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Maybe
Author's note:
This story is something I worked really hard on and is actually based on me and how I feel every day but also based on my amazing friends who help me every day. I would never have made this story if it wasn't for my honors language arts teacher Mr. Cisneros, who encouraged to reach for our dreams the way he did of becoming an author.
I was walking down the hallway, looking at the same things I see every time I walk by. The classrooms, some doors open but most are closed so the classes aren’t disturbed by the sounds of students, the walls decorated with different posters that just end up getting torn down, the representation posters that the exploratory classes do every month. I’ve always liked those posters, and it makes sense that our school has them because our school is 98% Latinos and the rest are Asian and African. I was looking at this month’s posters, black representation month when I heard it. Well, I should say heard her.
“MAYYAAAAA”
I didn’t turn around. I didn’t have to because I already knew who it was. Instead, I just prepared myself for the blow that happened at the same time every day since the beginning of the school year. I felt it hit me, the weight of what was half hug and half tackle. It was my best friend, Emily. She was hugging me like she does every morning when she sees me on my way to class.
“EMILY! People are starting to stare” I told her when I realized people were looking.
“So?”
I didn’t bother to stop her. That was Emily, she was the same amount of social I was but in different situations, she was friends with more popular people whereas I was friends with everyone else. The difference between us as she was confident and I was just pretending to be anything but the anxious person I am. I decided to just drop it.
“C’mon we need to hurry or we’ll be late,” I said pulling her arm a bit
We walk up the stairs fast because even though we have a good 10 minutes before classes started, we still needed to say hi to our friends, then go to Mr. Tran’s classroom to say hi and draw on his whiteboard. He may not be my teacher anymore because I got switched to an honors class in November but we still show up and he doesn’t mind it.
“Heeeyyy”
“Hiiii” Said Brisa, my friend since the 6th grade said.
Even though we see each other every day we still hug each other every morning as if we haven’t seen each other for years. We said hi to the rest of our friends then went to Mr. Tran’s room. When we got there we just walked past him and walked in only saying hi once we opened the markers we chose.
“Hi Mr. Tran,” we said at the same time
“Hi girls. Hey, can you do me a favor and put these on the desks for me?” He said handing me a stack of workbooks.
“Sure”
I put them on the desks quickly because I only had 5 minutes left before class started. Once I finished I left.
“Bye Mr. Tran,” I said, loud enough for him to hear because I was already halfway out the door.
“BYE,” he said but I was already gone.
After class, I was going to nutrition, which was a fancy way of saying breakfast which was weird to me because I feel like saying breakfast is just easier, Alex came up to me and tried to hit the back of my shoe. I saw him coming before he did it though and moved my foot before he could take off my shoe.
“I almost got you this time.”
“But you didn’t, so it doesn’t matter.”
“Yeah, but it was close so I’m getting better.”
“You’ve been ‘getting better for 3 years. Look it's easy!” I said hitting the back of his shoe before he could even react
“HEY! That wasn’t fair!”
“Yes, it was now go to class tortoise neck,” I said as we were nearing his classroom
I laughed a bit as his teacher Mr. G told him to go inside while he was muttering about how I took a cheap shot and I was a stupid emo. That was my favorite part of having nutrition when he had class, he couldn’t get me back.
When I get to nutrition the first thing people noticed was my “bangs”. They weren’t bangs, they were just my baby hairs that were long and got burned off when I bleached the front of my hair so my hair dye would stick.
“WHY ARE YOU LYING TO ME!”
“IM NOT I PROMISE,” I say with tears rolling down my face
“THERE YOU GO YOU’RE LYING AGAIN WHY THE F*CK ARE YOU LYING AGAIN”
“I’M NOT THOUGH I SWEAR IT’S JUST THE BURNED BABY HAIRS ALL I DID WAS MOVE THEM TO THE FRONT SO IT DOESN’T LOOK BAD”
“YOU’RE LYING TO ME AGAIN! YOU’RE JUST LIKE YOUR STUPID DAD!” She said it again. My mom knows how much I hate when she compares me to him.
“DON’T COMPARE ME TO HIM”
“Hey, are you listening?” Angela said waving her hand in front of my face
I snapped out of it, remembering that I’m supposed to be listening instead of thinking about last night.
“Yeah sorry I got distracted for a second. What were you saying?”
“I was saying your hair looks good and the bangs suit you.”
“They’re just for today,” I said
“Oh, why?”
“I don’t know. I just don’t like them” I lied. I didn’t want to but I did. I hate lying to them but I feel like I always am. Not in a way where I’m like a completely different person than they think I am but I don’t always tell them the truth. I don’t tell them about how my mom made me cry the night before or how I had a nightmare about how my dad called me a b*tch on my 9th birthday or how I can’t eat tamales or watch criminal minds anymore because it reminds me of my dead grandpa who I still miss. I don’t tell them. I just pretend that I’m always happy so I guess in a way I am lying about who I am. It’s fine I guess.
“Well that sucks it looks good though”
“Yeah thanks”
The rest of the conversation was kind of a blur but it was just the same old thing, a new boy she liked and complained about Danny, the kid who is kind of a friend and kind of a bug. He knows we call him this and he’s okay with it because he knows we’re just playing. I like being mean with some of my friends because they know I’m just joking and try not to push it so much. My favorite thing to do is compare them to animals, Alex is a tortoise neck because he has terrible posture so he looks like a tortoise to me when he gets up, Danny’s a worm, they’re cool and mean well but get kind of annoying. I felt terrible not paying much attention to what she was saying but I knew it would be okay because no one noticed. Nobody ever did.
Time went past fast today because the next thing I knew it was lunch. I got there and we were going by with our usual conversation when I noticed it was quieter than usual. I looked to my left and saw my friend Araseli when I realized her eyes were red.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
She turned to me with glossy eyes, “Yeah I’m fine”
As cliche and cringe as it sounds, everyone knows when a girl says she’s fine she’s not.
“What’s wrong? Did something happen?” I ask
When I said this my other friends started to notice too that she was upset about something. And when they start to ask she starts crying. All of us go to soothe her. It was weird though, not to be insensitive, but this stuff never really happened. None of us ever talk about sad stuff or anything, it’s always just joking with us. It was one of the reasons I never tell them about anything going on at home. Nonetheless here we all were, trying to console her.
I got home later and before I went to sleep I started thinking about what happened at lunch. Araseli told us about how her mom and dad were fighting a lot lately and she was scared her parents would divorce. We spent all of the lunch helping her. She seemed to feel a lot better after and I wondered if I should tell them too. I always wondered what would happen if I told them about what was going on. What if they didn’t care? What if they decided I was too problematic and didn’t want to be friends with me anymore? What if I spent my last semester as an 8th grader all alone? I guess I spent so much time worrying about the bad things that could happen I never bothered to think that it would be fine. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad though. Huh, that’s a nice thought.
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