When I was 11, I switched schools. This was a much smaller school than the one I came from, and only had one group per grade. My whole class (and the whole 7th grade) was just thirty-six students. I was a very outgoing girl, but I was still worried about making friends in my first week. I only knew two classmates from church, but they were almost as strangers as the rest of the class.
By the first hour of school, all of my fears had gone away. I had already made some good friends that even told me to sit with them at lunch! Out of my new friends, there were two girls who I loved to hang out with, who were always making sure I was adapting well to the school. One of them, let’s call her E, had a beautiful voice, and I really enjoyed singing with her and just being silly together. It seemed like a real dream, to have such good friends from the very first day. But, if that was the case, I would have no story to tell.
Eventually, these two girls I met stopped being inseparable, and I made some new friends myself. However, I still liked to hang out with them separately, always amazed about E’s ability to stay positive and as smiley as always. It was not only me, but all my classmates loved her deeply, as she was a very cheerful teenager. She was rarely mean to others and would always be the one to include a new person in our class group, just as she did with me.
But in Freshman Year of High School, we were all starting to segregate. We all knew each other by that time, as we were the same thirty students for three years. This is what made distancing more personal. Some girls will publicly make parties without inviting others and talk about these parties in front of the rest of the class. Soon the class was divided into little groups that became for some reason enemies. Personally, I didn’t like being a part of a group, because that meant I couldn’t go talk to other groups, but I also wanted to have a group in my class I could relate to. Thus, I started making friends of other grades to avoid being part of that segregation and usually felt that I belonged with them more than with my classmates.
However, I would still see my classmates (at least some of them, including E) at some voluntary work that school offered on Saturdays, but that didn’t seem to be any problem-solving magic move for the rest of the class, and even the principal would come several times a week to tell us how bad classmates we were to one another. I remember feeling alone and desperate, trying to deny that this was going to be the situation until Senior Year. As if nothing could ever change that. But, again, I was wrong.
Sophomore Year started right where we left at, with very little space for improvement. By that time, there were only five people in class I felt comfortable with, and they were all in different groups, so I could only talk to them freely in the voluntary work on Saturdays. One day I remember very vividly, E came to class with crutches because she had been in pain because of her knee for almost two weeks, but the doctors kept saying she had no broken or twisted bones. She didn’t recall a big fall or anything that could have developed that either, so we all expected her to be better in another couple of weeks. Yet, that same week, while she was on another doctor appointment, the principal came to visit us again for what we thought was another of her pep talks. But it wasn’t. “E has cancer, a very aggressive one. We expect you all to put all your differences aside for once and be there for her”. And we did. Instantly.
Somehow, we forgot every hard feeling we had and started taking care of each other. E, so loved by everyone, kept smiling as much as she had done those four years. “I don’t want to cut my hair!”. That was the only thing she would complain about. Not the pain, not the wheelchair. And eventually, she did have to shave her head. She started skipping school for days, then for weeks, and we would get a visit from her every once in a while. Two hours before she came, the principal would talk to us “She wants to come to forget about her pain, so you better cry now and be strong for when she arrives”. But E was way stronger than us. Her smile was now even wider, more sincere, and all her words were loving ones. Not a hard feeling, not a complaint, even when we could all see she was physically and mentally exhausted. She kept smiling and wanting to come to school. And we became the closest group of sophomores there ever was.
By Junior Year, many kids transferred schools and we were only twenty-four left. E finished her chemo and was able to come to class with us again, and it was a magical year. I was able to spend a lot of time with her since my teacher assigned me to be her tutor in Language and Literature, and I learnt way much more from her than she ever did from me. I was amazed by how strong she was, by how she could see the bright side of everything. Her hair started growing curly this time and we all agreed she looked so much prettier now. But it wasn’t because of the curls; we all knew it was her smile that made her look so beautiful. Her ability to make us gather together despite all our differences. Her beautiful soul.
Last time I saw her was in Senior Year. It was just September and we had learnt that the cancer had come back, stronger than ever. She still came with us to the town festival as a group, all dressed up like bees. Since that day, she stayed at home. We all prayed together, stayed together. She was our strength. Then, on October 17th, the principal came to our class one last time. “E has left us this morning”.
I remember running to our school church with a mix of anger, denial, and sadness altogether. Five minutes later, a classmate came, we hugged and prayed for her, holding each other’s hands whenever we couldn’t keep going. Not much later, I heard the church’s door open. The whole Middle and High School was there, ready to pray together. And we did. Our whole class sat at the first bench, holding hands, while the rest of the school prayed and sang for her, just as she loved to do. It was painful, but it’s one of my most treasured memories. The next week is blurry, but I remember thinking “What if this is it? What if we fall apart and segregate again?” But we didn’t. We stayed together the long way, the whole Senior Year, always remembering that she was what brought us together. That love and friendship – real ones – are way stronger than hate.
And that made me think. It made me realize the power of true and strong relationships with people. It made me change my teenage mind and grow up a little faster. It made me reorganize my priorities and set them where they should have been all along. And I realized that love is not about doing great things once in a while, but about consistency. Especially when it’s hard and I think I can’t keep going, those little efforts are the ones that matter the most. Because I realized that feeling lost doesn’t mean I’m alone in it.
Overall, I now know how real friendship, love and faith looks like: it’s the smiling face of a seventeen-year-old. And she will always be a big part of me. All of it.
