Lydia
School has always been pretty easy for me. Well, the learning part at least. I don’t make friends…ever really. I just do my work and get through the day quietly until it’s time to go home. It’s easier that way.
My grades are perfect. They always have been. Schoolwork is how I can escape in my mind. It’s the only thing I have to distract me from everything else going on in my life.
I slide into an open seat in the back of my second-period math class, pulling out my textbook and opening to the page that’s written down on the whiteboard.
I never talk to anyone in this class—or any of my classes.
Mostly because I don’t have any friends in general, but also because there’s a bunch of boys in this class who are really mean to me, so I just try to keep my head down the whole period.
Right before the bell rings to start class, I see a girl walk in who hasn’t been in this class before. She walks over to our teacher and hands him a note.
She must be new. She has these really cute braids with hot pink beads at the ends that bounce when she moves, and a pink hoodie over her uniform that matches perfectly.
She also has perfect skin. Unlike most of the acne-covered faces kids had at this age, she has smooth, flawless brown skin and the best style.
She doesn’t look like she belongs in a place like this.
She’s so pretty and bright. It’s like she radiates happiness when everyone else around here is so… lackluster.
After talking to the teacher, she scans the room and sits down—right next to me.
“Hi!” she says as she puts her pink and purple backpack down on the floor beside her.
I blink, confused if she’s talking to me or someone else around us. “Hey?”
She brushes past my hesitation and just jumps into conversation with me like we’re friends. “I just moved here from Atlanta…” She looks around before leaning over to me. “Is it always this dull around here? Everyone seems so…boring.”
I laugh a little, caught off guard by her, and then nod. “Sadly, yeah.”
She leans back in her chair. “Ugh, well, I hope you’re not. I need someone to talk to or I’ll go a little crazy. I’m not a quiet person. I hate when it’s quiet.”
I’m a little shocked by someone going out of their way to talk to me. No one at this school has ever purposely had a nice conversation with me before.
“What’s your name?”
“Um, Lydia,” I answer.
“Ohh, that’s a pretty name. You’re really pretty, too, Lydia. You match your name perfectly.” She giggles a little when she says that.
“I am?” I ask, kinda shocked. I don’t think anyone has ever complimented me outside of Camilla. I don’t know how to respond. I want to tell her she’s really pretty too, way prettier than me.
“Yeah! What are you?”
“Huh?”
What am I? What does that even mean?
“Like, what race are you? You look white, but like, not full white. Your hair is so dark and silky, and your brows. Geez, I wish I had perfect brows like yours. Do you use any makeup on them?”
I would normally feel super overwhelmed by a conversation like this, but for some reason…there’s something about her that draws me into anything she’s saying. I don’t hate talking to her. I want to talk to her.
“Um, yeah, my dad was white and Uruguayan, and my mom was just white, I think…so, mostly just white.”
“Was? What are they now? A different race?” she asks, teasingly.
I can’t help but laugh. “Um, no…they’re…um, dead.”
She instantly goes quiet and makes this ‘oh’ face like she just realized she messed up.
I don’t want her to feel bad, though. “It’s okay,” I say. “They died when I was like eight. It was a long time ago.”
“Still, I’m sorry. Let’s act like I didn’t just put my foot in my mouth. By the way, I’m Simone!”
“Nice to meet you, Simone.”
“So like, scale of one to ten, how hard is this class?”
“Um, I don’t know. It’s pretty easy to me.”
She tilts her head at me. “Well, then, I guess I picked the right person to sit next to. Will you let me copy your work?”
I chuckle. “Yeah, sure.”
One of the boys I hate in this class, Marcus, walks over and stands in front of our desks. “Hey, new girl, what’s your name?”
I roll my eyes, but I know she doesn’t know how much of a jerk Marcus is, so I don’t say anything. I wouldn’t in front of him anyway. I’m not stupid enough to give him a reason to taunt me.
She turns fully in her chair to face him and smiles. “Simone,” she says, raising her brows in question to him.
“Why are you talking to the weird girl, Simone? You know, can come sit on the other side with us,” he says, nodding his head over to his little group of friends.
“Weird?” she asks, tilting her head, looking irritated now. “She’s not weird. Why would you say that?”
He looks confused because everyone knows I’m the weird girl, and no one ever questions it when people call me that. “Yeah, you made friends with the weird girl. If you want to save yourself from the embarrassment of being around her, I would do it now before it’s too late.”
I shrink down in my seat, hating the way this conversation makes me feel. The way they always talk about me like I’m not right here, like I don’t have feelings.
“Ew, I hate mean kids,” she tells him. “So, no thank you. She’s my friend now, so I guess we’ll just both be weird together.”
Friend? Did she just call me her friend? They just told her I was the weird girl. Why would she want to be friends with me?
“Whatever, when you realize how much of a freak she is, don’t come running back to us.”
Simone rolls her eyes at him. “And when you realize how cool she is and how much of a jerk you are, don’t come running to us.”
He scoffs and goes to say something else, but the start of the period bell rings and our teacher tells everyone to take their seats.
When the teacher finishes talking and starts passing around worksheets for us to do silently, she leans over and whispers, “You’re not weird; they’re the weird ones. I hate bullies.”
I just give her a small, shy smile. “Thank you.”
* * *
At lunch, instead of walking straight to the corner of the cafeteria like I always do—to my usual spot against the wall, alone with my food—I feel a hand tug at my arm.
“Come sit with me,” Simone says. “I don’t know anyone else. And we’re friends now, so you can’t leave me alone on my first day.”
We end up sitting together near the big window where the sun hits the table just right, making the surface feel warm.
She has a packed lunch with a juice box, a fancy Lunchable, and a little bag of grapes in it.
I have a PB she’s seventeen.”
“Whoa, cool! I’m an only child. It sucks. I always wanted a sister. I even used to beg my mom for one, but she said I was enough of a handful on my own and that she couldn’t handle another one of me.”
We both laugh.
“Yeah, it’s just always been me and her,” I tell her. “We’ve been in foster care since our parents died, so we’re all we’ve got, really. Especially with moving around a lot.”
“Dang, I’m sorry. That sounds like it sucks; I shouldn’t really be complaining, huh?”
“No, it’s okay. Everyone has things they wish were different about their lives, I guess.”