A Classroom Called Everything

From Roy

My name is NOT Roy. The Chang part is right, but not Roy. I remember it like it was yesterday. Ma and I had just moved to The States and Pa stayed behind in Beijing. It was the scariest thing that ever happened to me and also possibly the best. At the time I was inconsolably upset. Everything I knew and loved was in Beijing. Not only was I required to leave my school and friends, but Pa wasn't even coming with us. Pa had to stay behind to make money to support me and Ma in The States. Too many of my parent's snooty friends had sent their children to study abroad so my parents could not be left out of the loop. Why I needed to study abroad as early as second grade, I still don't understand.

On my first day at an American school, I was the stand out in my classroom. No one looked like me, absolutely no one. A thing called reading circle happened in the middle of the day. I was confused by it so I just followed the other kids. One girl, who would later turn out to be the unflappable Agnes Thompson, was smiling and bopping her head side to side. Everyone else seemed bored out of their minds. 

They all sat in specific spots like it had been pre-designed since birth. It seemed that I was the only one who didn't get my reading circle seat assignment in the womb so I looked for an appealing spot. Quickly, I decided to sit next to the only kind looking person, the boppy headed girl. She didn't see me coming. She was too busy bopping her head and staring blankly off in the distance.

Finally, the smiley-boppy girl looked my way. She didn't seem happy to see me. In fact, she leaned forward so she could look past me. I looked to my left to see what smiley-boppy was looking at. There, on my other side, was an extremely pale girl with stick straight black hair down to the floor. She was the spitting image of the monster from the first horror movie I had ever seen. Out of fear, I moved away from my left and closer to my right.

I heard smiley-boppy ask what my name was. When I turned to answer her my mind went blank. She was staring straight into my eyes which made me feel.....weird. I didn't like it but I didn't hate it either. Somehow I must have been talking without comprehending it because next thing I know smiley-boppy was calling me Roy Chang. My first name was never Roy but that's what she heard and there's no way of knowing what I said. The one thing I do know is that on that day, in that classroom, it was the beginning of everything.

The next six years flew by as I spent my days pretending to run from Agnes, whose name I finally learned three days after she kinda learned mine. Every day she would profess her love to me and I would ignore her. I liked Agnes, most people did, but I didn't like like her. Being the new kid was hard but when Agnes was around, the people who liked her also liked me. I needed her so I never told her to leave me alone.

As we grew older, however, her confessions grew stronger and so did my friend pool. On the second day of eighth grade as Agnes Thompson tried to follow me into the boy's bathroom, I snapped. Without thinking twice, I turned to her and screamed at the top of my lungs "I'm not attracted to you!" It wasn't exactly a lie. Agnes scared me. She was so extreme in her feelings and so sure of her love. We were only thirteen. You shouldn't be so sure at thirteen.

That was the last day she ever confessed to me. We didn't speak at all for an entire week. Then one day she popped up next to me at lunch. She didn't say anything, she just ate. The day after that she just said hi and the day after that she asked to trade my pretzels for her brownie. The day after that, we were friends for life.

A/N Moodboard pic by edoggypaws