Being Me

Chapter Two

“Class, start your work now.”My teacher announced. “You have thirty minutes to complete it.”

It wasn’t easy to fit in to a totally new system. I was struggling with everything. All the books were different, the teachers taught differently and the students had a world of their own and believe me when I say differently, I mean it. Who would know it better than me? After all, I had changed four schools.

“Hey, umm…Mel, can I see your work?”

“No!” She retorted. “Copycat,”

It had been like that for days now. Everyone told me that Mel was like that, so I shouldn’t mind. I didn’t mind, but it was not fair; I had never done any work like that and I was way too shy to ask from the teacher. Mel was kind of everyone’s leader like there is this one person in every group whose words are final. I didn’t like that.

Once during recess, we had quite a conversation. I will never forget it.

“I want chocolate,” Mel had said wistfully.

“Me too, I love chocolate.”

“I like it with nuts, so crunchy.”

“Me too,”

 I was so excited. Finally, someone had common interests with me.

“You know I could eat a whole box of chocolate and want more.” Mel stood up facing me. She placed her hand on her hip and tilted her head a little. “Now, you will say, you can do that too.”

The sky was blocked by her head and I could see the coldness in her eyes.

“What? Are you kidding me? I can never do that, I would get sick.” I lied, I don’t know why.

Maybe it was the way she looked at me, I felt guilty. Back then, I didn’t have the courage to make a comeback. I didn’t know much about the world. They knew about the singers, the movies, the actors and I knew nothing, was too naïve.

All six of my friends were not really always there for me; Shelvee was mostly buried in her books, Rue and Fen usually ignored me and would keep on talking to each other most of the time. Sometimes I felt excluded for the group. Only Raven was there for me. We would talk for hours and hours on phone. She used to tell me that Mel was just like that and I shouldn’t worry about it. I also liked her. Back then, I was crazy about dolls and Raven had the widest collection of dolls. She was so lucky. Unfortunately, our friendship was short-lived.

She called me one day.

“Hello,” I picked up the landline.

“Guess what, Anna!” She almost shouted with excitement.

“What?”

“My father just got promoted, we are moving to the big city!”

“Oh my God Congratulations, Raven.”

“Thanks, I wanna tell you all about it, see you at school.”

“Ok.”

I wasn’t really happy; after all, I was losing a friend.

Well, I started to change myself, to fit in with everyone else. That was the only way.

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“Class, what is the meaning of pollination?” My science teacher was literally shouting to make her voice audible in all the chitchat and the laughter. “Anna, why don’t you tell?”

The Whole class grew silent as I stood up, my legs were wobbling and my hands went all sweaty; everyone was staring at me like I was some kind of a clown.

“Pollinasion…tion is the Spread of seeds…” 

“Ok. Shelvee, why don’t you tell?” My teacher cut off.

Thank God, she asked me to stop, or I don’t know what kind of horrible things would have happened to me.

 I messed up, again.  In my old school there were only two students in my class and we hardly ever discussed answers like that, so when the teacher asked me to answer in front of all the class who stared at me like I was their lunch, I freaked out and ruined the pronunciations.

Maybe, that was the reason for me not being selected to play in the drama festival. I loved to play in the dramas, but apparently, I wasn’t good enough.

I also liked singing. One day, I went to the music teacher and asked him to let me sing in the school music group. He was amused by my boldness at first, but then he asked me to sing and while I was singing, I ignored his blank expressions.

“Sorry Anna, I cannot take you into the music group. You see there is no place left to put you on for now.”

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“Ok, be quiet everyone, I have an announcement to make now,” Miss Roberts, our class teacher said. “I have been receiving a lot of comments from various teachers that you don’t study and keep talking to each other, so I am going to fix your seats according to how I want you to seat.”

What she did to me was a horrible, upsetting thing.

She made groups of four and one was of five because of the odd strength of the class.

Miss Roberts made me sit alone with four boys! How was I doing to survive?

Poor me. . .

For the next few days, I would sit straight and not really talk. At first, they were not so bad, but a couple of days later, they started teasing me over stupid little things.

“OH, look you can’t even hold the pencil properly.” Jake said in his most annoying voice; he started laughing.

I had to bear the wrath of my teacher for a whole year! However, it didn’t last long. I am quite an intolerable girl; I boil up really fast.

I, now, don’t remember what had Tom said that made me lose my patience, but whatever it was, it must be very annoying because I went to the teacher crying and told her what he had said.

I still laugh at the memory. I can’t forget their contrite faces as Miss Roberts scolded them. I know, I am evil, but they deserved it. They always do.

My teacher changed my seat the next day and made me sit with Fen. We had to be strict in not getting caught talking, otherwise my seat was to be changed again. I couldn’t risk it.

Well, the whole year passed, I didn’t do so well in my exams as I was still having difficulty getting use to the new system. Shelvee came first, I got to know that she had been on the top since class one. I wondered how that felt.  My father was not happy with me and after all, he had been paying for my fee which was far above our range. I was ashamed and promised myself to work even harder next year.

This was just the start of my amazing journey; I had the whole way to go. For now, I just hoped that at the end I would find what I was looking for.