His Perspective

Perspective #2

Perspective #2

I stood outside the yearbook room after school that same day. My hand was reached out to open the door but it was hovering over the knob. I could not find the strength to actually turn it. I had a sneaking suspicion that I would somehow fail at doing something as simple as that.

Suddenly there was a hand over my own and it made the movements that I had been trying (not so hard) to do. I turned my head and saw Mason standing right behind me.

"I thought maybe you needed a push in the right direction," he said and let go of my hand. I looked back at the door to find it open, waiting for someone to walk through.

"Yeah," I answered lamely and forced my feet to move through the open doorway with Mason following close behind.

When I stepped in, everyone who was already in there stopped what they were doing and looked at me silently.

Suddenly they all jumped up and shouted as if they were at the Superbowl and their team had just made the winning touchdown. One girl even came up to me and wrapped her arms around me.

While all this celebrating was happening, I stood there, probably with a scared expression on my face. 

After they became quiet, they all stared at me as if they were expecting something. I closed my eyes, slowly walked out of the room, opened the door again and walked back in.

Maybe I had imagined all of that.

But, when I walked in, they all laughed at my reaction. The girl who had hugged me came up to me again and said, "You're really funny."

"Haha, okay," I said. I grimaced realizing that that laugh was really forced.

"I'm Leena," she said. She took my arm an pulled me towards a bulletin board and pointed at a piece of paper that was pinned to it. "This is our Taboo List."

"Taboo?" I asked. "Isn't it supposed to be To-Do?"

"Yeah, it started out like that but then Chuck over there accidentally called it a Taboo List and it just stuck," she answered pointing to a tall, light-skinned, black kid. I looked over at him and gave him a small wave.

There. That would be my social interaction for the day.

I turned back to the list and read it over. Since I didn't understand a word it said, I read it again. Finally I gave up on it and looked back at Leena.

"I'll try to give you something easy since it's your first day, but you're sort of late so everything might already be taken...." She trailed off and looked around. "Yeah, everything's taken. So I guess you'll be taking pictures today!"

"I don't think you want to do that, I'm not very good with-"

"Don't worry about that, you'll learn," She said, cutting me off.

Geez, this girl could talk. Leena also had an air of sweetness surrounding her, but you could tell that she meant business. I already knew that she was the leader of this group, even if they never took some sort of vote. She also walked and talked really fast, as if she was always rushing.

She walked (rushed) to a desk drawer and pulled out a piece of paper and a camera. She went back over to me, then handed me the paper.

"This is a contract. It states that you will never, ever, let anyone touch the camera that I'm about to give to you and that you will never, ever, mistreat it. And if you should do any of these, and something happens to it, which should never, ever happen, then you will pay for a replacement," she told me.