A Collection Of Short Stories

Show and Tell

A story about new kids, freckles, and rainbow teddy bears.

"Alright class, does everyone have their special objects?"

It was the first day of school at Lakeside Elementary, and Mini was terrified.

She had always been an introvert, or maybe, if she dared to say, ambivert, very much in contrast to her older brother, Amir. It had seemed that the second they had settled into their seats on the airplane from India to America, he had made friends with the kid sitting next to him. Amir's amazing people skills was pretty much the only reason Mini had anyone to talk to back home. Most of Amir's friends were a year older than her, but they were very nice to her, so she didn't mind, and neither did they.

But now, in America, she didn't even have the choice of hanging out with her brother's friends, since he was in an entire different school. The American schooling system was still a bit new to Mini, since in America, there were four different schools instead of three, like India: Pre-school, Elementary school, Middle-school, and then High-school. After High-school, you could go to college. Mini was in fifth class (but for some reason, her new teacher, Ms. Barnes, kept using the word 'fifth-grader', so she guessed that was the American way of saying fifth class.... She really didn't understand why American English had to be so different from her English. Both were English, after all!)

Everything about America was so different. The accent of the people, the way they talked so fast that half the time, Mini wasn't even sure if they were speaking English or some other language, the way they said some totally different words like 'gotcha', and 'wanna', and the fact that there were people with all sorts of different skin-tones and ethnicities sitting in the classroom. She was seated in the middle of a Korean girl with short, straight hair, and a European boy with dirty blond hair, and a splatter of a few tiny spots (freckles?) on his face. In her class in India, all of the kids had brown skin--- albeit different shades--- black hair, and usually a shade of brown eyes, all wearing white and blue uniforms, the colors of their school.

Mini was pulled out of her thoughts when she heard chairs scraping against the ground as the children around her started to get up. She quickly took out the box and walked back to her seat.

Ms. Barnes had sent a letter to her family a few days before school started, informing them about how she was excited to meet Mini, and telling her to bring something special to her to school on the first day. She had spent all day the day they read the letter, thinking about what she should bring, and had finally made up her mind.

"Who wants to go first?" her teacher asked when everyone was seated with their objects. Mini could see a lot of interesting things on the desks of her classmates. One kid had brought a giant rainbow teddy bear, and another kid had brought a silver locket. A few of the kids' hands shot up in the air, but Mini just sat and watched.

Ms. Barnes called on a girl with shoulder-length brown hair and glasses. She was the girl with the locket. Her name was Lauren, Mini learned, and the locket was given to her great-grandmother by her great-grandfather when he had to leave for war, and it was now like a family heirloom. Mini was kind of scared that after listening to this story, her classmates wouldn't think much about hers.

After most of the kids had gone, and no one else was raising their hand, Ms. Barnes decided to call randomly. "Minakshi, would you like to share?" she said sweetly. Ms. Barnes had pronounced Mini's name wrong, it was Minakshi. Her parents had told her it would probably happen at one point, and that she should tell everyone her nickname instead, but Mini, of course, was waaay too shy to say anything.

Mini stood up and walked to the front of the class like the other kids had before her, and avoided eye contact with anyone. She then opened the lid of the container in her hand, and took out the things inside of it, putting the container down on Ms. Barnes's desk and showing the things in her hand to the class. Everyone was silent and no one knew what to make of it for a second, and then Mini started talking.

"Th-these coins are c-called Paise," she said, stuttering a little. Some of the more verbal kids oohed, but most people stared at her. She couldn't really tell what they were thinking, or why they looked at her, which made her slightly insecure. Was it because she hadn't talked in an American accent like everyone else, pronouncing the c's and p's as if they had h's after them? Or were they actually curious about the coins?

She showed them off to the class again, saying, "In India, there are different kinds of Paise, depending on where you are." She had overcome her stuttering, a little because she had been thinking about what to say while the other kids had been going, but mostly because all the kids in the class looked very interested.

Mini picked out a couple of differently shaped coins, like the silver octagon one, and the bronzish circle with slight waves around them to hold up.

"These coins are all very different from American coins. For one thing, most of them have the numbers clearly written on them, so you don't have to remember which ones cost how much," she continued, "But they're similar to the coins here because of how they have carvings of important people on them." She held the coins up for a while, switching them up every few seconds, partly so that the class could see them, but mostly to delay the moment she would have to say why. Finally, she mustered up the courage, and finished her sharing."I brought this in today because it reminded me of India. You probably already realized because of my accent, but I am originally from India, and I had to move here this summer. I really miss my old home, and these coins are one of the only things I have that represent India." She was tearing up a little, as the memories of her and her brother's old friends came back.

She quickly walked back to her seat, a girl wearing a hijab taking Mini's place at the front of the class.

At recess, another Indian girl approached her. She had shorter-than-shoulder length but longer than chin length black hair, a blue hoodie, and mismatched black pants. Mini was surprised and quite a bit excited that anyone was coming towards her willingly.

"Hello, Minakshi," the girl said. She had an american accent, so Mini was pretty surprised that the girl had pronounced her name correctly.

"Hi."

"I'm Aanya. I was born in India too, and could relate to your sharing from earlier. Would you like to meet my friends?" she asked.

And that was how Mini made her first friend in America.