Getting out of my sister's shadow

Chapter 8

When everyone loves your big sister more, it's nice to find something that you can do better than her. Singing is that thing. No one in my family can sing, except for me. I don't know where I get it from and neither do my parents. Oh well, all I know is that I love it! It's the one thing I hold on to, and cherish the most about myself.
It's the third day of school now. I got all of my homework done for my classes and guess what? They assigned more homework! Yay! Isn't that exciting! The answer is no. Unless of course you like homework, but why would you?
It's finally time for chorus. The only class I really like other than art. The teacher Mrs. Nelson told us all to sit down and close our eyes.

"Why?" Tom Jacobson asked.

"Tom, just amuse me and do what you're told for once."

That shut Tom right up. Keep in mind that our chairs are set up in a circle. She split us up into four groups of six. Then when she said the number of a group they all got to go in the middle of the circle. Each person had to go around to every person in the circle. If they place two hands on your shoulders that means, I would like to get to know you better. If they place one hand on your head that means you are a good friend. If they place two hands on your head that means that you have changed their lives for the better. I got a lot of shoulder touches. Although, I also only gave shoulder touches....I don't know who these people are. Finally Mrs. Nelson let us open our eyes and put the chairs back to normal.

"Now does anyone know why we did that so early in the year?" She asked.

No one raised their hand.

"Well, I'll tell you. I saw a lot of shoulder touches, and a few one hand on heads. Why?"

"Because we don't know each other very well." Sarah Adams answered.

"Very good, Sarah. But I had some of you last year, and the year before that. Do you guys not know each other?"

"Well we do, but it's been a whole summer since we've seen each other. People changed." Said Derek Thomson.

"Ok, true people did change but you've known them forever! Ok, I'm a little disappointed. Not in the 9th graders though because they don't know any of you. Now the reason I did this at the beginning of the year is to see how comfortable you were with each other. Not very I guess. You can't have a good choir unless you have students that work together to form one voice. That's what I want from you guys. We will do this activity at the end of the year. I want to see those shoulder touches become one or two hands on the head. Understand?"

Everyone nodded. How am I going to do that. I mean yeah people here know my name now but they still compare me to my sister. Ugh. By the end of the year all of these people will be my friend....Or at least, I hope they will be. I need as many friends as I can get. I thought Becky was enough, but, I need to broaden my horizon. I need to be like Amanda...