Hope
I pulled my head up from the desk it was laying on. It was hard and cold. I put my hand to my cheek, and the warmth nearly stung it. I think I said ‘ouch’ out loud. Now some girls over in the other side of the class are staring at me and one of them giggled. I put my head back on my desk and pretended that the cold wasn’t there.
My mind flew to being at home this morning. I was having a difficult time buttoning up my favourite pink shirt. My dad was too busy and told me that I needed to learn how to do it myself. I nodded, but I didn’t know how. My fingers just wouldn’t move in the way I wanted them to. I went to my mom; she was at the back door, smoking a cigarette. Usually dad would be smoking with her, but he didn’t want to talk. His face was twisted and it made me want to back away, just like the teachers told me to do if I ever saw a bear.
The teacher told me to lift up my head. My cheek was cold again and I thought it had made a red mark this time. I smiled at her, because she is my teacher, and you are supposed to smile. But then I realized that she was talking to me. Her words were very fast and her sentences were very long. I closed my eyes and tried to concentrate on what she was saying. I just figured out the first thing she said when she was already on a rant and asking question after question. They were coming so fast that they stacked up in my head, layer upon layer, too quickly for me to concentrate on any specific one. I squeezed my eyes shut, unable to concentrate. The words were filling my head and spilling out of my ears all mixed up into sounds I couldn’t recognize. I yelled as loud as I could, hoping for it to stop.
I opened my eyes. The teacher was back at her desk. The classroom was quiet, and I liked it. I pulled myself up and tried to speak to the teacher. My words came out as mumbles, and the class giggled. The teacher was stern with them. She told me I could go to the bathroom. I smiled. The teacher was a nice teacher.
As soon as I was in the bathroom stall I was dripping in my own tears, and hoped I could stay there long enough for them to stop. I passed the mirror, staring at my own reflection, my chest hurting. My messy red hair, chubby face and body, and eyes that don’t always look in the same direction stared back and I wanted to hit the mirror. I wanted to hit it for showing me something I wasn’t supposed to be. I wanted to break it and maybe the next time I looked I would be normal. Maybe my differences would go away, and when I looked at busy pictures I wouldn’t drop to the ground and wake a couple minutes later, trembling and unable to remember what happened. But someone would eventually come for me, and yell at me for not being in class. Yell at me for being different, or maybe for breaking a mirror.
My name is Hope, and I’ll continue to draw that smile on my face every day when people can see me. Tomorrow it will happen all over again.