Motive

Just The Two of Us

~Mary Jay~

"Alright class, settle down, please." The woman spoke. She wore a yellow sundress which made her ginger hair stand out even more.

Everyone gathered in the circle until almost all of the seats were filled.

The woman looked around the circle, taking mental attendance. Once her eyes scanned mine, her facial expression changed a few times; from surprised, to confused, to excited.

"I see a new face in our circle today! Would you like to tell us about yourself?"

Not really.

I nodded before speaking, "I'm Mary Jay, my friends call me MJ."

She nodded and smiled as if she was waiting for me to continue.

"What're you here for?" A girl called out who sat diagonal from me.

no.

"Just some. . .regular stuff."

Her face morphed into confusion while I stared at the teacher, silently begging her to move on.

"Alright, thank you Mary Jay. I'm Mrs. Rivera. Now picking up from where we left off last week, we'll need to pick new partners."

Everyone erupted into whispers, choosing their partners. I didn't even bother to try to look for a partner, I was hoping she'd let it slide for my first day.

Obviously not.

"Mary Jay, there's an uneven amount of students so you'll have to join someone's group." Mrs. Rivera explained.

"She can join ours!" Carter exclaimed. I could see 'Matt' hit the back of his head.

"Are you comfortable with that, sweetie?"

I looked towards her with my eyes, still keeping my face in the direction of Carter, "Uhm, sure."

"Great, be nice boys."

Carter scoot over one chair so I sat in the middle of the two boys.

"Today you will be bringing up one good memory from your childhood. We're constantly focused on our trauma and letting it define us that we barely ever take time to appreciate the good things. Today we'll be taking a trip down memory lane."

I cringed slightly. I didn't have many good memories from my childhood; I had suppressed most of it anyways.

"Oh fun! I'll go first." Carter was beyond excited. He'd been playing with a strand of my hair before sitting up straight in his chair. "When I was around 6 or seven, my older brother taught me to swim. I remember pushing him into the water and he chased me around afterwards with a floatie." He sighed in between, "Good times."

I smiled and nodded along with Carter. Seeing his genuine excitement lit up the mood.

"Your turn, Matt!" Carter pushed.

Matt's innocent expression fell for a second as he rolled his eyes before going back, "You're annoying."

Carter pretended to be offended by throwing a hand over his heart. "Rude."

"When Carter and I were little, we went to my grandparents house for the weekend and accidentally broke my grandmas vase. We didn't wanna get it trouble so we walked all the way to the store to buy super-glue to fix it. To this day, I'm pretty sure she doesn't know." His eyebrow lifted slightly on that last part.

"That's funny." I said without laughing. It was a SALTS moment. 'Smile a little then stopped.'

"What's your good memory, MJ?" Carter asked.