It was just another Tuesday at school, sun shining bright, my friends sitting on the steps in front of the high school waiting for all of us to arrive. I sat down at my usual spot third from the top, crying. After what felt like ages, I heard someone say, “Sharlene, what’s wrong?” I slowly look up to find Ashley standing in front of me.

“You come here, see me crying, and only now you ask me what’s wrong. You know what’s wrong, you are the one who bullied me since the beginning of last year. I trusted you never to do that to me”, I yelled back.

“Sharlene, please calm down. I was only trying to help you, I knew you couldn’t stand up for yourself, so I was trying to teach you how to in the only way I could.”

“Seriously, you were trying to teach me to stand up for myself, it certainly doesn’t seem like it, couldn’t you teach me that in any other way?”

“Sharlene, did you not hear what I just said? I don’t know of any other way to help you?”

“You know what Ashley, whatever.”

I blankly stared at her. Eyes shifting right and left to Ashley’s unresponsiveness. By that time the bell had rung and we all had to get to our first period classes. At the end of my first class I casually made my way towards the tables outside the art room. Sitting at my usual spot I started to work on my Chinese homework. Moments later I saw someone come up and sit in front of me, discreetly looking up I noticed Ashley sitting there. I was about to say something, but I was afraid of something. The silence, no it couldn’t be, the anger, maybe, oh I don’t know.

I waited and waited, but neither of us said anything. I looked around to see people talking all throughout the cafeteria, in the art room and on the track, however, right here around us, I could hear the buzz coming from the fan blades above me. I finally couldn’t handle the silence, so I picked up my stuff and just walked off to the library to finish the rest of my homework.    

As I was eating lunch I heard Ashley ask me, “You know what Sharlene, I can’t deal with this anymore, would you please just tell me why you have been ignoring me all afternoon? What did I ever do to you?”

Just as I was about to reply,  I remembered something that my sister once told me. If you constantly worry about something and remember everything someone has done to you, you will always have some form of conflict with that person and you will never be able to move on with your life successfully.

Moving on with my life, what an impossible task. I’ve always moved before the tension between my friends have gotten this bad, but now I can’t. I can’t take the easy path and just run away, for there is no where to run to.

“Sharlene, you there? Are you going to answer my question?”

“Huh? Sorry Ashley did you say something?”

“I just wanted to know why you were ignoring me.”

“Well, I didn’t want to keep this conflict going, so I just let it go, but why are you so oblivious to the world around you?”

“Oblivious, what are you talking about?”

“Ashley, you disregard my feelings and you don’t even bother to say sorry to me. At least I have sympathy for other people’s feelings and I don’t just say whatever I want. It doesn’t work that way, there will never be peace among us if I said whatever I wanted to. Even if it doesn’t work out at least I’ve tried to understand where you’re coming from.”

Standing at our normal meeting spot after school outside the high school office, I look around me to see everyone talking and having what seems like a blast, but me? No, I’m just standing there surrounded by those I call my friends, feeling lonely but for some reason I was okay with that. Not wanting to miss my bus home, I made my way down the steps waiting for a new day to start.