It was a regular day of walking to school. Kicking the stones on the sidewalk while looking up at the dark gloomy sky until water droplets hit my face. My legs started to walk faster to avoid getting completely soaked. Walking into the doors of school is one of the hardest things, It's hard to avoid the eyes of the other students in school. You can’t do anything without someone seeing you, so if you make a mistake, that’s the only thing that you’ll be remembered for. Looking down at my clothes, I make sure that I don’t look terrible, don’t want to be called “wet dog” for the rest of my school life. There weren’t many drops on my shirt but I went to the bathroom to dry off anyway. Peaking inside and listening will make sure that no one else is in there to see me. There is no sound so I go inside and turn on the hand dryer to dry off my pants in shirt. The hand dryers are very loud, it is sure to draw attention to me. There are footsteps in the hallway, my heart starts to race as I look down to see if my shirt is completely dried. It has finished drying so I walk out but run into someone. We apologize to each other and go our own ways. But I couldn’t help thinking about what just happened, all of these different thoughts run through my mind as I head to my first class of the day. As I walk in, I see a note on the board of the things we are doing in class today, one of them reads; presentations. 

I sit down at my desk and freeze. We were never told this. Why bring it up out of nowhere? Presentations are the worst thing, if you mess up once, the whole class starts laughing and whispering to each other. All I want to do is run and hide, I can’t make a fool of myself in front of everyone, no one in here likes me even though I never did anything to them to make them hate me, I always just assume. The person next to me is already preparing, should I do the same? What is the presentation even about anyway, I don’t remember what we learned last week? All I remember is worrying about the things that needed to be done that Friday at home. Of course, I spaced off during class, It's all I ever do when I feel super anxious. When the teacher walked in, my body has a meltdown. My body heats up to over 100 degrees to the point where sweat starts to drip down the inside of my arms. My heart begins to race, even faster than the time in the bathroom this morning. My stomach starts to turn and hurt to the point where I feel like throwing up. My mouth and throat become dry and the air that comes out of my mouth sounds weak and pathetic. Tears start to fill my blurry eyes as I become dizzy and look up at the teacher. Everything suddenly becomes silent as my ears start to ring. I need to escape. I quickly raise my hand and the words leave my mouth before the teacher even notices me. My legs start to move without thinking and now I’m in the bathroom, in a stall, trying to slow my breathing to calm down. Tears start to fall and make marks on my pants, I don’t know what to do. Staying in here will only get me in trouble and I’m sure the presentation is worth a lot of points as well. I wipe my eyes and nose with the cheap toilet paper and leave the stall. I see my reflection in the mirror and stare at myself. There’s a nervous wreck staring back. 

Staring at the thing in the mirror makes me realize I need to get back to class or else I’ll have no idea what is going on. I splash water on my face and dry it off before heading back to class, breathing slowly, trying to calm down. The door creaks open and the whole class stares at me as I sit back in my chair and pretend as if nothing happened. The teacher was explaining the presentation while I spent my sweet old time in the bathroom. My eye’s lock on something on the board, “You may work with a partner.” My heart drops when I realize that this is the only class that I have no friends in. When she lets everyone pick partners, the room becomes a madhouse. Everyone is trying to get to a partner so they don’t have to be with a random person. The madness comes to a stop when everyone is sitting with their partner. The teacher then asks, “does everyone have a partner?” My hand slowly starts to rise but I force it down. Another boy in the room raises his hand then points at me and also says that I don’t have a partner. I wanted to slam my head down on the desk. He comes and sits next to me and waves and tries to smile at me but I ignore him and look at the teacher. She explains the rest of the presentation and gives us most of the hour to work on it and leaves the last 25 minutes for presenting. A loud sigh leaves my mouth and makes my partner uneasy since It seems like I don’t like him, he’s fine, I guess. He isn’t one of those annoying guys so I should at least try to help with the presentation. He lays out different papers and starts to write on them. “So, I think we should do a presentation on the element of helium!” He blurts out as I giggle a little. “Hey, what’s so funny?” He asks. “Nothing,” I say as I calm down and try to figure out how we are going to do the presentation. My first thought is making him say more than me. “Do you like to talk a lot? It seems like it,” I say as he starts to write some facts down on the paper for the element helium. “I guess, like to make new friends so I don’t feel alone so I tend to talk to people a lot, I’ll do most of the talking if you don’t feel very comfortable but, you have to do more of the work for the presentation,” He leans back in his chair and give me a smirk that makes me uncomfortable. “T-thanks…” was the only thing that left my mouth as I began to write whatever I remembered from last week about the elements. A huge wave of relief washed over me, I can’t believe what just happened. 

As time went on, he helped me here and there until it was time for the presentation. “Who would like to go first?” The teacher asked as she observed the room and looked for a hand in the air. No one, absolutely no one raised their hand until I saw something move in the corner of my eye. It was the boy’s hand, of course, he would be the only one to volunteer. He’s the type of person who doesn’t care what people think which is the type of person I wish to be so I suppose I admire him a little for being brave enough to go first. My feet shake as they waddle up to the front of the room. The front of the room is the worst place to be in, it's like a stage where the spotlight is all on you. I manage to get all the way up to the front, my eyes stay looking down at the floor, I don’t want to see all of the eyes of those robots in this class since people are like robots. They a wired to do the same thing every time someone is put on the spot. Stare down the person, find something to make fun of them with, come up with mean thoughts, and whisper them to their friends. It's the one thing that I always find annoying since it never seems to stop. My mind has been running this whole time that I don’t even realize that my partner has already finished his part. I take the papers from him and take a deep breath before I begin to read. I push through the fear as my lips begin to move and go faster and read the words like it's a competition to see who finishes first. The words that leave my mouth sound all jumbled together that they don’t even sound like words. I don’t care how I sound at this point, I just want this to be over. I make it to the end of the page and a loud breath of relief escapes my mouth as I shuffle back to my seat and put my head down.

The sound of a loud bell wakes me up. I fell asleep and the teacher didn’t even notice? Not even the boy? How rude, I must have looked so stupid just causally asleep while everyone else was presenting. My hands begin to shove everything in my bag before I’m out of the door. Before I realize it, I’m sitting down at my desk for my next class. There’s a sound next to me and my head turns and sees the boy from my first class. He’s in this class!? How long haven’t I known that!? And he sits next to me! My face turns red as my red is now facing away from him. There’s a tap on my shoulder but I ignore it as I try to listen to the teacher. Before I know it, I’m already spacing out. As the class goes on, there’s a strange feeling under my hand. I lift up my hand to find a note that has been placed on my desk. I already know who it's from. I unfold it and read it carefully. “You did a good job today, even though you made one mistake,” the note read. Me, make a mistake? I must have been so focused on reading that I didn’t even realize that I could have said something wrong. Class ends and I go straight to the boy and ask him about what happened. “When you were reading the word element, you read it has elephants. I was going to say something but you were going too fast.” He said as my whole body froze. He suddenly grabbed my hand and dragged me out of the classroom. “Don’t worry, I gave the class a mean look to get them to stop laughing.” He rubbed the back of his neck in embarrassment. He definitely likes me. I’m not sure how I feel about him, he has been one of the nicest people I’ve met. I come to my senses and give him a smile before heading to my next class. I made a new friend today, something I never expected would ever happen since, I don’t talk.