I don't want to go to school

This is a monologue I performed in theater arts about how going to school made me feel.

I don’t wanna go to school. I don’t have any friends, except for the girls that don't speak English. I can’t understand them, because everyone can speak Spanish but me. People don’t like me because I’m at Purple level, the top one, and because these two mean girls make everyone hate me. In the fall, when I cough too much to go outside, I play with the dolls in the library by myself. I’m happy I’m moving, but my class is happier, they all cheered when I told them.

I am so scared. Everything about this place is different. The people are lighter, and the houses are bigger, and the stores are so far away; I can’t even walk to school. I’ve never seen so many white people in one place before. They look at like I’m an alien, or an animal. They already think I’m weird, and I haven’t done anything yet. Now, I understand what Mommy and Daddy mean when they say we’re minorities. I am happy that my backpack is the same as this other girl’s, but when I tell her, she just looks at me funny and put her backpack under her desk. I’m never going to fit in with these people.

I want to lie to myself and say “Maybe I’ll finally make some friends this year,” but I know I won’t. I try, I really do, but I don’t know how. Mommy can’t make “hang-outs” for me like she could playdates. The middle school is so huge. I just know I’m going to get lost, but I won’t be able to ask the big kids for help; they'll probably ignore me anyway.  I can’t even get my locker combination right. My homeroom teacher scares me, and she picks on me all the time. She makes everything so much harder because she gives my classmates more reasons to laugh at me. I don’t like this school. My parents think my only friend is a bad influence; they’re right, but she’s the only friend I have. I had another friend for a little while last year, but we’re not friends anymore; I still want to be friends with her. I try to hang-out with her friends, but she cursed me out, so I ran away and don’t talk to them anymore.

               I can’t wait to be done with this year. I thought I had made friends, last year, and we’d talked for a lot of this year. But, my other friend told me that they talk about me behind my back. Everyone else does it, but I want my friends to be people who don’t. This one girl doesn’t even hide it. She sits right in front of me in English. She’ll cup her hand over her mouth and whisper loudly to the girl next to her. I know she means for me to hear it. Why is everyone so mean? Even the people that seem nice just pretend to like to me because they feel bad for me. You know that other friend? It turns out she lied just to break up our friend group, and I believed her. I’m such an idiot; I always turn away the few friends I have.

               I don’t want to walk onto that campus today. Middle school was hard enough; high school is going to be ten times harder. I don’t know half the grade, but I do know it’s just 200 more people to judge me. People wave at me, pretending to be happy to see me. I wave back; I can pretend, too. Maybe if I act really nice people will finally like me.

               I just can’t be bothered to care anymore. School is school; people are people. Why should I care about what they think? I carry around a sack of notebooks every day, and write in them, sometimes when my math teacher’s talking, but I still get the lesson. A group of seniors were looking around and laughing in choir. Probably not at me, though. Seniors have to see me to make fun of me. For theater arts, I had to come school dressed as someone else; I chose to be a model for the day. A lot of people stared at me in the halls, and I’m not going to lie; it felt nice to not be invisible for once. My history teacher needed help taking down decorations, so I volunteered to climb the ladder, even though I was wearing a dress. It wasn't not a big deal, I was wearing shorts anyway. Not that he paid attention enough to thank me, even though he thanked the rest of the class. There’s this monologue assignment I have to do for theater arts, maybe I’ll write about how I sit with only four people at lunch, and though it would be a big deal when I was little, having a few loyal friends doesn’t bother me now. 

Author's Note

This is supposed to be from the perspective of younger me progressing to present me.

Reviews

[PaintedBirdy]

hi Lavender! overall i like this story and your writing style. i like some of the specific details you mention, such as the description of the new neighborhood, "she'll cup her hand over her mouth and whisper loudly," not being thanked by the teacher for someone you went out of your way to do.

overall i think the topic of "not fitting in at school" has been done so many times thats it difficult to make an original spin on it, but i like that yours is a 'chronological struggle' of trying to fit in. since 'having friends' seems to be the main motivation for you/the narrator to go to school (another specific focus you bring to this topic), maybe tell more details about what you did to make friends that worked.