Loveb Irds

Michael II

Jeremy stuck his tongue out at me before entering the classroom. God, my best friend was such a dork.

I put my headphones back on and started walking to the library. Miss Smith wanted to see me after school there. She-demon was in New York, and Nadia didn't get home on Fridays until six.

I had time.

"Oh, Mikey, there you are! I thought that maybe you had forgotten." Miss Smith smiled and turned around to grab a packet of papers from the bookshelf behind her.

"No, I just had to walk a friend to a club real fast. What did you want to see me for?" I slid the headphones back down to the base of my neck.

She spun around, making her floral dress twirl around her as she handed the papers to me. "I was reading about this scholarship, and I thought you would be the perfect candidate for it. You're mixed race, right?"

I smiled. "Yeah, uh, half white, half Filipino-Ecudorian."

"Oh, perfect. You have to write an essay about your experience at school, coming from a household that has two different cultures."

Panic started filling my chest from beneath my red hoodie. I couldn't talk about stuff that happened at home. No one would want me at their school if I wrote anything about that.

"Erm, Miss Smith? No disrespect, but my dad, the white one, uh, doesn't live with us. I haven't seen him in years. My step-mom has family in South Africa, but we don't really adhere to any of those traditional kind of things. Like, I think it's her third cousins or something that she's met once at a wedding."

Miss Smith made an "o" shape with her mouth. "Well, let's go through the requirements to see if you could still write something. It's a big scholarship because campuses are trying to be more diverse."

She took back the stapled stack and started flipping through the pages. "Who puts the guidelines on the back?" She whispered to herself.

I cocked my head and tried to read some of the words for the underside of the paper. "Half of the tuition will be paid for if the student is to be part of the Ethnic Studies program."

Half of my tuition? I didn't want to major in anything close to that, but that would give me freedom to do other things if the college would pay for half of it. Hell, that might be the only thing I could use to convince my mother to let me go to college.

Nadia was all in favor of me going off and continuing my education after high school, but the she-demon wanted me to stay in New Jersey. She wanted me to stay so I could never get rid of her.

"Aha! Here!" Miss Smith shoved her pasty hand in my face with the paper.

I took it and started reading the guidelines and requirements of the essay.

"The participants of the scholarship contest should write about their experiences as being mixed-race children. This can include but not be limited to: clashing of cultures at home, finding balance between different parts of the lifestyle, racism experienced in the home or outside of the home, social ranking/standards set in the education setting, and/or how being mixed race affects one's everyday life.

The college board is asking for students of multiple races and cultures to write an essay based on their experience(s) in hopes that more light can be brought to the issues students can face because of their background.

The Ethnic Cultures Program is also trying to find the best candidates for understanding and bring multiple cultures together. They will be giving a guarantee for half of the tuition of a bachelor's degree to whoever wins the scholarship."