Learning to Fall

When I was little, I barely spoke. I was generally just a really quiet kid. Anybody outside of my immediate family, which consisted of my parents, Zack, Ryan and me, made me nervous. Now, at almost 17 years old, I’m still on the quiet side, yet not quite as bad as I was.

Zack was always the one who would complain. That’s probably the reason I feel really weird right now. Mom just placed a bowl of mashed potatoes on the table, and Zack’s not here to complain about how much he hates them.

Mom looks at the bowl carefully for a second, almost as if she’s second guessing her decision to make them for dinner tonight. But we can’t avoid eating potatoes for the rest of our lives, so I take the bowl and spoon some onto my plate. She smiles briefly and then turns back to the other side of the kitchen.

Mom hasn’t been the same since she got that phone call at nearly 2AM one week ago. It’s completely understandable. She lost her oldest child to a drunk driver. No mother should ever have to go through that.

I feel Ryan kick me underneath the table and points at Mom while her back is turned and pretends to silently cry. I nod in understanding; Mom’s been crying when she thinks we don’t know.

“So,” Dad says, sitting down at the table. Mom seats herself next to Ryan, purposely avoiding the spot that used to belong to Zack. “Are you ready for school?”

“I just have to get my stuff together,” Ryan says. He’s going into the 8th grade.

“Have you gotten everything you need?”

Ryan nods. The first day of school is tomorrow, September 3rd. There’s no doubt that it will be awful. Everybody’s going to stare at me and say, ‘oh, that’s the girl whose brother died’.

“Well, Stells,” Dad starts, using the nickname he gave me when I was really little. “You’re going to be a junior. How does that feel?”

“Weird…”

“Why?”

“I have to start the whole college thing… It was painful enough when-” I stop myself. Mentioning Zack is probably not the best idea.

“Oh. Well don’t worry about it yet,” Dad says, eyeing Mom carefully. We never know when she could just break out into tears. I’m surprised she hasn’t yet.

I nod to myself and Ryan shrugs, continuing to eat his dinner. Suddenly, I’m not hungry anymore. Just looking over at Zack’s empty seat is bad enough. Thinking about him is making me worse.

“Can I be excused?”

I don’t wait for the answer, but Mom nods when I’m halfway out the kitchen door.

*

As I expected, the first day of school has been really bad so far. When I walked into homeroom at 8:30 this morning, every single person in the room stared at me as I walked to my seat. I’m a self-conscious person as it is!

But now, I’m sitting in my AP math class surrounded by all seniors. This is definitely the worst class I’ve been to all day. When I got my schedule and saw that they put me in AP math, I was kind of excited. I mean, I love math and I’m good at it, so why not? But when I got here, my enthusiasm disappeared. I’m the only junior in a class of seniors. A class of seniors who all were friends with, or knew, my brother.

So far, three boys have passed me notes. The first one said ‘I’m so sorry about what happened’ and the other two said something like that, I think. I can’t be sure because they were almost illegible.

At 2:44, I close my notebook because the bell is going to ring in about a minute. A few others around me do the same, and just as I put my backpack on my desk, the teacher, Mrs. White, calls out my name.

“I need to speak with you after class,” she tells me.

My cheeks turn bright red, I’m sure, as a bunch of people look over at me and stare for a few seconds before turning back to whatever they were doing.

What could she possibly want to talk to me about? How she’s ‘so sorry that I lost my brother’? That’s the only thing I can think of. Already I’ve had quite a few teachers that I don’t even know come up to me and talk about how great Zack was. I almost burst into tears the first few times.

30 seconds later the bell rings and everyone gets out of the room as fast as they can. Except me. I take my time getting up and walking up to her desk where she’s waiting for me.

“Stella, I understand that you’re a very bright girl when it comes to math, correct?”

She keeps her eyes on me as I struggle for words; I wasn’t expecting that.

“Um, yeah. I guess so.”

“Well good, because I have a bunch of seniors who need a lot of help with basic math.” She pulls out a clipboard from a drawer and lifts up a few papers. “I was wondering if you would be interested in being a tutor. It would be credit towards your final grade.”

I process all of this new information. Me tutor a senior? I think I would feel awkward. But then again, it would go towards my grade and I really could use a high math grade to send to colleges…

“Okay,” I say. “I’d be happy to.”

“Excellent,” Mrs. White exclaims, writing my name down on the list. “I will let you know as soon as possibly who you will be helping. It really is such a great help, Stella. They need to raise their math grades for college.”

I nod, slightly taken aback by how grateful she really is.

“Well, you should get going. You don’t want to miss your bus, do you?”

I nod again, even though that there’s no bus for me to make. My mom picks me up. I step out of the classroom and am met with a crowded hallway full of seniors at their lockers. I walk quietly down the hall and make a right, coming into the junior hallway. I take ten minutes at my locker and wander outside to wait for my mom. I end up waiting another half hour before she shows up, claiming that work was hectic. She was probably home early and lost track of time because she started crying about Zack. I wouldn’t blame her, if that were the case.