When It's Just Us

Shelley Patton: Stuck in my Silence

"Do you think we're friends in every universe?" Something that Opal likes to ask everyone. Well not just Opal, our whole friend group likes to ask each other these types of silly questions. I never asked them before. If I think about it, I don't think anyone has asked me one. I found no need to answer them anyway. I don't think it's even possible to be friends with someone in every single universe. That's just silly.

Suddenly the whole class started cheering. I was in 6th period with my friends Catherine and Julie. Catherine always tries to help others while Julie is always stressed out about something. I looked around confused. My eyes caught Catherine's. She made a silly face at me. That's something I'll always laugh at.

I looked back down at my book and smiled to myself. As much as I hated silly things, Catherine still made it a priority to make me smile. That's Catherine's special ability as you could say. She always found a way to make people smile. Even if they were crying their eyes out. She is the definition of an angel. Without her everything feels so lonely. I can call everyone my friend but do they think I'm their friend too? I mean if they don't, that's completely fine. But who would I go to? The only person who is actually my friend is Catherine. Why do I only trust her? Is it because she's the only one who's been there for me even when I was okay? That can't be right.

I took a deep breath. "If Catherine's ability is to make others smile, mine is to overthink and overanalyze everything someone does."

I spent the rest of that period just trying to focus on my book. "Nothing else. Nothing else is going to distract me. Books are my escape from reality. The only time I feel safe." I replayed that thought over and over in my head. I read a few more lines and then finally, the bell rang. Julie was done with her homework and was talking really really fast about how she would've been "so dead if Ms. Coles didn't give us a study hall today." I'm going to assume that Catherine had something to do with it. You don't just randomly get a study hall out of nowhere.

I closed my book and grabbed my backpack. Now it was time for 7th period. The class period where I am in total silence. The class period where I am invisible.

I said my bye's to Catherine and Julie who were both going to art class. I was going to my history class with my teacher Ms. Miller. She was the teacher no one liked. And I know that I definitely don't like her at all. She's always been mean to other students and assigned an unreasonable amount of homework. 7th period is the part of the day where I wished I didn't exist. And as much as I wanted to skip class, I couldn't because even if I was late to her class by 3 minutes, that'd be counted as an absence. So off I went to Ms. Miller's classroom.

As I walked to her classroom, I heard two boys behind me talking. To me, it sounded an awful lot like Lorenzo Dunn, one of the English teacher's sons. The other boy talking to Lorenzo was Elias Murphy. The golden child of the Murphy siblings. He was more widely known than his brother. However, I was decently friends with him. I think he's pretty nice too.

"Ay, you're going to Ms. Miller's right?" Elias said.

"Yeah, but it's pretty boring in there."

"Yeah. She's pretty strict.", Elias laughed. "Alright I have to go down this hallway. See you tomorrow." He ran off into the hallway. "Ok, bye." Lorenzo said. I kept walking and walked into one of the hallways. The classroom was further back into the hallway so I walked for a longer time than usual. As I entered her classroom, everyone was quietly talking to one another in their own friend groups. I looked around. Not anyone I would talk to, as usual. It was the start of the second semester so there were some new people in our class, but other than that, nothing new. "Hey, move along. I needa get in the class.", Lorenzo said. I turned around and then he smiled. "Oh hey, Shelley." I moved out of the way. He walked to his friend group and started chatting.

I walked towards one of the tables and put my backpack down. "Yeah, I really don't know anything here huh?" I thought. "Hey over here." I looked around until I saw Trevor Murphy waving at me. I grabbed my backpack and walked over to him. I sat at the desk across from him. For a while we both just sat there. No words were said. Just us and silence.

Finally Ms. Miller walked into the classroom and hushed everyone. She then grabbed a marker from the board and started to write something. Ms. Miller turned back to us, "Go into your textbooks and read pages 343 to 348. After you're finished, grab a packet by my desk. That is all we will be doing today. Simple, yes?"

Hushed murmurs of all the students agreeing. "Alright then, get to work. I don't mind partners, just don't get loud." I opened my backpack trying to find my textbook. Nothing. I looked at the community shelf where all the extra textbooks were. Empty.

I started to panic not knowing what to do. From the looks of it, everyone else had their textbooks. Trevor looked up at me and mouthed, "You don't have your textbook." I shook my head. He then looked at the person sitting beside me which was a girl I had P.E with. I never really talked to her though. She was more on the extroverted side. Although I do remember she would always say hi to me in the hallways, other than that we never talked.

"Hey, Jacey." Trover tapped on her textbook to get her attention. She looked up, annoyed. "What?" Jacey didn't like getting in trouble and all of us knew, we'd definitely get in trouble if we weren't quiet. Trevor ripped off a piece of paper off of his notebook and quickly wrote something on it. He then passed it on to Jacey. It read, from what I could tell:

Can you please share a textbook with Shelley. She forgot hers :(

Jacey looked at the note, then Trevor, then back at me. She shook her head in disappointment and then scooted her textbook towards the middle. A little "Thank you." was all I could muster out. With the heat of embarrassment and disappointment was too much. To save myself from feeling more bad about everything, I quickly scanned through the pages and managed to get the packet done. After almost everyone was done with the assignment and packing up to leave. I walked to Jacey and thanked her profusely. Jacey kept on saying things like "It's ok." and "No problem." But I still felt bad. I knew that the next day, I knew I was going to check if I had everything in my bag.

I feel so bad. Not just for bothering Jacey and Trover, but also for letting myself down. It's already the second semester and I'm still forgetting things. "What's wrong with me?" I kept thinking. The bell then rang. The final class period. 8th period, the end of my day.