Chasing William Read Free

English teacher, Miss
R., she’s great. You can tell she wants all her students to
succeed, she doesn’t have favorites or people she hates, and the
classroom is fair. I don’t think I’d be able to do that. There are
people I’m not sure I’d be able to stand.
    I see Amanda sitting over to the side so I
go over to join her. I’m not sure I really want to sit by her but I
feel obligated. It’s weird how you always feel like you have to sit
by someone in your “group”. I hate sitting off to the side,
especially in Miss R.’s room because there are only three desks
over there and whoever sits in them sticks out. I’d rather sit in
the center of the classroom with everyone else. It’s not that I
really want to hide. It just makes class easier when I don’t feel
like everyone is staring at me. Some people are front row people,
like Amanda. They like to be singled out and want to share their
opinions as often as possible. I’m one of those people who’d rather
sit in the second row. I pay attention, but I only talk when I have
something to say. I’m not too crazy about always being in the line
of fire. I sit by Amanda anyway. It’s like the unspoken rule of
high school: you sit by who you know.
    Amanda doesn’t seem too excited I’ve come to
join her. It makes everything I went through in my head combine
into this knot of frustration. None of this highschool stuff is
important, I know that, but somehow I still seem obliged to play by
those rules.
    “Hey, Amanda!” Amanda was the first friend
I’d made in high school and we always said that meant we’d be best
friends, but things had started to fall apart last year for no
apparent reason and I wasn’t sure how to fix it.
    “Oh, hey.” She looks up at me for a few
seconds then back at the floor, or more accurately, her cell phone.
She sends a quick text and then looks up again, a little more alert
this time.
    “Oh, hey, Crissy! How are you?!” She gives
me a halfhearted hug from her desk and then goes back to her
phone.
    “Fine. Hey, I heard you had a thing at your
house this weekend?” I wasn’t planning on saying anything. It just
came out. I guess I miss my friend, especially right now, and if
there’s any way to go back to a point in time where I could talk to
her about something like William and death, I’ll take it.
    “Yeah, Pru told you.”
    “No, Mars mentioned it today.”
    “No,” Amanda starts laughing like I’m an
idiot,” Pru called you and told you to come.”
    “She didn’t.” I shrug. “I was just
wondering.” The one thing that really bothers me about Amanda is
how I can never be mad at her. I know that sounds strange, but
sometimes it’s healthy to get angry and everyone’s entitled.
Amanda, however, has a gift for always making it someone else’s
fault. I think it would bother me less if she just said she forgot
to invite me.
    “Yeah, sorry, you know I’d never forget to
invite you! Pru’s just kind of an airhead, you know that.”
    I nod, but it’s a pretty lame story. If she
really wanted me to show up she would have called me herself. Since
when does Pru call to invite people over to Amanda’s house? Still,
I have more history with her than anyone else and I’m not ready to
give up on that yet. Maybe she’ll understand when I tell her about
William. Tragedies like this are supposed to bring people together.
If William’s death can bring me my best friend back then maybe it
will hurt less. I wait until class was over and we are walking to
lunch, trying to linger long enough so the hallways would be empty.
I am going to do it. I am going to tell someone the whole story and
then maybe everything will feel a little less miserable.
    “Come on, Crissy, let’s go.” Amanda is just
one step away from tapping her foot.
    “Yeah, I’m coming. So, Amanda, my summer was
kind of crappy. You remember…”
    “You think your summer was crappy? Let me
tell you about mine. My. God. I wish my parents would just get