“When you believe in things you don’t understand then you suffer.” -Anonymous

“You’re not going to eighth grade,” my dad explained bluntly. “I’m sorry.” 

“What?” I began to cry. 

I cried. I cried a lot. My eyes felt like leaky faucets; you can turn them off, but they’ll still drip. I knew I had messed up really bad. My dad told me my scores for summer school. I should’ve known this was coming since I never did the work and always just watched videos on my laptop. I lied and said I had done the work when I hadn’t. My mindset through all of this was, It’ll go away. I’ll be fine. I’ll just get away with the work I did and move onto the next grade. But, that’s not how things worked and deep down I knew that. I was just always given what I wanted and if it didn’t go my way, I'd throw a tantrum until it did.

“Francesca, I’m staying back,” I said with tears in my eyes over FaceTime. 

“What? Why?” she replied with shock.

“Well, for starters, I never did the work. I kinda knew that this would happen in the back of my mind.”

“Oh. I don’t really care what grade you’re in, I'll always be your friend. I promise.”

“Do you think people will still want to be my friend?” I stammered. 

She nodded, “I think so. Hey, at least now you’ll know who your real friends are. I guess that's a good outcome. And you can make new friends. Maybe you can be popular, like Matthew Cabral!” she said enthusiastically. 

“Yeah, maybe. Or maybe I’ll just be an outcast,” I replied unhappily.

“I’m really sorry this happened though. Is there anything I can do to help?”
“No, no it’s ok. It’s sad because it just hurts. I’ll get over it,” I said. 

We said our goodbyes and the call ended. I kind of just layed there not moving, not doing anything. Just, laying there. I knew I’d get bullied once people saw me walk downstairs instead of upstairs. 

And I did. More than I’d like to admit. 

All of the eighth grade boys kept asking “Did you stay back?” and laughing. The girls talked about behind my back. Even some of my friends turned against me, like Chloe who just came up to me saying, “Hi seventh grader,” in the most demeaning tone imaginable. Or Landon who said he only high fived eighth graders. 

They were just jokes, but they weren’t funny. I didn’t laugh. Nobody did. I cried, once. I shouldn’t have, but I'm very sensitive to these types of things. I still have friends, I made new ones, but deep down inside I know that I'll never belong. I’ll never be able to fit in with them. 

I feel like I’ll always be that one dumb girl who stayed back. But, it was for my own good. If not this year then it would’ve been next year. I would have already learned all the things, but since I rarely paid attention to anything, I probably wouldn’t have remembered it. I know that I have to get good grades this year, and that it’ll be really hard to get out of my old habits of not doing the work. But, I think that I can get the grades I want.