The story of my life

Chapter 2

It is the end of third grade. Sorry for the time skips, but I'm not going to type down every single thing that happened in my life. A reminder, all of this happened in real life.

I walked out of the third grade classroom smiling ear to ear.

Nothing could get me down.

I walked up the stairs into afterschool when the sinking realization hit me. My younger brother would be coming next year.

Darn it.

"Jules!" I called.

"Hmm?" she poked her head around the door.

"Wilson is coming next year!" I cried.

She smiled sympathetically. "It won't be that bad."

I threw up my hands in frustration. "He throws a fit about almost anything!" I changed my voice to make it higher and sing-song-y. "Mom-my, I don't wan-na take a sho-wer. I wan-na read a book! Mommy, I don't want to do Willow's chores!"

I sighed. Who am I kidding? It wasn't going to be that bad.

It was going to be a whole lot worse.

Fourth grade was fun and easy.

I sat next to Michael, unfortunately for me, and we had to pick a mission to write about(e.g.Santa Barbara Mission).

His final presentation had carrot tops, scratched out words, non-capitalized and non-punctuated sentences, and to top it all of, he had doodled all over the cover, so it now looked like a battle plan.

Ridiculous! And he kept shoving me over so that he could have more space to 'work'.

Man, was he annoying. But I had fun with the project.

I think my presentation went fairly well, I mean, I got an A, so I would assume it went well.

I believe that it went better than others, anway.

I was in such a good mood, that the boys running up and down the hallway's at afterschool yelling, "Gotta PEE!! OUTTA THE WAY!! Gotta PEE!!" didn't even bother me.

And then I walked into my room, the room I was in charge of.

It was chaos, and I was amazed that i couldn't hear them from outside.

When I walked in, they immediately shut up. Except for him.

Wilson. He had to ruin everything.

I had an idea. The others were scared of me. Wilson was scared of Jules. I don't know why, but I was willing to try it. Plus, it would help me see why the others were so afraid of me.

I got Jules and she walked into the room.

Wilson immediately stopped talking.

The others carried on.

I walked in. The other fixed their shirts, straightened their pants, and sat up straight.

I snorted.

"Is it really that hard to respect others?" I cried, looking around the room, my long, brown ponytail swishing behind me.

"Am I that scary?"

"Wilson, you only ever shut up if I get Jules in here. The rest of you, what is it? Am I that scary? Is it that difficult to respect the real people in charge here? I'm 9! 9! And you respect and listen to me more than you do with the other adult TA's! Why is that?" I sobbed, tears in my eyes.

One little boy raised his hand.

"Yes, Marcus?" I asked, softening my features for him.

He visibly relaxed.

"Well, I wanted to say that when you are mad, you are scary. And when you are scary, you scare us. Maybe if you didn't get so mad, we wouldn't be scared of you." he suggested timidly.

I thanked him and addressed the room.

"Thank you, but that is not what I am asking. Why do you only shut up for me? Or is it because I'm scary and no one else is?" Everybody nodded. "Well, Marcus, if I become less scary, nobody would listen to anybody in this afterschool."

At least they had the grace to look ashamed.

"So, is it too much to ask that you all respect the other adults? Is it too much?" I cried, wiping tears with the back of my hand. I sank down in to a chair and starting sobbing, my head in my arms.

Silence.

Then, slowly people got up.

I felt one hand on my arm.

Then another. And another. More and more people comforted me.

"Willow, we promise to try harder." a voice said.

I raised my head.

"I don't want you to try, I want you to do it." I told Jamie. "Don't disappoint me."

They all nodded. Things got better with them.

But it was just the start of a complicated lifestyle for me.