Everyone has a time where they feel like they’re the only one that exists. No friends, no one will talk to you, you might as well be a ghost to the world. Or in this case, the world was high school. During the time I was in high school, I thought high school was a death sentence. I didn’t know if I would make it out alive or not, but does anybody?
Hello, I'm Stacy Newman. Well high school had started and my parents dragged me to a new high school. You know that magic trick where you can pull the tablecloth out from the dishes on the table, and the dishes are supposed to stay on the table, but they fall and break in a bunch a little pieces? Well that's what it felt like. The only good thing that came out of the whole ordeal was that we didn't have to move; the high school was only thirty minutes away. Why couldn't I of just have stayed at my old school? Oh I remember, my counselors and principal think i’m smart, so they recommend I go to a preppy private school. Because I love my parents, I told them I would try it out.
Jump ahead a few months, I was just starting to like it at this new high school. I befriended girls from the so called popular group; well that didn't last for very long. Hope (the leader of the popular group) said it was because I don't have a so called “off switch”. I know I can talk a lot, but I didn’t think it talked that much. But it seemed like every day Hope always loved to remind me, and everyone else of how I was cursed with ability of not being able to shut up. With her constant torment, I thought I would give her a taste of her own medicine. She likes to have to have her own opinion about me and other people, or in other words she absolutely loves to gossip about people.
When I got home that same evening, I grabbed a sheet of paper and a pencil, then began to write down all the things I could say around school about Hope. You wouldn’t believe the engenius things I came up with: she's cheating on her boyfriend Eli, secretly putting together another popular group, or I could say, since she gives me a hard time, she could be jealous of me. After I was finished, I went into the restroom to brush my teeth and put on my pajamas, then I climbed into bed and drifted off to sleep with a big smile on my face.
The next morning I woke up and realized that the smile I had was still there, and I was even more confident than ever before; I was going to do this and take her down. When I got to school, I noticed the two girls that are pretty much Hope’s entourage, Paris and Hannah. They were standing by a set of the lockers. No second thoughts entered my head as I make my way toward them; I had my list of rumors memorized, and I told of them both all three of them. Of course they didn't believe me, so I had to come up with some proof. I went onto Instagram, then went to Hope’s profile, and scrolled through her pictures till I found one where she was with a different guy than Eli, then I showed Paris and Hannah. They were so shocked that their best friend could ever do such a thing. I made an excellent choice on picking to tell them first because Paris and Hannah were about to do all the work for me.
By the end of the day, the whole entire school was whispering about at least one of the rumors, “did she really cheat on Eli?”, “I thought she was devoted to Paris and Hannah, why is she making another group? To make herself look good?” So many questions ran through everyone's minds. I had done it, and I was feeling pretty good about myself. When I got home, my parents told me they receive a call from the school about me spreading rumors about Hope. Pretty much all I remember about that night was a lot of yelling and then I was sent to my room, and I'm pretty sure that I was grounded, too.
School was much worse. Hope found out that it was me who spread the rumors. While I walked in the hallways, all I was getting was awful looks; the people I used to talk to, they decided to shun me. I was the only one that I could talk to; at lunch every time I asked if I could sit at a table with some one already there, someone always seems to say, “we're full” or “this seat is saved”, but we all know that neither of them are true. All I remember when I arrived home that day I ran straight to my bedroom so I could sob until I couldn't sob anymore.
For the next three years of high school, I was given so much crap for saying those rumors. Pretty much nobody really talked to me, at least willingly. Now, like in a school project or a partner project in class and they’re forced to talk to me. But i’ve been out of high school for at least five to six years now and the reason I started telling you about my terrible four years of high school, is because it's happening all over again. I’ve been working at my old high school as their new choir director. Well, you honestly wouldn't believe who's also working here. Hope! She's a counselor; that woman shouldn’t be talking to students about their feelings because she doesn't care about their feelings. She is the last person that's qualified for that position, but the school was desperate and needed a replacement.
Of course Hope hasn't changed in all these years. She made her own little teacher popular group. She has teacher mixers and only invites her little group of so called friends. And one day after one of her mixers, all the teachers seemed to be giving me dirty looks. It's happening all over again. So I went up to Hope and demanded that she tell me what she said to the other teachers. When she told me I wasn’t shocked one bit; she brought up all the crap that happened freshman year. Everything was coming crashing down once again. How could this be possible?
I confronted Hope once more, and told her what she was doing was completely uncalled for. And I think that very night she took a really hard look at herself because the next day when she arrived at the school, she apologized and by the end of the day all the rest of the teachers were talking to me again. Everything was finally over and all that tension has dissipated; I finally feel comfortable at the high school now.