She really believed me when I said I wouldn’t talk anymore. Since when do teachers believe you when you say that?
As told to Perel Stone
Sunday, October 28
Since the beginning of the school year, I’ve been sitting next to Ruti in the back row. She stopped pretending she doesn’t know me in school. It’s the first time I’ve had a real friend during school, and that makes school much more bearable. But today Mrs. Taub caught us talking and asked me to switch seats.
She put me in the front row next to Shaindy. Shaindy leans too close and touches you a lot when she talks to you. She laughs really loudly and spits while she talks. I sat next to her and gave her a huge smile. I know what it’s like when people are mean to you, and just because Shaindy does some things that annoy me isn’t a reason to make her feel bad.
But in just one period of sitting next to her, Shaindy put her arm around me four times and patted my leg so many times I probably got a bruise. There was no way I was going to be able to sit next to her for very long.
I waited until all the other girls left at the end of the day and went to Mrs. Taub’s desk. She put down her pen and looked at me like she was waiting to hear what I had to say. It sounds normal when I write it like that, but no other teacher has done it the way she did. When you go to speak to other teachers, it’s like they’re waiting for you to finish so they can go back to what they were doing, but something in the way Mrs. Taub was looking at me made me feel like she wanted to hear what I had to say.
Create a free account to keep reading.
