Fiction genre: Short story (Brenda's perspective)

The New Girl

In fourth grade, I was kind of a nerd, but I didn’t know that I was. I wore glasses and had braces and I didn’t know anything about makeup or about what was cool and what wasn’t, and my dad had lost his job the year before, so we didn’t have much money for designer clothes anyway, so to make a long story short, I was not a fashionable kid. To make matters worse, I had a speech impediment—a lisp—and I had trouble with my Rs, so I didn’t talk much if I could avoid it. I wasn’t shy, but I had a hard time connecting with other kids my age. I looked like a geek and talked like a freak and had peculiar interests like reading and writing and worst of all, I LIKED school… So as you can see, I was a weirdo who didn’t fit in. And most of the time I was okay with that. But sometimes, it got lonely. Mostly, I just wanted to have ONE friend so that I didn’t always have to sit alone on the bus or eat alone at lunch. It would have been nice to have ONE friend to call about homework. ONE friend to have sleepovers with. ONE friend to partner with in class when we had to do group work.

I started to get so lonely that I stopped wanting to go to school at all. I would fake sick in the mornings so I could stay home. I’d tell my mom I felt feverish and I’d warm my forehead with a hot, wet washcloth and then hold the thermometer to a light bulb until it read 100 degrees or higher. One time, I held the thermometer on the lightbulb too long. It read 107 degrees.

My mom said, “Congratulations, Brenda, you’re officially dead. Now why don’t you tell me what’s really going on?”

I finally told my mom why I was avoiding school. “No one likes me,” I said.

She said, “Oh Brenda, I’m sure people like you. You just need to try harder. Extend yourself. Ask someone to sit next to you. Reach out and talk to someone. Muster up your courage! Be brave! I know you can do it.”

That day, I went to school resolved that I would make a friend, and that day, I met Margaret. She got on the bus on the stop after mine and I knew right away that she was new. Here was my chance! She didn’t know me, she didn’t know how big a nerd I was, I had a chance to prove to her that I was...normal. So even though it was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, I stepped up and said, “You can sit with me.”