Ignition

Chapter 1

Recommended songs: Go off by Doja Cat, Eyes don't lie by Isabel LaRosa

*Azaria's perspective*

The air is humid tonight and I can't sleep. It's nearly midnight and my first day of senior year is in approximately ten minutes from now. Not only is it hot in my room from the hot Los Angeles air, there is a million thoughts swarming through my head.

It's finally my last year of high school, and I really don't know how to feel about it. Of course, I've hated being in high school, but growing up sounds scary. Reality just hit me that I'm growing up when I turned 18 in July and I realized I'm no longer just a girl.

I'm no longer the shy girl who was chubby with glasses and braces. Over the summer, you could say I've transformed into someone I actually like being.

I've lost weight, embraced self-care and self-love, learned new things about myself through my own spirituality journey.

Without realizing it, throughout middle school and most of highschool, I hated myself more than my old bullies did. I hated the way my body looked and developed a eating disorder. Gaining a bad relationship with food and my body.

This resulted in episodes of major depression and my mental health was just really bad. I didn't realize how deep of a dark hole I was in until I got out of it.

I decided at the end of junior year that I didn't want to be that person anymore. With some professional help I was able to change for the better. So here I am, still anxious about school.

I want to get into my dream college which is Los Angeles University and become a therapist. But my grades tanked for the first time in my life at the last semester of junior year. Changing my 4.0 gpa to a 3.8 gpa, which isn't good because LAU only accepts 4.0 or higher.

It was one of the reasons why I wanted to change because every year my episodes of depression get worse and for the first time ever it damaged my grades. I couldn't let that happen again.

My mama was so pissed that I had let my grades slip which really made me disappointed in myself. I knew then that I needed to change because I couldn't afford to be kicked out of the house and be a failure for the rest of my life.

Me and my little sisters plus my mom live in the suburbs close to the city. We are a average middle class family. My mama is a lawyer and is our sole provider. She works in one of the best law firms in the city and she is an incredibly hardworking and successful lawyer.

Even though she makes good money, we are nowhere near rich enough to even think about going to any private schools in Los angeles.

Until I got selected as one of the ten students out of all the students of the Los Angeles area to receive a merit-based scholarship to attend Northridge High School.

Which is the most prestigious highschool in the area. I received the scholarship at the end of my freshman year. Basically it means I get to attend the best highschool with the best education for free. All because I managed decent grades.

I remember it was definitely one of the better times in my life, because I truly felt that mama was proud of me for once. Now I've been attending Northridge since sophomore year and let's just say it hasn't been the best experience.

I felt like an outsider who was invisible when I first got there. I think the school itself gives out these kinds of scholarships to typically people of color in the low and middle class, to claim they want "diversity" at the school.

In actuality we are just brownie points for the school to look good but do not actually care about the students they bring in.

Just picture an elite high school filled with stereotypical obnoxious preppy rich white teenagers in uniforms and you get Northridge in a nutshell. If I didn't have the friends I have now, I wouldn't be able to survive at Northridge.