Standing Up to Life

Chapter 2:

I WOKE UP to see my mom standing in the doorway. She could clearly tell that I had been crying again. I was sure that she had heard about what had happened that morning by the look of concern on her face. She saw that I was waking up, so she came over to my bed and gave me a hug.

"Sweetie, what happened?" Part of me hated it when she called me that, but part of me liked it for some reason.

I related to her all of the bullying crap that had happened to me that day. When I told her about what happened with Matt after school. She immediately got on the phone and called her boss to find out why that kid had been allowed on my bus – he said he would look into it. After a quick and silent dinner, I put on my clothes for soccer practice.

Soccer was the only sport I really liked to play. In all honesty it was the only one I had even a modest amount of skill in. I couldn't catch or throw to save my life, so the other normal sports of baseball and football were definitely out. On my soccer team I was a defensive sweeper. Even though I was so small, most of the time I managed to get the ball away from my opponent's team, and pass it to the offensive players on my team. Our team goal for that year was to make it into the city championships.

The team was coed, and I said, 'hi,' to all of my friends as I got there. The nice thing about my soccer team was that they were all the same age as me, meaning that I was the only one in the sixth grade; the rest were in fifth grade. I'd been playing with the same teammates for four years now, and we all pretty much got along. We benefited from having an awesome coach that understood that sports should be fun. Yes hard work was involved, but there was the human aspect to it that so many coaches didn't have. He understood that we were just kids.

We went through a lot of drills that night using cones and having other people try and get past with the balls, as well as some goal shooting against our goalie. Practice ended with a short scrimmage, our team divided into two. By the time practice ended I was thoroughly exhausted. I came home and sat down at the kitchen table with a bottle of Gatorade. My parents sat on either side of me while the TV was on in the background.

"Ooh I almost forgot!" I exclaimed and ran to get my backpack and pulled out the brochure and letter about the trip.

"Ms. Fitzgerald came up from the elementary school to give this to us today!" I showed my mom and dad the packet that Ms. Fitz had given us that afternoon. "I'd get to go to Florida and see Kennedy Space Center! They even take us to Space Camp!" I said excitedly. It had been a dream of mine to go to Space Camp ever since I watched the movie by the same title.

My dad looked at it and said, "I don't know, it's not cheap."

My mom looked at him and said, "Well I don't know that he would ever have this chance again though. This is really a once in a lifetime chance to do all of this."

My dad looked at us and said, "Okay we can look into it, I'm not saying yes until I can spend some time thinking about it first."

I hugged him and sat back down; knowing to push it any further at this point would be a good way to get a no. "So what's this I hear about you fighting today?" My dad asked.

"Umm... it wasn't really fighting..." I continued to relate the events of the day, though not as thoroughly as with Mom. I didn't talk to him as much about stuff. In all honesty he was at his job's beck and call twenty-four hours a day most of the time, which meant I didn't see him nearly enough.

After I finished relating the story he looked at me and said, "Maybe I should find this Matt kid and teach him some manners." Flexing his muscles...

I had little doubt that he would think about doing that, but Mom and I said, "That's a bad idea, then you would just get in trouble."

"Well, let me know if you have any more trouble with him and we'll deal with it." Just at that moment the phone rang and Mom picked it up.