Math class, Darius, and an embarrassing slip up
When I started high school, I was mistakingly placed in a math class to help kids who struggled in the subject. I’m not sure how the mistake was made or how no one caught it, because I was also enrolled in an algebra 2 class. When I realized it was a mistake I didn’t say anything, I was looking forward to having an easy class everyday and hopefully meeting my required math credits early, giving me a short list of classes when senior year came.
In the class, we would be assigned a certain number of online courses we were to complete by the end of the week. I’d complete all my lessons for the week within the first day or 2 of class and spend the rest of the week talking to and helping my friends. The teacher caught on quickly, but it was his first year teaching at the school and didn’t seem to care enough to get me out of the class.
My assigned computer was between a friend of a friend, named Mariah, and an older boy, Darius. I soon learned that Darius was in James’ friend group. We connected instantly and became the best of friends.
I started hanging out with Darius, James, and their friends everyday at lunch, and after a few weeks Darius and I would start texting each other whenever we had the chance. I’d spend most nights, after school, texting Darius nonsense, making jokes, talking about life, and eventually we came to the conclusion that Mariah had a secret crush on him.
These texts of Mariah, started out innocent, but soon turned into a joke about an imaginary obsession she had with him. We’d text for hours about all the things we’d imagined led to her obsession and ultimately we concluded she had a Darius shrine hidden away in her closet. In the shrine we envisioned love letters, notes waiting to be sent, pictures of Darius, and some of his personal belongings.
This would continue for some time and become more and more elaborate. We’d start lightheartedly teasing Mariah about her crush on him and she’d get flustered and slightly angry. One night, I received a text from Darius saying he needed help. At first I was concerned, but it was quickly revealed it was a joke. Darius was pretending to be trapped in the shrine, desperately needing me to save him. Once he was “safe”, we had a good laugh about it, and it became our favorite inside joke. We’d frequently bring it up in conversations and try to be vigilant so that it wouldn’t happen again.
After a few months in this math class, my parents caught on and made me sit down with the schools dean, to get out of the class. The dean was a mean old lady and was fairly unliked by the student body, which led to her being giving the nickname, Mrs. Boner, as it sounded similar to her name.
I sat down with her and she gave me a list of classes I could join. The list was relatively small, due to the fact the semester was about half over. I ended up picking choir as it seemed like the easiest class to pass, even though I had no real interest in singing.
The next day, I headed to the choir class, with a letter informing the teacher I was to be joining his class. When I walked in I told him “Mrs. Boner sent me.” The entire class heard what I had said and the room burst out in laughter. I was mortified. I’m sure the teacher heard what I had said, but ignored it and sent me to my seat.
From that day on, I wished I hadn’t been forced to leave my math class. I missed being able to joke around with Darius and slack off, and was overall embarrassed every time I had to talk to the teacher. Darius and I remained close friends though, we continued to hang out at lunch and text constantly. At some point, my mom began to have a weird obsession with Darius and me being together, even though he had never met him, and she didn’t allow me to date.
The fake glasses debacle
For a majority of my life I’ve had glasses. When I entered high school, I desperately wanted to fit in, as I was considered a weird outsider in middle school. I decided I wanted to land somewhere between preppy and hipster (I ended up falling more between hipster and scene).
I’d only wear obscure indie band tees, skinny jeans, scarfs, and rocket dog shoes. I was missing one key accessory however, the iconic fake glasses. My glasses looked like something a librarian would wear, but I didn’t have contacts, so my dreams seem to be crushed right in front of me.
At my next eye appointment I begged and pleaded for my parents to let me make the change to contacts. After much arguing, my parents gave in. Nowhere in town sold fake glasses though and I’d gone so long with glasses I hated how I looked without them. The brand new contacts, I wore maybe 3 times, got pushed into the back of the vanity drawer, forgotten.
A few months later, we took a family trip to a big city and stopped by a mall. The idea of fake glasses was almost completely out of my mind at this point, until we went to Hot Topic. I found the prefect ones. The fake glasses of my dreams. They were big, chunky, and very purple, I had to have them. I spent what little money I had saved on them.
Getting ready for school the next week I felt unstoppable. I had curated the perfect outfit: straighten hair with purple tips, the DEEPEST side part , an oversized flannel, a band tee, Pink leggings, a cat print scarf, and the cherry on top, my new purple glasses. I couldn’t wait to show my friends the new person I had become seemingly over night. My happiness was very short lived when I entered my first class.
I sat down with my friends, Logan (a main character from the middle school trilogy) included. Everyone loved my look, except for her. She barely spoke a word to me all class and I couldn’t figure out why. She’d whisper to our friends and on my way to the next class I asked her what that was all about, hoping for a juicy secret. Logan blew up at me, getting mad I had fake glasses, supposedly the ones she had wanted. I didn’t understand the problem as we were best friends and could share them whenever she wanted.
To her it was a huge deal and wanted nothing more than for me to be gone from her life. I was devastated. Not only was she my best friend, but I was also harboring my love for her. Who knew a pair of fake glasses could end a friendship so suddenly.
Enter the storyteller
Freshman year, I made a new friend who was infatuated with storytelling and writing. He would often send me stories he had written and reading them woke something inside me. I wanted to create stories as beautiful as he had.
I was never much of a writer before this, only writting one love story about a boy I had a crush on, and I was quickly turned off the idea when my parents had found the story on the family computer. They teased me relentlessly and interrogated me about who this mystery boy was.
After some encouragement from my friend I decided to get to work on my masterpiece. I titled it “The Endless Summer” and it was a fictional dramatic romance about my imaginary sister and the boy next door. It opened with lighthearted summer shenanigans, where my sister and I would run around doing whatever stereotypical teen girls do.
The boy, who was based on my real life childhood neighbor, was the love of my life and we were destined to be high school sweethearts. As the summer went on I’d begun spending more time with the boy and less with my sister. At the climax my sister and I were barely speaking and she’d begun to disappear without a trace.
By the end of the summer I’d spend all my days outside with the boy, running up and down the neighborhood. It was a quiet, small town, neighborhood and we’d run in the streets without a care in the word. In the final moments of the story, I was chasing the boy down the street when a car came hurling around the corner, heading straight for me. My life begun to flash before my eyes. I was reliving all the great times I’d had with my sister and felt sad I never get to see her again.
At that very moment she became real and pushed me out of the way of the car. She was hit and laid lifeless on the road. The driver and the boy ran up to see what had happened. They stood, staring in disbelief as I cried out for my sister, holding her in my arms.
The end.
I never wrote another fictional story after that, feeling I’d accomplished something writers spent years and years trying to do. I wrote the perfect story (in my eyes). The desire to write and tell others my stories never left though. The following year I decided to start a diary, so I would be able to write down everything I’d go through in life.
Melodrama & Merriment 