I Am The Sun

• Isabel Goodfellow, Grade 9
• Short Story
• 2010

‘Omg, wtf! Fml, this sucks so bad’
I don’t know what ‘fml’ means. I turn back to my book and try to block out the conversation of the two mindless blonde girls sitting behind me. Why do other teenagers feel the need to abbreviate everything? Is it really too much effort to say, ‘oh my God’?
I feel as if I will never have a proper conversation with anyone.

There was an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. In class I brought up the idea that we do some fundraising to help out, but all I got was blank stares.
One girl said, ‘I’m pretty sure they don’t play golf in Mexico.’

We are reading Wuthering Heights in English. It is my all time favourite book – Heathcliff and Cathy have such a powerful bond, and are both such strong characters. People don’t write characters like them anymore.
A girl sitting up the back got all excited because her boyfriend sent her a text that said: ‘ily xxx’. I think ‘ily’ means ‘I luv u.’
Tactful.
Cathy says: ‘Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.’
I think my soul is different to anyone I know.

I took my kite down to the park. Some girls from my class were there, with a big group of boys. They pretended they didn’t know me, and made fun of me.
I like it when my kite flies across the sun, and makes a dark shadow.
Those girls are like a shadow to me.
I realized that I don’t even know their names. They are just tiny, insignificant, dark shadows across my sun.

I got an A on my English essay. My teacher says I am working well above my grade average. I felt so proud, like I was floating. But one of the girls, who got a C on her essay, tore mine up.
Just a shadow, shadows can’t hurt me.

I kept a diary for a little while. I wrote about books I like and teachers that are nice to me. I wrote about how it makes me feel that people don’t like me, even though they don’t know me. I wrote about the girls in my class, and my kite.
They flushed it down the toilet.

Sometimes I wonder if I am here by mistake. I don’t fit in, I feel all wrong. I will never understand Facebook or Home and Away. I will never understand why people smoke and do drugs.
I will never understand what’s so important about having everyone adore you, and follow you. Or why it seems the only way to feel good about yourself, is to make others feels bad. I don’t understand the girls in my class.

They are dark shadows, but I am the sun.