school help: Can somebody read my short story? - Help.com

Can somebody read my short story?

If you could take 5 minutes to read as much as you can about this short story I have to write for English class, I would love to hear any feedback about any or all of it. The assignment is to write about a moment that was significant in the author’s life, and this is what I chose to read. Any comments appreciated:

I started public school 7th grade, and things were going pretty well for me. I got good grades, I lived close to school and I didn’t have to wear collared shirts anymore. My transition was pretty good despite some changes, and I was very grateful for the way things were turning out for me. But something was missing. And it wasn’t until a year later that I figured out what that was.
It all started when a classmate stuffed something in my pocket after health class on a Friday afternoon in early March. She was a weird kid, not that I didn’t like her. She had a tendency to get worked up on various occasions, and sometimes her energy came out in sudden bursts of excitement around certain people. I happened to be one of them. Since it was the last period at the end of the day, she was bursting with excitement to go home for the weekend. She was rushed up to me, yelled something to me, jumped up and down and stuffed something in my pocket before running away with the rest of the crowd. I shrugged it off, as it was Friday and now officially the weekend.
I groped in my pocket to see what it was she put there, and glimpsed at something shining in my hand. A small, silver dime with FDR’s face stared back at me as I continued walking toward the bus. Not knowing what else to do with it, I left it in my pocket, boarded the bus and looked for my seat by the window toward the back.
It would be the last time I would sit on this bus before I moved to my new house over the weekend. It would be the last of several moves around Maryland I made at the time as my house was being renovated, which was supposed to be ready that day. I watched the swarms of rambunctious students behind the fog of my breath clouding the window, and let my head rest on the pane of glass beside me. I waited inevitably for that strange kid to get on the bus, searching through the sea of students for him with his instrument he always brought back from school. To my surprise, I saw him getting on the bus with the person he always talked to, took a step up, and I quickly looked away toward another bus before he came. I waited patiently.
I tried the best I could to hide from him, to look away and not make eye contact. But I knew he’d come around too it soon enough. And surely enough he did.
“Hi,” he said. “What’s up?” I tried my best to act as indifferent as I could. I probably shrugged. “How’s it going?” he asked again. I waited for some other kid to listen in and join the conversation, but it never happened.
“I’m fine I guess,” I conceded. I looked out the window and waited for him to move away from me.
“Is this yours?” he said. I turned around, careful to avoid his eyes, and noticed the small dime that the girl stuffed in my pocket had fallen onto the seat space between us.
“Oh you can keep it, that’s fine.” I said. I looked away. He started talking again.
“Heads or tails?” he offered.
“No, that’s fine.” I said.
“Come on, heads or tails?” he offered again.
“No, really, it’s fine,” I said, trying to remain indifferent.
“Come on, chose one.” I turned around to see him looking at me, waiting for a response. I finally gave in.
“Okay. Heads.” He flipped it. It spun in the air, making a metallic whir as it flew upward, thumping with a land in his palm. He turned it over with a smack on his other hand, opened it up, revealing the backside of the coin.
“Aw, too bad,” He said. “”Wanna try again?”
“I’m okay,” I said, trying to give him a reason to stop talking. Though I really didn’t want him to.
“Pick a side,” he insisted.
“Tails.”
He flipped it again, but this time, it went flying to the back of the bus into who knows where, landing with a metalic ring that was lost in the incessant chatter in the back of the bus.
“Oh sorry, do you want me to get that?” he asked, getting ready to get out of his seat.
“No, that’s fine, I don’t need it,” I said this time, really expecting him to leave now that the dime was gone. But he stayed anyway.
He didn’t move. No matter how frequently I looked away, no matter how much I tried to give him a reason not to talk to me or pay attention to me, he kept talking. I wanted more than anything to prove somehow that he wasn’t just talking, that he wanted to talk for a reason, and I felt the only way I could figure out was if I gave him every reason to stop talking to me without being rude and see if he talked to me anyway. He still talked. But it didn’t make sense why he did.
“Just leave him alone, he obviously doesn’t want to talk to you,” somebody said from the back of the bus. I didn’t know what to make of it.
“Am I bothering you?” he asked.
“No,” I said almost too quickly, shaking my head.
He looked at me again, this time, more seriously.
“Do you think I’m making fun of you?” he asked.
My head seemed to sink. I felt so stupid when he asked me that question. I wasn’t sure what to think. Is he trying to make this hard for me? Why does it seem so difficult to understand? Thoughts of his immeasurable cruelty and insincerity pulsed through me as I imagined the possibility that he went through all that trouble to pretend to be nice, contrasted immediately with uncertainty and doubts that they might not be true. Why is he so nice to me? Is he being fake? Does he feel sorry for me? I couldn’t think of a reason for the way he acted around me.
“I don’t know, you tell me,” I concluded, not knowing what to say.
His facial expressions and his body language changed, the tone in his voice seemed to go down along with the rest of his demeanor as he prepared to say something different to me. I waited anxiously.
“Look,” he said, “I don’t do that kind of stuff.”
And something struck me. I wasn’t sure what it was, but for a moment it felt like nothing was missing anymore. The emptiness I felt, that missing feeling, was no longer there. For a moment, his intentions still weren’t clear to me, but I felt strangely content, like something was complete despite that feeling that something was missing. Yet almost as soon as that thought came to me, I was struck with another.
It was then I realized I wouldn’t ride the bus again, and this was probably the last time I would talk to him. All of a sudden I didn’t want to move, I didn’t want to go back to the newly renovated house, I wanted to stay, to keep riding the bus, to figure out the rest of what happened and was going on. But I knew that wouldn’t happened. And it struck me like nothing else did before.
All these thoughts flashed through me as we approached his bus stop before he got off. Each second I was thinking desperately what to say.
“Bye! I’ll see you Monday,” he started saying, getting ready to get off the bus.
My mind was blank. I was struck by the realization that I would never see him again, that I missed some kind of chance or opportunity to do something, not knowing what that was. I wanted desperately to say everything on my mind, and I tried to speak.
“It doesn’t matter…” I started, to say that I wouldn’t be on the bus Monday because I was moving. But the words didn’t come out.
“What’s that? It doesn’t matter?” he said. “Okay, see you Monday then,” he said, and got off the bus.

