On My Way

Chapter One: When Ella Met Ashley

I met Ashely on the first day of our freshman year of high school. I'd come from a middle school that didn't feed into our high school, I had a completely blank slate to work with, but I struggled in the beginning.

Knowing this information, and how I'd wriggled in the past my neighbor tried to make friends for me. She introduced me to various acquaintances and friends. I didn't get on with any of them, but I had an interesting experience with Ashely, another freshman, in the minutes before our biology class.

My neighbor and I had biology during the same period but in different classrooms, so to her this was a perfect time to find people for me to meet new people. She spotted an acquaintance from middle school, Ashely, she introduced us, but one look at her made me nervous. She was a petite girl with pale skin and golden hair so long that I was sure she could sit on it, and then there were her eyes. She stared at me with such intensity that I didn't know what to do. Her eyes were sharp with a gray coloring that reminded me of storm clouds. She said a semi-friendly hello, but I couldn't get over her eyes and the way she looked at me. Whether it was intentional or not she looked angry and I couldn't help but feel scared, but I didn't respond so that probably didn't help.

The bell rang and we broke eye contact. We went inside the classroom and that was our only interaction for a long while, even though I saw her every other day. Months passed before we ever talked again, and those months didn't treat me well. I fell deeper into mental illness and it was taking its toll on me. My face had no color besides the gray baggage under my eyes. My face was gaunt and sunken. You could even see it in the way I walked. I slouched to keep my eyes on the ground, and walked slowly almost without caring where I was going. I sat with my neighbor or in the library everyday, cried before swim practice, and watched as my neighbor, the only person, I knew forget about me.

Before I had even started school my parents pressured me to sign up for something, so I chose the swim team. I fortunately already swam competitively, so I didn't expect to feel as out of place. I did well for a while until in the middle of the swimming season, I had to get a second surgery on my feet. Pins in my feet were shifting, and to say the least that was bad and extremely painful. After the surgery we had to rearrange many of my classrooms if I was in to into the small and overcrowded rooms of my school. In one instance of this I was moved to an aisle seat in biology so I could get to my seat with minimal tripping. This move landed me right next to Ashely, the girl I had met in the beginning of the year.

Something I have failed to mention thus far is biology is a very hard class to pay attention in. Even the best of students would sometimes fall asleep in biology when the lights were off and the teacher was going through a presentation. So, in a class where most kids would talk to friends I had no one to turn to except for Ashely, and the student council member who was permanently in the "punishment seat" next to us. This student council happened to be justice, my unofficial enemy.

Avery was a student in the dual language immersion program, unfortunately that was the same thing I was enrolled in. In DLI students went through school learning half the time in english and the other half in a foreign language. We'd both gone through school learning in english and chinese. When I moved into a different school system with a different DLI program I met Avery. He was constantly on my nerves, always talking, interrupting, and being a general nuisance in my life. So I decided not to like him, and that was that.

We were in a secluded corner of the classroom, so it was only the three of us.  Avery talked constantly to Ashely and me during biology, we tried to ignore it but that only made it worse. We suffered through an hour and twenty minutes of his talking which felt like a lifetime until we made a game out of it.

Our biology teacher had given us the idea, when she threw a rolled up poster at his head in an attempt to get him to shut up. The rest of the unused posters, like the one our teacher threw, were conveniently placed under our desks. This resulted in me and Ashely throwing the posters at Avery's head whenever he began to talk again. While you might think that this would get us in trouble, we would even throw them at him when he answered questions. Our teacher and class could plainly see what we did and either laughed or didn't care.

Biology became the only thing I looked forward to, as weird as it seems biology, the bane of all freshman, became my lifeline. Every other day I got to go to biology, and I would talk with Ashely and see her smile. I had thought that she didn't want anything to do with me, even when I was sat next to her. Her eyes were still stormy and cold and she didn't show any facial expressions beyond a small smile in greeting. When I threw the first poster she chuckled and smiled at me, and I thought that might have been one of the most beautiful things I've seen in awhile.

Ashely smiled at me more after that, we began to talk to each other every other day, and she helped me to my next class which we were happy to find was the same class she had. At first we only talked about our biology notebooks but slowly our conversations shifted. She asked about my feet and I told her the story, but for the most part I asked about her. I was fascinated by her life and asked her questions almost everyday, so between jokes and small biology notes we talked.

The most fascinating type of stories were about her team, the colorguard. Before I transferred I had researched teams and clubs to join in the hope of making friends. During that time I had found the colorguard, but information was hard to come by, so eventually I gave up trying to join. One day I saw her sparkly red jacket with "Colorguard" prominently displayed and I knew I had to ask about it. She got really excited when I asked much to my surprise, and went on to tell me extensively about the high school color guard team.

While I had researched how to join the colorguard I hadn't spent much time researching color guard itself. If you've ever seen a marching band the color guard is the section of people dancing and spinning colorful flags and weapons. Ashely had shown me videos of the professional marching bands and color guards otherwise known as DCI and WGI, they were mesmerizing and I couldn't help but want a piece of the action. She showed me pictures of team members and videos of them winning the state championships. Everyone was in perfect sync with each other performing dazzling feats. They tossed they're flags and rifles 20 feet into the air and caught them without trouble.

After a bit we were moved next to each other in our next class, English, as well. She told me and the rest of our neighbors in English about her semi relationship with a boy in another color guard. She showed us all the texts and asked how she should respond, which we found much more entertaining than Romeo and Juliet. It went on for months, and eventually we exchanged numbers so I could help her with her blossoming relationship. We talked about him, and as I got more comfortable with her I teased her and joked about her concerns, and we'd even play games. Whether it was about the boy or what homework we had, we talked about everything. Her relationship with the boy fizzled out like a lot of young romances after they met in California during a trip, fortunately we kept talking.

Eventually she told me about the beginning of the summer marching band season. Only now in retrospect do I know that, that was one of the most significant moments for me and the other people that were about to come into my life. Despite not knowing, despite my past, the anxiety, the depression, despite everything that made even getting out of bed a chore, I said yes not knowing what I had gotten myself into.   

Thanks for reading, tell me what you like and what you don't! Tell me what you'd like to see in the future, I love suggestions! Thanks again for reading my story!

-Lilyanne