It has always been hard for me to find friends and meet new people. I’m what you would call an introvert: someone who basically has trouble socializing and likes to be alone a lot. No matter how hard I’ve tried, I always end up not having a solid group of friends. Not that I’ve never had friends before. I have always been seen as the anti-social kid, the silent one at the back of the class that always got good grades. I am the one who floats around different groups of people and hears gossip all the time and stores them inside my brain just in case anyone needs me. It has always been this way, except for one incident I could think of clearly.

I’ve just felt like my ‘friends’ aren’t really my friends in the first place. I first realized this when I was in Kindergarten. I was a tall kid, third tallest in my grade and first in my own class. I loved to help other people because it gave me a sense of meaning to my life knowing that someone wanted me to be there for them, if only for a short time. I would do all sorts of tasks: getting toys off of high shelves, grading papers, and helping my peers with their homework. My love of kindness and generosity made me the favorite of my teacher, Ms. Hezekiah.

My behavior also caught the attention of two students in particular. DeJanae and Kiara were in my class and, before we knew it, we already had something in common. We were all Black. The school held about five hundred students, from Kindergarten to 6th grade. It mostly consisted of Latinos, Hispanics, and Caucasians. There were only about ten students out of the population who were Black or identified as one. My parents, especially my dad, wanted there to be more kids like me. But, then again, this school is in New Mexico, and there are not a lot of us who live out there.

DeJanae and Kiara treated me like I was their friend and I believed them or at least one of them. We all looked, at least, vaguely the same, so why not trust them. The three of us would play during recess and eat together during lunch. I stuck by them even when their friendship turned rocky. DeJanae and Kiara would argue about random stuff all the time and I had to always smooth the situation out by giving them both something I had. Not that they did anything for me. When I lost something I liked or gotten hurt, they would just tell me not to worry and to move on. Maybe they expected me to get over minor hardships more quickly because I was bigger than them or smarter or something like that. I was considering finding a different set of friends that entire year, but decided to push through. I thought that they didn’t know the meaning of generosity and kindness like I seemed to, so I just shrugged off their cruelness as some sort of dark humor.

There is this one day where I realize that not everything was perfect between the three of us. During recess, I was trying to plant a tree using a leaf, some sand, and a little water. It was hot and dusty outside and I wanted to just laze around. The sand was protected overhead by some tent like covering that made the sand bearable. I felt the cool sand slip between my fingers as I dug the hole in the ground and a little of the dust from the sand go into my lungs. I saw DeJanae and Kiara on the sidewalk talking and giggling to each other; they always told me to stay out of their business when they had private time. I noticed that they kept on looking back towards me as they giggled and laughed. They weren’t the best at whispering.

“Are you sure,” DeJanae asked. “She didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I don’t care,” Kiara said. “I want to see what she does.” I knew that Kiara didn’t like me and I still don’t know why. Maybe because I was nice and won over DeJanae who introduced me to Kiara in the first place. I don’t know, but she seemed to have it out for me.
They slowly made their way towards me, trying to hide their smiles. Under the shade of the tent, they looked more dangerous than usual, like if you shone a light directly above someone to make them look more menacing. There was something in the back of my mind that told me that something bad was going to happen. I definitely felt it too: an adrenaline rush that you would only get if a dangerous animal was trying to chase you. I was lying on my stomach when they stood over and looked down at me. They were both smiling, Kiara’s smile more terrifying than anything I’ve seen thus far. All three of us were silent in the midst of all the other kids playing and laughing. I didn’t move, just continued to look down until I was looking at Kiara’s shoes. The feeling became stronger and the situation was got more and more tense. All of a sudden, Kiara’s foot rose up and dug into the ground, spewing the cold sand into my face and eyes. I screamed and sat up. Everyone on the playground stopped playing; their attention was focused on me and my situation. Kiara kept kicking sand in my face even though I kept telling her to stop.
“Ms. Hezekiah! Ms. Hezekiah, help me!” I screamed and cried out.
The situation happened in slow motion. The sand got into my eyes, nose, and mouth. I was coughing violently and almost choking. The dust was covering every cubic centimeter of my lungs. It got into my hair, it got into my clothes. I felt all of the kids staring at me, not knowing what to do. I felt the gentle touch of Ms. Hezekiah when she had gotten me to my feet and rushed me to the bathroom. I heard Kiara laughing like she had won, like she had gotten her friend back. This horrific sound still rings in my head to this day.
You would think it would stop there, but it didn’t. At this point, I was in the bathroom trying to get the sand out of my eyes. Freezing water against hot and dusty skin doesn’t make for a happy party. As I washed the sand away, I started to think. That entire time, DeJanae didn’t do anything. She was just standing there, letting her friend bully someone she seemed to care about. I couldn’t (and still can’t) blame her; Kiara controlled the both of us, making us give her some of our food, not letting us on the swing, and cussing us out whenever she didn’t get what she wanted. She was that child. The sand that was in my eyes seemed to protrude back into my skull, trying to touch my brain and I got a bad headache.
The door opened and DeJanae ran in crying. She grabbed my shoulders, pulled me closer to her, and hugged me. I’m so sorry, was what she was trying to say under uncontrollable sobbing. I cried with her, and when we finished, she helped me clean myself up. She told me that she didn’t want to be friends with Kiara anymore and that she was sorry for not doing anything. We hugged once more and started to head back to class when the door wouldn’t open. I pulled with all my might, but it wouldn’t budge. It seemed to be locked from the outside. DeJanae and I banged on the door, only to stop when someone on the other side was laughing. It was Kiara.
“OPEN THE DOOR!” DeJanae couldn’t take Kiara’s bull crap anymore.
“No! You said you didn’t want to be my friend anymore.” Kiara was losing the only person who cared about her. “Besides, what do you see in her anyway?”
“She’s a better friend than you will ever be.”
“I hate both of you! AHHH!” Kiara ran back to the classroom.
The door opened again and we went to class. When we got in, my peers asked if I was okay and if I needed any help. DeJanae pushed them all back, telling them to give me my space. I looked over at Kiara, who had hatred in her eyes. She looked like she was crying and if life didn’t get any crazier: she flipped me off and turned away from me. The rest of the day went on without a hitch, and I went home lying to my dad about how the day went.
As I sit here today, I realize that there are much more people like Kiara that I have encountered and I am now better suited to face them. Maybe that whole incident was trying to teach me a valuable lesson about friendship that I now use today. DeJanae and I still joke about that day and she has told me that Kiara was begging to have her back. Of course, she refused and went on with her day. I’ve had DeJanae’s back for the longest time even though we don’t speak very often anymore.
As I’ve gone through different groups of friends, I see that they, at some point in their friendship, talk about having each other’s backs when life goes awry. I wish that I could have friends like that, but I’m happy with the friends I have now. The only social issue that I must conquer post-haste is not attracting people like Kiara and being used again. That shouldn’t be a problem anymore, as I have gained self-confidence over the years. And that is what matters, a good education, inner peace, and a backbone, literally and figuratively.