The Butterfly and Her Sunflower

A Drawing - Jaydee

Emilee continued to follow me to the playground. I made sure to avoid Jackson. I knew he would try to get Emilee to play with him instead of me. I was still holding Emilee's hand as I took her to the slide.

"That is the biggest slide I have ever seen!" She yelled. I let go of her hand and she quickly started climbing the ladder towards it. When she reached the top, she looked at me with the nicest smile on her face.

"Are you coming up, Jaydee? I want you to slide down with me!" I looked at all the different ways to get up to the slide, and decided to use the one with the rock shapes coming out of the wall. When I reached her, she sat down first then patted behind me, wanting me to sit behind and hold onto her as we went down. I didn't really want to, because I've never been down this slide before, and it scared me, but when Emilee smiled at me again, I didn't feel scared anymore. I ended up holding onto her, closing my eyes tightly as she pushed us both down the slide. When we both got to the bottom, we ended up tumbling into the sand. She was laughing, and so was I.

"That was so much fun!" She laughed.

"I want to do that again." I said to her, and she got excited.

"Then come on! Let's do it again!" We sat up and got ready to climb back up, but then Jackson came over.

"Emilee, you should come play with us." He said, before he looked at me angrily.

"But I'm playing with Jaydee right now." She still had a smile on her face, but it wasn't as wide as before.

"I want you to play with us, though." He seemed to get angrier, and then I felt myself getting angry. She actually wanted to sit next to me today, so it wasn't fair that Jackson was trying to take her away. I didn't want her playing with Jackson because I knew he was going to turn her against me like he did with the others.

"She playing with me, Jackson!" I yelled at him. Jackson shoved me hard, and I fell to the ground hard. I looked to see that both my hands and one of my knees were scraped, and they stung so bad I started crying.

"Don't do that, Jackson! I'm going to tell the teacher on you!" Emilee screamed at him. She came over to me and helped me up, taking me to the sick bay. She told the school nurse what happened, and sat down next to me as the nurse looked at my knee and hands.

"Okay, I'm going to clean your scrapes, and then you," he looked at Emilee "will put the band aids on. Can you do that for me?" My eyes were blurry, but I saw her nod. The cleaning part stung a lot, and Emilee held my hand through it, which made me feel better. The nurse then gave her the band aids.

"Okay. I'm going to let your teacher know what happened. You can sit in here until the bell rings if you so choose." Then he left.

"Thank you for helping me." I told her as I rubbed my eyes to make the tears go away.

"He's mean, and I don't like meanies." Emilee put a band aid on my knee first, before I held out my hands to her so she could put them on my hands. I could see her looking at my skin. She didn't look grossed out like Jackson did, though.

"Your hands are so cool, Jaydee. Why do they look this way?" Dad had always told me that some people might ask about my skin, so I tried to remember exactly what he told me to say.

"My dad told me that its a skin condition called vitiligo... vitleego? No it is vitiligo. Um, its when parts of my skin doesn't have enough of the stuff that makes the rest of my skin a darker colour." She traced the natural patterns on my hands before we both heard the bell ring. As we walked back, I decided to ask the question that's been sticking in my brain.

"Emilee, are you only being nice to me because of my hands? Do you think they are weird?" She stopped us both.

"Of course not Jaydee. I chose to sit with you because you were sad. I don't like seeing people sad. And no. I don't think your vitiligo is weird. It's just one part of you, and I want to know all about you,"

When we walked into the classroom, I saw that Jackson was being talked to in the corner by another teacher. Miss Cam was waiting for everyone to sit down.

"Okay, friends. For the next hour, you will be put into groups that will rotate. I will work with a different group each rotation for some math." We all listened as she told us our groups, and she put me and Emilee together. We were both excited, so I asked Emilee what she wanted to do first.

"I really want to draw! I love drawing so much!" I wasn't very happy about it. I didn't like drawing. I wasn't very good at it, but when I saw the smile she had, I didn't want to say no. I followed her to the drawing table, where she got every colour of pencil she could find. Red, blue, yellow, green. There were even strange colours I had never seen before. I sat next to her and watched as she began to draw shapes and colour them.

"Why aren't you drawing, Jaydee?" she asked.

"I'm not very good at drawing. I never know what to draw." She gave me a piece of paper and a pile of coloured pencils.

"Draw whatever you want! I won't judge." I grabbed the green pencil as it was my favourite colour, and just moved the pencil across the page everywhere. Emilee looked over at it.

"I feel like it needs more colour. Do you mind if I draw a little on yours? I promise I won't ruin it." I nodded and moved the paper to her.

"I'm going to put some blue on it. Blue is my favourite colour." I smiled a little.

"Green is my favourite colour." Soon she handed the paper back to me, and now there were shapes drawn in blue everywhere. I loved the drawing now.

"Wait. Here!" She slid over her piece of paper. There was a really pretty drawing of a sunflower on it, with a sun shining in a blue sky.

"I want you to have it." She told me.

"No! I can't have this! You drew it!" I put my hand on it to slide it back to her, but she put her own hand on top of mine

"So what? I can always draw another one. I want you to have this one, as my best friend." I felt my eyes go wide. Best friend?

"I'm your best friend?" I asked.

"Yes! And you'll be my best friend forever!" She hugged me. It took me a minute to hug her back. I then took the drawing, holding it like it was my most favourite toy. My best friend.