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Middle School

(I added fictional names and titles to things to hide the identities of people, hope you guys don't mind! This happened this week actually. I also switched my gender. Hope you all enjoy this story as much as I did writing it.)

Diven is a name, my very old writing teacher gave. He can't remember my name for no apparent reason. He can remember everyone elses' though. The only person who he can't remember. A lot of my classmates like to make fun of me. My real name is Danieal. But now everyone calls me Diven. It's really annoying. I just want people to call me by my actual name. That's all. But apparently, that's too much to ask. Now, I got put in the second writing workshop honors class. This was the class where my greatest enemy really talks to me.

One day my teacher wanted us to play war. Whoever had more letters in the words get the match. My greatest enemy, a week earlier I had started calling farfadet. That's a leprechaun in English. It's French. He gets really mad whenever I call him that. I originally called him elf shoes because he has shoes like elves on almost every day. very ugly and very easy to make fun of. If he's going to make fun of me, I'm going to make fun of him. He deserves it anyway. He called me out on the things I wore to, but I looked fine and he looked like was an elf. That should be named leprechaun for his behavior/attitude and other things.

My writing teacher made a huge bracket. He was on the other side of the bracket. I wouldn't have to deal with him. Now, I was pretty bad at playing games. I had never been good. But I tried. For the first ever, I won three times in a row. And who else won three times in a row? Farfadet, that's who. Now, our teacher didn't really like him either. But he was old and didn't like very many pupils anyways. Everyone cheered that I was in the match. People told Farfadet to not compete. It was like no one wanted to be on his side. It felt very funny. I had a terrible feeling about competing in the end. But that night I decided to compete anyways.

I showed up the next day. Random people I had never even know before came up to me to ask me questions when it was obvious that I was talking with other people. Like I was going down the stairs talking with one of my pupils talking about a video we had watched in class when this guy got up the stairs to where I was and started shouting at me, "Hey, can I ask you a question?" Over and over. I didn't want to talk to him. I'd never even seen this person before. Or if I did, I didn't know their name. I walked past and told the pupil why I ignored him.

I was extremely nervous every time I went to a class with him. My language arts teacher told everyone my address. What's worse? He was in that class. So what does farfadet the elf do? He writes down my address. Of corse. And then everyone talked about how I was going up against him. And then he told me, "You're going down Diven!" At this point, this was the third time he had told me that. I was so embarrassed. My best friend patted me on the back telling me to just ignore him. Easy for him to say. He had lost the second round yesterday. Easy when he doesn't know how many people were counting on me to win.

Writing Workshop. Seventh period. It came much too early. I tried to make it very normal. I pulled out the homework. 20 perfectly written scentances to make a one page story. The teacher goes around the room marking it, scanning over it quickly. Very normal. Except for the bracket on my left side saying my name on it. And the third period winner. The winner was the exact opposite of who I had wanted it to be. But I could win. I could win against him. I can make farfadet look like an elf in front of all these pupils. The match starts. My heart make me shake.

I feel so very scared. I felt sorry for him. When I thought we were going to go up against each other, I didn't think that every person in the class would watch us like animals in a cage and scream one of us got a match. My heart felt like it could fall out. I was pretty sure every one could see my hand shaking every time I drew a card or claimed a match or pushed one tword him. He finished counting his cards before me. And then his voice rings through my head. Thirty six cards. We started with forty each. Which meant I had forty four. I was the winner.

I went straight to the board. I couldn't believe I had won. He fist pumped me and I went to the board and I looked. They wrote down my name and I was still shook. And then he apologized about what he had told me. And then I apologized for calling him farfadet the elf. I also told him that all day he had been wrong. He asked how. I told him that he had told me that he was going to win. He was going to beat me. And here I stood the winner. My teacher gave me a homework pass/two points extra on an assignment. He also gave me a shiny pencil and a shiny sticker. I put my shiny sticker on my binder and I put my pencil in my backpack. The homework pass/extra points went in my binder.

And he got a pencil too. Then his ex girlfriend got the biggest loser award. She had lost every single match she had been in. One of them being with me. In the first match. It was a draw, and then I won the final draw. Then I did the next one, same story. The third was normal. The fourth was normal, but the best win out of all of them. The win where farfadet ate his words. No prize could beat knowing that. That you had beat an elf. The more popular, the one who claimed he would beat you. And yet you were victorious. Sometimes, that's the best win you can have.

March 18, 2022 22:31

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