Stella Skye Swift!

New Beginnings & Best Friends

Today I start school in New York, which is where my mom and I will be primarily living. We're in the car after my mom took at least a million pictures of me. You could probably lay them out and see my every move like it's a video. Right now, I'm shaking slightly while my knee bounces up and down out of anxiety.

"Stella, I can see that you're shaking, and I can see your knee bouncing. It's going to be okay. Today will be fun! Besides, no matter what happens today, you're still my daughter, and after school, we're still going to watch a movie while eating ice cream with my cookies crumbled on top after dance," says my mom.

We're at a red light, and she looks back at me. I look into her calming ocean blue eyes, and I relax a little. She reaches her hand towards me, and I hold it.

"It's going to be okay," says my mom. I nod and say, "Thanks, Mom." "Anytime," says my mom. Then we start moving again, and she puts both hands on the wheel.

We arrive at school, and my mom says, "Bye, Stella! Have a great day!" I look at her like she's crazy, and she nods reassuringly. "Bye, Mom. Love you!" I say. Then I get out of the car with my backpack, dragging myself into the school gates and to my classroom. I already know the room number because my teacher sent that to all the parents in an email about essential things for this year.

My classroom is towards the school's front, and it looks like the teacher spends most of her free time on Pinterest. There are five rows. As I count the desks, I learn that I am one out of 20 kids. I find my desk, which has a name tag that reads Stella Swift. I smile.

Stella Swift. That's me. This is the first time I have a last name! Well, a real last name anyways. At the school, I went to while at the orphanage, my "last name" was Skye, which is my middle name. At the schools I attended in my foster homes, my last name was their last name.

On my name tag, next to my name, is a number. 13. I got 13! What are the chances? Oh wait, they know my last name. I probably got that on purpose. No matter what, I got 13!

I put my backpack on the back of my chair, and I sit down. My desk is the second row from the front, and I'm dead center in front of the teacher's desk.

I look around the room, and I notice some of the math-related things on the walls are things that I taught myself ages ago in first grade and Kindergarten. Yes, first grade was two years ago, but for me, that's ages ago, considering how much has happened to me since then. I'm very gifted when it comes to math.

I taught myself addition and subtraction in Pre-K. I taught myself multiplication, division in Kindergarten. I taught myself square roots in first grade. In second grade, I started pre-algebra. This year, I'm working on algebra.

I finished all of my work long before everyone else did. While it took my classmates twenty minutes to figure out the first question, it took me until the teacher finished explaining that we needed to write our names on the top of the paper to finish the paper.

Class begins shortly, and we all write a short sentence or two to introduce ourselves. The teacher goes first, and I tune out what she says since I'm trying to memorize what I wrote. Mine's a run-on sentence, so it's not hard to memorize. We're going in number order, and soon enough, it's my turn. I stand up and face the back of the classroom.

"Hi, my name is Stella Swift. I love to dance, do math, draw, make paper dolls, play with my cats, and go on tour," I say. As I say my name, all of my classmates start whispering to each other. Everyone knows who I am. I sit down, and my teacher calls on the next kid. I tune them out. I just want to get to math.

After introductions, we do math! The teacher is reviewing stuff from second grade, and I have my head down on my desk. I'm looking at the teacher despite my boredom. I'm working independently on Algebra in my free time right now. Not addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division fact families like my class is reviewing. My mom doesn't know that yet. I don't want her to think I'm crazy. Being in different foster homes gave me an advantage and a disadvantage. Each school I went to was at various places in their curriculum, so I was either ahead or behind when I went to those schools. After going to a different school for about a week and then going back to my usual school was a rough adjustment. I had to get used to my classmates, teacher, schedule, and curriculum all over again.