If you have clicked on this story, it either means you are way too curious, or you are one of us. Then again, I have too much curiosity too. Know that once you scroll down, there is no going back. You can't just walk away and forget about it, because the memories and dreams will haunt you. So be ready for the journey ahead. Because it is going to be a tough one. Anyone that isn't ready, go ahead and click out of this page.The rest of you, take a deep breath and scroll down.
I hustled down the hallways, my keychains clanking against my backpack. “Have a good day!” My mom yelled down the hallway. She was the orchestra teacher at my middle school, and I always had to get to school early with her, so she was always there to bid me farewell. I didn't have time to respond, however. I was late for Langauge Arts. How a kid that gets to school early could be late to their first class, I didn't know. But I was. So now I was panicking. The hallways were empty, and that was a good thing. I probably woulda smashed into several people already if they weren't. I looked at my watch. 7:45, it read. Two minutes to get into my classroom. I sprinted as hard as I could, and I could sprint fast, down the long hallway and turned a corner. I passed the counsellors office, the library, and the sixth-grade lockers before finally reaching my LA classroom. I stopped in front of the door to cool myself down so I wouldn't pant in the classroom. Any person that has ever sprinted down the hall knows that panting right when you walk into a classroom will get you busted. Again, I looked at my white and rose gold wristwatch. It was 7:46, so I wasn't late yet. I took deep breaths, then forced myself to breathe normally. I walked into the classroom just as the bell rang, and rushed to my seat before the teacher could see me. “Everyone, take out your books and read.” Said Ms. Concho, our LA teacher. I took out my latest book, called Keeper Of The Lost Cities, and began reading. I'm sort of a bookworm, and I read fast, so I'll go through books like water. Time flew. I was just getting to the good part when Ms.Concho made us put our books down and start to write our informational. Mine was about Arctic foxes. Language arts was probably my favorite class of the day, but it went by so fast. I yawned and wrote about how Arctic foxes have paws especially developed to walk on snow and ice. I was tired that day. The night before I kept waking up and falling asleep again, having horrible dreams each time. That seemed to be frequent lately. “Sky?” asked my teacher, and my head shot up. “Yes?” “What are you writing about?” said Ms. Concho, her beady eyes piercing me like a needle. That was the only problem with language arts. Ms. Concho hated me for some reason, even though I turned in all my assignments and never acted out in class. “Arctic foxes,” I replied. She laughed and smiled at me through her see-through mask. “You mean those evil little white devils that eat cute things like bunnies and birds?” I bristled, biting my tongue so I wouldn't run over there and scream in her face. I know she could see the anger in my eyes. “I think you meant to say, those wonderful angles of nature that have to eat to survive,” I said. The words came out of my mouth, but I didn't mean to say them. The rest of the class gasped. No one ever stood up to Ms. Concho. Everyone was whispering things, probably about me, but I only caught one or two. “The jinxed girl” was mainly a part of it. But I don't feel like explaining that now. Ms. Concho walked over to me, her eyebrows raised. “No, I did mean to say those words. Just like I mean to do this.” She took my pencil, snapped it in half, and dropped it on the floor. Then, she took my paper that I had been working on for a week and tore it into tiny little pieces. Ms. Concho smiled her evil little smile and waited for me to start crying. But I didn't. I wouldn't let the worst teacher in history crumple me up and throw me out. I was stronger than that. I smiled under my mask. She could tell by the look in my eyes that I wasn't sobbing- no, I was smiling. She narrowed her eyes and made us get back to work.
Next, I had P.E. class. My teacher, Coach Grace, was nice enough. But I was tired out of my mind, and just didn't have the spark in me that I usually had. He took us outside and gave us random balls, like footballs and kickballs. I picked up a basketball and walked over to the hoops. I shot at the basket, mostly missing but not caring. I wasn't trying very hard. I just didn't have it in me. After about forty minutes of us being outside, Coach Grace led us back indoors and into the big gym. They had pulled a big, long, tan curtain in the middle of the gym, spitting it in half so the other gym class could have one side and we could have the other. Coach Grace split us up into teams of two to play pickleball, and luckily, I got my best friend Ivy.
Ivy was a tall, thin, African American girl with dark chocolate-colored skin and a love for tigers. She plastered them on everything, from her Chromebook to her bedroom wall. Her hair was braided black with tips of orange and beads braided into the braids. That's a funny sentence, braided into the braids. She was wearing a pink shirt and jeans. Most people have a best friend throughout their lives, starting from preschool, or kindergarten, or whatever. But not me.
My friendships tended to bounce around. I'll think that I have a best friend for life and boom! All of a sudden they betray you. And the strange thing was that half the time, they would blame me for things I didn't even know about. Lily, my third-grade friend, blamed me for telling the whole class that she had a crush on James, a boy in our class. She took my water bottle and dumped it on my head, leaving me wet and cold for the rest of the day. I didn't even know that she had the crush. Brooke, my fourth-grade friend, had blamed me for toilet papering the teacher's lounge and blaming it on her. She threw my lunch across the room. I had heard about the toilet papering, but I didn't know squat about blaming it on her. My fifth-grade friend, Ashley, had blamed me for kissing her brother! As if I would kiss anyone, much less that jerk. She was even madder than the rest and sprayed me with hot cheese at the graduation party. It saddened me, to think about how my friendships barely lasted a year. But this time, I was determined to have it last longer.
We stood on the same side as each other and faced off Gray and Madison. Gray was tough, and Madison was sporty. A good match. I was sporty and never gave up, but I just could not play pickleball! My paddle always swung the wrong way, or I would miss the ball, or I would hit it too high. Ivy wasn't very sporty, but she could play pickleball pretty well. We were like complete opposites. It was crazy.
I knew that I was the deadweight in this situation, especially since my fight wasn't in me today. I prepared myself to lose a lot. Then, Coach Grace turned on the music. He never turned on the music in gym class, and I didn't know how much I missed it. Suddenly, my energy returned, my spark came back. I was bouncing up and down, getting ready for Gray to serve the ball. When he served it towards me, I hit it back. And the hit was not bad. Me and Ivy dominated the court that day, somehow winning every match. “Where did you get all this energy and skill?” Ivy asked, and I shrugged, feeling lighter than a feather. “I don't know, only that I love it.”
The second the music was turned off when class ended, my body was slowly drained of energy. The flame in me was set out, and I was back to feeling tired. I slowly trudged my way through orchestra, lunch, and math. By the time I was home, the only thing I wanted to do was lay in my bed and eat some Cheetos. And I did just that. I dismissed my exhaustion from lack of sleep and tried not to focus on it.
I wish it was a lack of sleep.
