From My Point of View

Chapter 1

* When I was seven, my mom wanted me to join ballet. Like every little girl on the planet, she wanted me to dream of being a ballerina like she did. To be proper and poise, to be a trophy she could show off to all her old classmates and say, “This is my daughter. Look how much better she is than yours! Isn’t she perfect?” 

Perfect. Not exactly how I would describe myself. 

I ended up twisting my ankle in my first lesson. Let’s just say I wasn’t a graceful ballerina type. This accident ruined all of my mother’s hopes and dreams of having a daughter who didn’t look like she was about to murder everyone. It broke her heart. 

No, instead, she settled for something a bit more… violent… than ballet. Something that I actually enjoyed doing. Something I was actually good at. 

My older brother (who, at the time, was an eleven years-old white belt because he was so uncoordinated) was taking TaeKwonDo with another Sabom (the TaeKwonDo version of Sensei or Teacher) and was failing miserably. I had seen him trying to kick a playboard for the longest time and was discreetly taking notes from my place beside my mom. My dear old mother was on a call with a colleague and left the room for not five minutes. When she came back, she found me with a kid set of boards and breaking all of them in one go.

I was going crazy, kicking and punching things like a madman. Sabom had seen and told me my form was perfect and execution was spot on. It was like I had done it before. Apparently, when it came to ballet I couldn’t turn without getting dizzy. But with TaeKwonDo, I had so much hidden rage and strength for a seven years-old that I was a natural. I was the type of kid to punch their problems instead of expressing them into fluid motion. 

My mother conceded after a week of me begging and screaming in her ear to let me join. 

They kept calling me a prodigy, giving me lessons everyday after school, putting me in advanced classes, letting me see and participate in competitions. When I started getting Gold Medals in matches, my mother started supporting me more and more. In fact, I think the only reason she let me do a lot without her supervision was because I was making our trophy room shine brighter every time I kicked someone to the floor. 

I started getting really really good. I spent more time in my Dojang (the TaeKwonDo version of Dojo or Gym or whatever) than I did at home. I spoke more to adults than to kids my age because that’s all the people available to me. No kid wanted to talk with the girl that beat them up, or the girl that never went to a birthday party, or the girl who, well, didn’t really talk to anybody. The only friends I had were the ones who I met in preschool, the ones who knew me and my mother forced me to keep in touch with them. Other than those three people, and our two neighbors, I wasn’t really close to anybody else. I never really got the chance to know anybody else. 

I thought High School would be different. That’s why I was glad I was going to West Hills Academy. It might have been for preppy rich kids, but at least those kids are new. They had no idea who I was or that I was someone who could knock them out with a single roundhouse kick. This is what I was looking forward to. What I’ve been looking forward to all year. 

Little did I know, it was harder for me to make new friends in High School than it was anywhere else.

**A month into the school year and I still knew no one. Well, I knew names. But knowing people is different than knowing them. I was hoping things would be different, but I guess not. 

I was walking down my walkway with my siblings; Elijah, a Senior Musical God, and Amelia, a Junior future Valedictorian. 

I was about to put in my airpods when I felt my brother tap my shoulder. “Hey, look at that.” He was pointing to the house on our left. The Levine’s House. Their car was in the driveway. “They must be back from London.”