The Hallway Blood Clot

         I am one of the original members of The Hallway Blood Clot. This is a very strange thing to say, and often when someone starts off with a very strange comment like that, they proceed to explain it. I will, of course, try my very best, but I’m not sure that anyone could truly get it. I barely understand the name myself.
         The Hallway Blood Clot is my high school clique. Obviously there must be some confusion there. I will tell it as it was told to me by another member of the group, Aislinn Primrose.
         “So, Megan Gray was all, ‘We’re clotting up the hallway.’ And then Shelbey was all, ‘We’re a blood clot!’ And then Mariah was like, ‘We should call ourselves The Hallway Blood Clot!’ And we were all like, ‘Whatever.’” So The Hallway Blood Clot was born. Does it make sense to you? Yeah, me neither.
         At my school, we have The Scene Kids, The Emo Kids, The Preps, The Goths, The Sluts, and The Ghetto Kids. There are The Skaters, The Stoners, The Brains, and The Art Freaks. But no one in our clique fits into any group. So we formed our own group: The Hallway Blood Clot.
         Apart from other things, we aren’t a specific group of four or five people. The Hallway Blood Clot changes every morning. There are a few people that we always expect, a few that may or may not be there (those that have other places to go, but we don’t really care where they are most of the time), and the extras that show up every now and then as guests.
         There are a few kids that we won’t allow in. I’m bad at labeling, so I’m not sure if they’re Goth, Emo, or something else entirely. To me, they have been “The Girls at The Top of The Stairs That All Dress The Same, Are Obsessed With Anime and Vampires, And Talk About Cutting Themselves Like It’s A Hobby.” They think they’re my friends, but for the most part I don’t care enough about them either way to decide if I like them or not. They do have their own group, though they like to think that they don’t.
         The concept of Goth-Emo-Etc., I’m pretty sure, was originally to be just that-original. Now it is Something Else. If you don’t all dress the same, why do you all shop at the same one store? If you are so into being different, doesn’t that mean you care about how other people see you as much as the rest of the groups that you are so proud to not be a part of?
         My point is that they have a group. My group does not accept labels, and I don’t see your justification for wearing a big button that says, “I’m not Emo, Goth, Punk, Scene, whatever. I’m just me,” and then standing around talking about how “Punk” you are, how “Preppy” she is, and how much you looove the “Emo” boys.  Our group is not labeled or conformable. We do not all dress the same. We shop at different stores, we think different thoughts, and we talk about things real people care about. Like who took my last piece of gum and who gets Megan Gray’s Zebra Cake at lunch.
         Most of us have friends outside of the clique. We’ve all brought a new friend, boyfriend, girlfriend, or stalker into The Blood Clot at some point. We’ve all seen each other act stupid and we’ve all excluded someone from The Clot when we got annoyed with them. And most of us have, at some point or another, labeled ourselves and someone else.
         “Our little clique is completely different,” said Mariah Baker, who named The Hallway Blood Clot. “We don’t all dress the same and we don’t all act the same.”
         The concept of The Hallway Blood Clot, and the reason I care enough to write about it, is this. Some of us have been friends since primary school. We’ve all gone in separate directions with the way we dress, wear our makeup, and do our hair. We’ve all made friends with people in the other groups. But something kept us from completely conforming to their idea of What We Should (or Shouldn’t) Be. I’m not sure what it was. Maybe it was a determination to remain who we were. Maybe it was a rare deformity where we aren’t born with the desire to fit in or, as the case may be, not fit in. Maybe it’s that none of us really care about anything at all. Or maybe, just maybe, it was each other.