Girls of faith: Judge me not

John 7:24 ESV

Do not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgment."

"Hurry up!" My best friend, Katarina, urges. "We can not be late today. How does my outfit look?"

I roll my eyes at her because her outfit is a standard uniform. Our school requires us to wear only items on a list, not because its a special school or anything, but because there can be so much gang violence. "The same as everyone else will look." I laugh as she glares at me, pulling at her moss green cardigan.

See our school is in the heart of an Arizona city, Which would be nice, if it actually wasn't a violent city. To top it off, most the kids from my area is considered the "ghetto" and they bus us in to this nice school twenty minutes away where all the snobby white kids go. Well actually its not nice anymore. Probably cause we go there. We only go there because the other closes school is over crowded and there has been fourteen shootings in the past five years. So, there solution was to take about three hundred of us and put us in the other school. It was on a volunteer basis, so my parents jumped at the chance to get me and my brother. They want us to have a better life then they did. Which is fine, as long as Katarinas parents sent her to. Which they did. So this is our second year here.

"Aubri, Trina lets go!" My brother bangs on my door.

"Ugh!" I groan pulling on my black knock off toms and sliding my black bag over my shoulder. I was wearing my green plaid skirt, and white collared button down. The only colors we could wear at school were, Green, white, black, brown, and yellow cause there the only colors that have not been associated with a gang in any way. We can wear purple and pink and Grey too, but only on fridays.

I pull a brush through my curly golden brown hair and follow Trina to meet my brother in his car outside.

"Good morning Marco, do you mind putting youre cigarette out" I say in a voice as if I was talking to a child as I scoot into the back seat with Rina knowing we have to pick up Marcos friend, Juan. My brother rolls his eyes but throws it out the window as we drive on.

We arrive at school in time to pick up our time tables and meet up with our other to friends, Liza and Veronica.

"Ready?" I ask holding up my schedule, so that it faces me. We have a tradition of revealing our time tables at the same time each year. "Go." I say turning mine over.

"We have home room together!" Trina says to me excitedly.

"I have math with you Trina." Liza point out.

"Ew Chem. We all have that."

"No one has English with me?" I groan, this is the case every year, as I take honors English. I'm also a year ahead in math. I stay back in science. so I have some classes with Rina and my friends. Does that sound bad?

"Maybe if you weren't taking advance classes. You'd have more classes with us." Veronica snorts teasingly.

"What ever. Lets head to home room." I toss my time table in my binder and wave good bye to Liza and Veronica.

"Aye Chica." A familiar voice calls tossing his arm around me.

"Hi Ricardo." I laugh. "Not in uniform I see."

"Its the first day... They gotta cut some slack." Me and Ricardo have had a minor fling a few times. That and in my community... Parents always try to set up the younger kids. My parents and Ricardos have deemed us together forever. Its alright I guess. I like Ricardo. But I don't want to commit. So were kinda friends with benefits. Is that appropriate? We stay PG. don't worry.