The Day Science Changed My Life

I love school, and nothing could ever keep me away. I haven’t missed a day since third grade and I am now in eleventh. Now, I think I’m going to break that record. Now, I feel like a bird in a cage. I have no say in anything, I am stuck in a place I don’t want to be, and as much as I peck, nothing will change. It was two weeks ago that- no, let me tell it from the beginning. We were walking through the halls on the first day when I heard somebody scream, “Geeze girl! Take a shower!”

Who me?  I guess I looked sort of freaked, because Scarlet, the best friend in the whole entire universe, noticed me freaking out in the slightest bit and said “Don’t worry it’s not you, anyway, who cares what they say?” The kid who said it was one of those senior guys who think they are awesome and get into trouble just to be talked about, the kind who are loud and obnoxious on purpose. He was talking about Alana Alcott, a girl I’ve barely ever heard of in my entire school years. The only memory of her I had was in of her in first grade, when she didn’t want to cut paper because she was afraid she would hurt its feelings.

“You know,” Scarlet said, “I’ve heard she hasn’t showered in a month”

“Yeah, Susan Bleckard puked last week when they had to sit next to each other,” said Levi. We talked about her for the next ten minutes. We told each other all the things we’ve heard or seen that has dealt with her. Before our first class that day I felt I had a pretty good understanding of her. All that day I went through school thinking about how she lives, why she never showers, how she feels, and why she just lets everything go by like nothing is happening.

The last period of the day, I had chemistry, the best class ever. I am friends with everybody there, the teacher is so fun, and I get all “A”’s. We do experiments that we don’t do in any other classes. I’ve been so excited for this project. Lib’s been talking about it for weeks. I’m talking about our semester-long experiment that is “awesome”, but that’s all he told us. He’s making us wait until that day, which we cannot stand. Lib is short for Mr. Libmen the most awesome teacher in the world. Usually he lets us pick our partners, and Levi and I always pick each other. No, Levi is not my crush, and no, we are not dating, but he is my closest guy friend and has been for as long as I can remember. Anyway, Lib decided that this time he wanted to mix it up and see how well we work with different people. I was alright with that since I am fine working with anybody, at least I thought I was. He was calling out names he drew from a hat to make it fair, and it was down to about six kids when my name was called. When he called my partner’s name, I couldn’t believe it; not because of who they are, but because I had no clue she was in my class. Well, I can’t say I didn’t care who they were because it will affect my grade and I have to deal with her for an entire semester. I was assigned to Alana Alcott.

“But Lib, I can’t work with her, you know I care too much about my grades!” I said.

“I can’t give you any special treatment just because you are a good student.” replied Lib

“But-”

“The answer is no, Em.” Cutting me off, “Yes, I do understand your concern, but no matter what you do will change this.”

I don’t get it, why would you do this? I left his room, fuming. I was fifty feet down the hallway, when I started screaming, started punching the walls and shoving anyone in my way. Nobody could stop me, I didn’t care how much trouble I got in because my life was already in a hole because of this project, so I might as well just keep digging. I didn’t actually do that, but I sure wanted to.

Over the next couple weeks I was tortured. Alana did absolutely nothing. I tried to assign parts to her so she can at least do something, but every time I asked her where her work was or what she will be doing, she’d just mumble something then get to work. Though she never actually did one thing, she was pretty good at faking it. At times, trying her to get her to do something, I would tell her to ask Lib about it. She would get up and wait in the line by his desk so she can ask him a question, and she would walk back with no answer. Since I was doing all of the work, I decided to stop completely.

“Why aren’t you working?” she asked me the second day I did nothing but read and murmur.

“Why aren’t you working?”

“I am”

“No you aren’t! How can you work when all you do is stare at the same page for an hour and a half!?!”

“As a matter of fact-”

“Just shut up! I don’t want to hear it!”

