I have been trying to find myself, all my life. No matter what I try, I have never found a soul purpose or a passion for me. I’ve tried sports, never really stuck to them. Art? I don’t have an artistic bone in my body. Brains? I am confused basically 24/7. Yeah, I’ve honestly tried it all. Well the fact that I have no special talents or passions in life makes a lot of things hard for me. But the biggest problem is…people find me boring. My name is Kacey Lind. Simple name, simple girl. I’m 12 years old and I am working my butt off to find out who I am. I have about 7 or 8 really close friends, but I’m definitely not going to call myself popular. I go to Fairhaven, and here; popularity is everything. Oh boy. Kacey Lind, getting through life with just a pencil. Seems like a likely story.

The pencil. It isn’t A pencil… it is THE pencil. I have only seen this kind of pencil be used by celebrities and movie stars. It is black, and has gold stars around the end, and a golden horse engraved into its side. As it is my first day back to school since last summer, I thought that maybe having a special pencil would make me less boring, and more superior to everyone else. Isn’t that how life works? Having nicer, cooler things than everybody else? No. That is what we’ve been blindly led to believe, this generation. No one seems to focus on personality anymore, or what’s inside. So what if she’s mean, snotty, and hates puppies? She has nice hair. So what if that beautiful black and gold pencil has poisonous graphite in it? At least it looks cool. See the new logic?

Fantastic! The minute I walked into class, my pencil was nowhere to be found. Just completely disappeared from my binder. All I had left is this boring yellow Ticonderoga. Surely, a boring pencil won’t make this day worse for me as I already had it coming right? Wrong. I know what you’re thinking. It seems a bit outrageous. But when we sat down to work on a warm up sheet in math, every kid in there- EVERY kid- pulled out a black pencil, with a gold horse and stars. That is… every kid, but me. I felt completely defeated already. This is going to be one heck of a day.

Considering this is the first day back from winter break, you can imagine how many people were talking about that new video game they got, or those new “fabulous and expensive’ boots they received. Again, I was the odd one out at lunch again. I went and say down at a table and waited for some of my friends. 10 minutes passed, and I realized I was still sitting alone. I hadn’t touched my lunch. I didn’t want to believe that my friends had ditched me, so I simply didn’t. I kept making up scenarios in my head that could have prevented them from coming to sit by me today. Just then, I heard a roar of laughter that caused me to jump out of my seat. I turned around and saw a group of friends laughing together at a table across the lunch room. My group of friends.

1.I am not one to scream and bawl my eyes out when I get my feelings hurt. I am the type who silently lets tears roll down her face while she sits in a casual setting, pretending nothing is wrong. People stare, definitely. But do I actually care about their opinions on me at this point? No. All I had ever cared about was if I could be safe and happy and comforted by my friends. But not anymore. No one came and asked me what was wrong. Everyone was too shocked by my weird reaction. I didn’t touch my food sitting in front of me. I didn’t pay any attention to the whispering going on around me. All I was focused on was how my friends were completely silent, and watching me from across the room. Not one of them made an effort to talk to me, or make pitiful eye contact. Instead they looked at me with disgust. And then I ran out of the lunch room to try and find myself.