On Wednesday, for Youth, in 2021, I was at my old school staying late with my friends, Joshua and Jimena. We were having fun playing volleyball and basketball in the gym, waiting for our pizza for dinner. This day was the day when I realized being heartless could bring out the worst and good in people.

While we were playing volleyball and basketball in the gym, I was thirsty and decided to get water for me, Jimena, and Joshua. Joshua and Jimena were my friends for a couple years at school. I walked out of the gym into the empty hallway leading to the kitchen, where the water bottles were. 

Then, I got a text message from my mom. I decided to ignore the text message just until I got the water bottles. I put my phone back into my back pocket. I didn’t want to know what it said, either if she was going to tell me to do something, or I had to go home. While walking closer to the kitchen, the smell of pizza grew stronger. I then saw around six boxes of pizza all stacked into one stack on the table in the middle of the kitchen. I still heard the vague sounds of laughter and chatter from the people playing basketball and volleyball in the gym. I saw the water bottles under the kitchen table. I went down to grab the water bottles. I then decided to stop ignoring my mom and open the text message. 

As I was reaching to grab the water bottles, I took my phone out of my pocket and opened the message with my right hand. The message read, “We are moving you to a different school next year”, with a smiley face after the sentence. I was shocked and surprised, however, I had a feeling I was going to move schools after that year anyway. I hated that school anyway. It made me feel annoyed every time I stepped foot into that building. I was just shocked at how sudden that message was. 

I rummaged my hand around in the plastic baggage around the water bottles. I eventually grabbed the three water bottles. I put my phone back in my pocket so I could carry all of the water bottles, and started to walk back to the gym with them. 

When I went into the blue and gold gym and placed the water bottles on the bleachers, I called Joshua and Jimena saying, “Hey! I have your water!” They stopped playing volleyball and came over to the bleachers. When they came over, I decided to tell them that I was moving schools. As they were grabbing their water bottles, I started to open mine. Before I drank my water, I said, “I’m moving schools next year”.

 They both stopped and stared at me for a couple of seconds. I then drank my water. Of course, I didn’t feel bad that I was moving schools, or leaving them. I didn’t feel anything at all. I felt numb to everything that was happening around me. Joshua said, “What? I thought you were staying until high school.” Jimena still gave me her shocked look waiting for me to have any reaction to what I had just said. “Yup”, I said. They both waited a little bit to see if I had anything else to say. Joshua then said, “Where are you going?” “I don’t know”, I said.

 I honestly didn’t know and I didn’t care. I cared about nothing about anything happening around me or of what was going to happen next. “So just like that, you’re leaving your school of twelve years just to go to a school you don’t even know about?” “Yup”, I said. I should have felt broken or destroyed that I was going to a different school instead, but I felt relieved to finally leave that school. I didn’t tell them that because they already knew that was true. 

Jimena looked at me, and I looked at her. “So do you not care?” she said. “Not really. You both knew that I hated this school anyways. Why would it matter?” I asked. “It matters because I thought you were going to stay because of us. We thought you were gonna stay because you cared about us?” she said. “I do, I just hate this school”, I said. “But we are here and you don’t hate us. By your actions right now it literally makes me think you don’t care. You have no emotions and you can’t even say that you’re sorry for moving or anything”, she said. “I do care”, I said. “Then show it”, she said.

That was the day I began to lose those two friends. I had ghosted them for the summer because I didn’t know what to say to them. I ended up feeling sorry for not showing any emotions and being the reason why a good friendship ended. I realized you should care more about what people think about you when it comes to relationships.  I learned how to be more emotional about topics that should make you emotional because people learn you based on your actions. When you show emotion, it makes the people around you feel closer to you and understand what you’re going through. Being heartless in emotional situations makes people think that you are a careless person, when you could not be, but it was just in that situation where you were heartless.