Little Differences

The alarm goes off and my morning routine begins. Mom comes in and forces me awake, I get dressed, eat breakfast and run to the bus stop. I meet Jessie at the bus stop. “Hi, best friend”, she says giving me a warm hug. “Hello, best friend”, I reply returning the hug. “You look weird today”, Jessie says with a chuckle. “Is it my hair? I didn’t have much time to tend to it”, I say while smoothing my hair down. “No, it’s not that, silly. You have your worry face on. Why?” I hesitate at first, but Jessie is my best friend and we never keep secrets. “Well, Alani Yang came to my house last night”, I tell Jessie. “Ewww, you mean you hung out with meanie Alani?”, Jessie says with a disgusted look on her face. “No, she ran away from home and needed a place to stay”, I explain to Jessie. “Anyways, she left before my parents and I got to the door” Thankfully, the bus pulls up and breaks up the awkward look that Jessie is giving me.

When we get on the bus, I look around for Alani, but she is nowhere to be found. All kinds of scary thoughts rush into my head about what could have happened to her last night, but I quickly shake them out of my head. “I hope she’s okay”, I say to no one. “Who?”, Jessie asks me with confusion in her voice. “Alani”, I reply. “Oh, don’t worry yourself. I’m sure she’s somewhere inside making another kid’s life miserable”, Jessie says with a frustrated look on her face. “Why don’t you like her?”, I ask Jessie. I am becoming concerned about the negative attitude that Jessie is displaying towards Alani.

I know she can be mean and hard to deal with, but we should be nice to everyone. “Why don’t I like her? Do you really have to ask?”, she says with a roll of the eyes. “I know, I know but she’s really not that bad”, I say. “Plus, I have a feeling that something is seriously wrong with her”, I say to Jessie. “I’ll say”, Jessies says in a sarcastic tone. “No, I think that she may be in trouble” “You worry too much”, Jessie says as we head to our first class of the day.

I get into homeroom and look around the class for Alani. There she is on the other side of the room. “Hi, Alani. Where’d you go last night? We came looking for you, but you were gone”, I ask her with a puzzled expression. Alani looks up at me and I notice that she has a bandage over her left eye.

“What happened to you”, I ask her, feeling very concerned. “None of your business! Now, get out of my way, shrimp!”, she yells at me with so much anger in her voice. Startled, I run to my seat and fight back the tears. How can she be so mean to me when I’ve tried to be so nice to her? I even stood up for her against my own best friend. From now, on, I am going to stop caring about her. I’ll show her how a shrimp can act!