A Hero to the Story

I just finished reading the book Nineteen Minutes. I'm not sure how I feel about the fact that I can identify with each of the characters in the story. From the girl who is with her high school boyfriend simply because without him she doesn't know who she is, to the mom of the shooter...there is a bit of each one of them in each one of us. As I read about the bullying and the torment that went on in the life of the main character my heart ached as I remembered my Junior High days. I was in no way the “popular” girl but I wasn't a target...I simply existed. I remember vividly the outcasts, the kids whose hair stuck up in the back, who wore the same clothes to school each day, who always had food stuck in the brackets of their braces. I remember most especially the poor girl who had physically matured much quicker than the rest of us, no doubt in part to her diet of fast food and potato chips. She had glasses that looked like the bottom of the Coke bottles I drank from at lunch and a chest that double dribbled when she walked. Her shirts were always two sizes too big and stretched in an asymmetrical way that made the left side of her body always look off balance with the right. She wore sweat pants that typically had the remnants of her free lunch splattered across the thigh. There were so many things about this girl that screamed “loser” in my fourteen year old mind but despite all of that she always smiled. No matter what kind of day she was having she had a timid little wave and a smile that should have been on the cover of a magazine. I'd usually grace her with the upward nod of my head and then turn to make sure no one noticed. I don't remember ever being opening mean to her, in fact, she probably counted me among her friends. Perhaps that is the saddest part of this story, that me, a girl who would try her hardest to round the corner before she caught up to me was indeed considered her friend. I remember vividly a day in PE in which we had to run the mile. I could do it in my sleep but that wouldn't have fit with the image I was trying to project so I stayed back with some of the girls who didn't dare mess up their hair by breaking a sweat. As we flirted with the ninth graders running the stairs I watched as she misjudged a step. Her top heavy frame was no match for gravity and she flew through the air. She bounced not once but several times and she skidded to a stop at the feet of some of the more popular boys. Her glasses flew threw the air and landed feet away from crumpled body. I remember the laughter that erupted from the kids that had watched and the smattering of giggles as word spread of her horrific spill. I remember thinking to myself, “help her” and I remember being frozen with fear that someone might notice that I was her friend and therefore make me one of their targets. Over the years the story has changed as I retell it in my head. I no longer remember that actual ending to the tale. I don't remember if I reached my hand out to her and helped her up despite the ridicule and the glares. I may have laughed with them and snickered as she tried to recover. I may have simply turned away and pretended that I didn't see. I must have tried so hard to forget for fear I may have been counted amongst the bullies. The one thing that I remember is that she was back the next day with her smile and her glasses that were now crooked on the bridge of her nose and that regardless of the laughter she made her way up the steps one more time in an attempt to run that drill and for that reason and that reason alone there is a hero to the story....her.