Yearbook.

Under a mattress isn’t the place one might expect someone to store their year book, but I have hidden those forbidden pages filled with black and white memories in that very place since I received it in eighth grade.  Occasionally, I will flip through the pages to refresh the burns that are still scabbing over my heart just to remind myself how far I’ve come in only a year. Somehow, with every secret telling of my past, the glossy recollections automatically fall open to a certain page. The page isn’t particularly special: a just picture of varies students on the campus. But in the bottom right hand corner of that page, a seemingly unimportant snapshot never fails to catch my flickering eyes.

In such a small middle school, there was no need for a cafeteria; the students just brought their lunches from home. We ate according to our assigned homeroom classes of only twenty people. Naturally the boys and girls separated excluding a small group of girls with a certain brash, flirtatious manner. My clan, however, sat apart in the front of the classroom on a scuffed, black-topped table. There were four of us on this particular day, myself included. The three other girls were quite different from myself. In fact, they were my polar opposites.

I sat quietly in my blue school chair, picking miserably at my cinnamon raisin bagel I had brought for lunch that day. The humid scent of an oncoming rain shower floated in from the second story window, reflecting my irritable mood.

The other girls giggled around me. One sat to my left, and two sat across from my position. The girl on my left was deeply tanned, even in the bleak, sunless peak of winter. Her Filipino heritage was also obvious in her thick bundle of dark chocolate curls and her glistening amber eyes.  Her physique was kept dangerously slender from her intense dance schedule. She had been dancing for thirteen years; she was good and knew it.

The girls across from me were far more talkative than the stoic dancer. The one directly across from my seat was, in fact, addressing me. As my habit went, I tuned her out, only hearing glimpses of the blistering phrases that comprised her morbid lecture on how many calories were in my bagel. She was the unelected leader in the group, a take charge kind of girl. Her near white skin was beautifully blemished with freckles, and her creamy coffee-hued hair floated tenderly to the base of her elegant neck. The movement of her cherry stained lips drew in my attention once more. Afraid to glance up at her disapproving eyes, colored a soft grey-blue, I bowed my head as her malicious words hit me time and time again.



“You’re fat. You’re ugly. You’re so emo. Just go kill yourself.”



I had thoroughly lost my appetite, but so had the other girl, who was perched daintily next to my attacker. Locks of once long, blonde hair were cut sharply across her jaw line. The colorless flesh on her face sunk into her skull, and her blue eyes, although slightly glazed over, still burned with starvation. Yet, she chewed her bland noodles slowly, and when she thought no one was watching, she would quietly spit the food out into a napkin.

My frown deepened, and I felt my heart lurch with pity towards my special case of a friend. Although she tormented me daily along with the other two, I somehow managed to tolerate her Maybe because we had been near sisters for six years. Maybe because I was born too empathetic, idealistic, and stubborn to let go. Or maybe it was the promise I made. I promised myself although she has abandoned me in my time of need, that I would never think of doing the same to her. I swore to endure her daily beatings and be there until she flat out told me she no longer wished to see me again.

A fierce look of determination sparked in my eyes as a woman from the yearbook staff sauntered into the classroom, pulled out an amateur digital camera and smiled.

“Say cheese!”