they were. And there was an added part for the game, Ella would stand in the corner because she was big and too ugly to be one of their "daughters". She didn't like this and often left to read.
But it was true that Ella struggled with her face being irritated. She also had not so nice hands from climbing trees. She knew she was bigger than the other girls but that was fine. Most of the time it was fine. There was a week when Ella's school did bullying awareness, later the girls excluded her and called her names as the principal walked by. Since it was bullying awareness week and she felt a bit confident, she walked over and told the principal. The principal called her attention seeking and said it was all in her head. So Ella left sad that nothing had happened.
She would often talk with the boys about Warriors and cats and karate. She loved all these things. But the boys were more interested in Halo and she couldn't follow the discussion so she sat with some fourth graders.
The fourth graders admired her reading skill but were horrified to find that she hadn't read Harry Potter. Ella protested that one could live without reading Harry Potter and the other girls said they liked the movies better anyway and that she was a stupid book nerd.
Still she kept reading. She didn't do very well in school and couldn't understand why. She was the best reader and understood all the math, but her handwriting was bad and slow. She only liked Music, her teacher was very nice and there was no actual work, but she could sing and learn, she also loved Spanish and Art.
One day the girls asked her to join cheerleading, as a junior cheerleader of course. She really wanted to be with her friends so she joined. Her coordination and size were not ideal but she was a base for other girls to flip and cheer. That was enough. Later that year though, after the season she heard whispers about how she was ugly. The 8th grade cheerleader had spread rumors about her being stupid and had said she was a pimply nobody. At this point she started to be very self-conscious. She stopped feeling good when she saw older girls and would hide in the library studying to avoid them. She no longer saw them optimistically.
Even worse, her real friends who had also been autistic and shy left the school. She regretted not spending more time with them.

Two years later, she was with her friends, she went to study. She was now a third grader and she tried her very best. She left her bag behind and her friends left to look at books. When she got back she found her bag stuffed with an odd assortment of books. She loved reading but this was a bit ridiculous. Then from around the corner she heard the girls whisper "the library rule is checking out three books, if she steals 12 she'll definitely be expelled". They started laughing. Ella was horrified. Who were these girls, were they ever even friends?
She reported them but the staff told her she should simply forgive and forget. That summer she invited on of the girls to bake brownies and use water guns at her house. They had a lot of fun and the girl called her her best friend. But that girl had to leave the school so when she told everyone, they called her a liar. The next summer the girl visited and Ella called out to her. The girls who she was sure had hated her stood beside her. The girl looked at her and walked the other way. Ella ran off crying and played Smash with the 4th graders, 5th graders and staff. Josh, one of the staff owned the switch and let people use it and his Wii. He was a nice guy. She let her troubles wash away. Her friend that year had been a darker girl. Together they had drawn a picture of a very hurt and mutilated horror doll. The girl had entitled it the name of a girl who had bullied them. A staff brat girl who got away with everything as the child of one of the staff. She had put it in Ella's see-through lunch box pocket. And the girl whose name was on it saw it and reported it. The dark girl claimed it was all Ella's idea and she got in trouble...

To be continued...


Please give feedback on my story telling skills. Like is it realistic enough? What can I improve? Is there a better Pov to use for this?