“But-”

“You know what?” I screamed, “You probably expect me to do all the work and you can just sit back and relax and let you get an ‘A’!” Many other words were shared, but thankfully, she was saved by the bell, otherwise I would have mentally torn her to shreds, and I hurriedly scooped up all my things and stormed out of the room, again.

On Friday, before most people got to the school, I went to see Lib. I told him I just need to work by myself on this, but as I suspected, he said I couldn’t. He started to say something like “Well, you’d be surprised, on what she…” but I cut him off before he was finished because I knew, or I thought I knew, that I knew her better than he did. After taking – well arguing really – in his room for seventeen minutes, we finally reached a settlement, that if I stop complaining and not  make a huge fuss over it, he won’t let that affect my grades. I was still in a frantic, revengeful stage and wanted to grind her into the ground until nobody can see her. One of the easiest ways to do that is rumors. If I heard her name in someone else’s conversation, I would pop in and tell them about this girl. The best part was that I didn’t even have to waste on drop of energy thinking of these, for at the beginning of the year we exchanged all the things we heard about her. Of course, I twisted some and made them worse, but nobody can blame me, I didn’t make them up.

On Monday, I woke up feeling great, probably because I spent all weekend with Scarlet telling her everything terrible in my life while she did the same. Everything kept me in a good mood that day, yeah, even science. When I walked into science, I saw Alana just sitting there at her desk with three notebooks and about a dozen books piled as high as a skyscraper on her desk. I was so confused, a million questions all started popping into my head all at once; Did that fight knock some sense into her? Did she actually work on the project? Does she know what it is? Why is she just sitting there? She really should be reading those, not staring at the spines. Where did she find so many books, and how did she get them here? “What is all of this?” I asked nicely, not wanting to ruin my great day.

“My work,” she said back to me. I couldn’t believe it; she said a full, understandable sentence!

“Work for what”

“This project, what else?”

“I don’t know, another class”

“Nope, all for the project.”

“Can I look at it?” I didn’t even wait for a reply to pick up a notebook and leaf through it. It was all there, practically everything I told her to work on during class, and more. “Geeze, you did all of this?”

“Well you did tell me to.” I couldn’t believe it, seven weeks of writing. I could tell she didn’t do all this over the weekend because she cited and dated each entry in the notebooks.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know tha-” I just stopped and left the room. I felt so incredibly bad I just went to the bathroom and cried. When I was feeling better, I went back in gathered my stuff and moved to a seat as far from anybody as I could get and stayed there for the rest of the period.

Alana and I stayed after school the next day to work on our project. I felt so awkward for what I said to her, and yet, she is going on like nothing has happened. Well, no, I can’t say that because I think she took as shower or something over the weekend and now, she talks. It seems like that fight made her realize something about herself. After school, we barely talked, not because she hated me, but because I felt so bad and I didn’t want to make it worse, though she did seem better. We stayed after about three other times, and each one, we’d talk a small bit more. When we compared our information, I was surprised to see that she did so much.

After finishing the project, neither of us thought we’d get a grade higher than a ‘B’ since we threw it together in like those few hours after school. Three weeks later, when Lib was handing out the scored sheets to the project, I didn’t want to know what it was so I never flipped it over. Levi, being the smart one he is, took my paper and read it with the most surprised face in the world. I thought it was terrible, but it actually was a ninety-six percent paper, the second highest in the class. I went over to Alana and we talked about how surprised we were. Neither of us believed we got the grade we did. We shared with each other what we did and thought as we worked alone for the majority of the project. Before we knew it, we were walking into my living room, still talking. She slept over that night and we had a blast. Although she did have a hygene problem, she was a great person who I know will get better. On Monday, Scarlet and Levi couldn’t understand why I invited her over and didn’t text them back all weekend. I told them pretty much what happened in two minutes, and they just don’t get it. I told them you always can’t jump to conclusions like we did at the beginning of this school year, and you always have to give second chances. Think about how life would be with no second chances. That’s why I’m inviting the three of them over my house this weekend, so Alana will get a second chance.