************************************

I felt miserable. When I got home, so many questions plagued my mind, all those unfinished dialogues we had on the bus seemed to be left up in the air, open to speculation and wild interpretation. I couldn’t focus while I tried to pack, I felt like too much was missing as I placed things into their boxes for the last time, and I couldn’t move myself to keep going. His voice echoed through my mind, pounding against my head, I couldn’t stop thinking about everything he said to me each time he sat next to me on the bus. It meant so much to me now, but I didn’t know why.
I couldn’t take it any longer. I decided to take a walk around the neighborhood, something I did when I felt lonely or down, hoping afterwards I would be able to focus on finishing the move. I wanted so badly to stop thinking about it, but I knew the only way I could was if I could stay in that neighborhood for just a little longer before I left. But I knew I couldn’t.
It wasn’t until I made my way back home that I heard the first person on my stroll. It was a soft jingling noise in the distance; it gradually got louder as it came from behind me. But I didn’t care who it was running behind me; it didn’t matter because there was only one person in the world I wanted to talk to then.
I continued pouting to myself as I walked back home, when suddenly the jingling noise stopped. I still didn’t bother to look back.
“Hi,” said a familiar voice, one that was stuck in my head since I left the bus. I then turned around to notice him, standing beside me with a dog on its leash.
“Oh… um… hi,” I said almost in disbelief, suddenly now trying to gather my thoughts.
This time when he talked to me, I wasn’t second guessing his intentions anymore, I wasn’t analyzing his words for their intended meaning, but I still didn’t understand why.
“Look, I’m sorry if I kind of blew you off when you’d talk to me on the bus…” I started, thinking how to formulate the rest of an apology.
“Oh no, that’s fine, don’t worry about it,” he said, trying to cut me off. But I felt compelled to finish my thoughts this time.
“I just didn’t know you were trying to be… um…” and it hit me again. What was he trying to be? If he wasn’t making fun of me, what was he trying to be? Kind? Outgoing? Polite?
“A friend?” he suggested
Then I knew what was missing. And it didn’t matter that I was moving.

This open post was written 12 months ago | V/U/S: 296, 2, 3 | Edit Post | Leave a reply | Report Post

Mind, school, Bus, Window, house, Head, reason, Person, matter, Sea (How Tags Affect Reciprocity)

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