“Today’s class is the first class that you are going to work with your partner,” Mrs. Becker said excitedly. Shit, I was hoping this day would never come or if it did, that I’d have another partner. “I’m going to give you a list of words that are popular themes and emotions we use when we write great English literature. You are going to get with your partner to write when you felt that emotion the most. You will describe to your partner, how you felt and what you felt that made you feel it. I want you to explain all the textures, the smells, the noises, all of it in great detail. This project will not only help you see that you need to understand and experience these strong emotions to really connect with the emotions of characters you are reading about, it will also be a therapeutic project, by sharing these times with someone,” she explained to us.
I looked at Mickey, she was looking almost ghostly she was so pale. Just like the first day of school when the teacher had told us we’d be partners. I looked to Cody beside me and made one of, I want to kill myself faces, he laughed but Mickey also noticed, which made me feel like shit. Why did I do stuff like this? I always ended up feeling like a jerk in the end. Zach and Olivia passed out papers to everyone. We sat at the second to last table in the back so I took all the “no’s” and grimaces as a sign that it wouldn’t be pretty and when I looked at the paper, I was proven right. How Mickey knew what words would be on the list was beyond me. When I looked over to her, she was already writing the words down in her notebook, more than half of them but not in the same order. Not that it mattered but how did she know what the words would be, I knew she was great at English but still it was freaky. I knew love would be one of the words but horror, betrayal, and jealousy and the other words she had written down? There were fifteen words on the list but we only had to write about five.
“What if these are personal questions?” asked Jessie. Mrs. Becker grinned at that.
“Only your partner and I will know your answers and your partner and I won’t discuss these answers with anyone, otherwise they will receive an automatic fail and this project is worth 35% of your grade.” She smiled evilly. This wasn’t an option, if we didn’t do this, there was a good chance we would fail, well at least I would. “Oh, and this is serious, I don’t want any silly answers, I want the truth and I want details and specifics about the day too,” she continued seriously. I looked at the fifteen words and quickly chose my five. It was hard because some of them I’d never felt or had happened to me, so I got trapped into ones I didn’t want like love and passion. I didn’t want to tell anybody about when I felt that and why, especially not Mickey. She was the last person on the earth I wanted to talk about these two.
“So,” Mickey said speaking to me purposefully for the first time in almost two years. “Do you want to start or should I?” she asked. My jaw dropped slightly, a full sentence and not even an angry look. Actually, she looked more scared than anything else.
“You can,” I said and took the list, the first word was love.
“Okay,” she said taking in a big breath of air, trying to prepare herself. I didn’t want her to be scared, I wanted her to feel how she used to feel with me -safe.
“So, when did you feel love? How did you feel and what happened that made you feel it?” I asked, repeating what Mrs. Becker had said we needed to do.
“Um,” she began, her lower lip quivering a little bit. “I felt loved when I was with my mom and my stepdad, Miguel. I felt it whenever they looked at me or tucked me in at night or just held my hand. Their love made me feel safe, special, and important, like as long as they were around their love would be all I needed. It was all I needed. I didn’t need them to tell me they loved me, even though they constantly did. I always felt their love, one small smile was full of enough love to last me a lifetime. They always made me feel like I was perfect to them and they wouldn’t change me for anything. Because who I was made them proud and there was nothing I could do to ever let them down. We were just happy to be together, even if there was nothing to do, because we were together,” she said speaking a little fast, I quickly jotted it down as she spoke, trying to keep up in my sloppy handwriting. She looked kind of lost when she finished. Her eyes were getting all shiny and her lower lip was shaking more rapidly, without thinking I put my hand over hers. I knew what a tough subject her parents were and for that, I was happy I was the one who had to ask that stupid question, because I already knew how much she loved them and they had loved her. She used to let me watch the films with her and her parents together when we were younger, my favorite was when she was a flower in the Alice and Wonderland play. Her parents really did love her and it broke
