Tears fading into water.
Who: Ashley, Kendra and Sumi Where: Pool When: Friday after classes
After messaging Mr. Farrowe and getting a reply, dropping the vouchers off in the common room and getting changed she headed to the pool. Kendra placed her towel at the side of the pool and dove in. The moment she hit the water she felt free-er. Tears mixed with the chlorinated water as she sort of shimmered out of view, her body taking on the color and appearance of water. She found herself sitting on the bottom of the pool, eyes closed and crying.
Submitting her name to run for student government had been something that sounded fun. It would look good on a college application and would give her a chance to give back to the school. She’d looked up tips from others about how to create a good platform and they all recommended polling the student body- in fact another of the candidates everyone seemed to like had done the same thing. But Kendra had been called lazy. She hasn’t expected the bar to be raised by her opponent so quickly, pins vs. cookies had seemed ‘normal’ but then she started to get free stuff as ‘proof’ she could accomplish things. So Kendra felt that in order to compete she had to as well. So she’d worked hard on a proposal for the bowling alley to secure free vouchers to show that even giving away some free games, students would more than likely play more than one so they would still spend money. And the discount on food would mean they’d buy more than normal because they would likely feel they were getting a good deal. She worked a week on the proposal and it had worked. And she thought a bowling party would be a great time to talk to people in person and find out what changes the treasurer could do to help implement the changes they wanted to see.
But she was lazy for wanting to ask others for their input, and for wanting until she had her platform built before replying to others ideas. So she replied to others ideas, and gave her opinions, adding her own even... but that got her called privileged and accused of not knowing what the student body wanted. Privileged? She spent most of her life living on a base. Her dad wasn’t some high paid general, she wasn’t given everything she asked for. She had to babysit and find ways to save up money for her hobbies- which was hard when you had to move to a new country and no one knew who you were. She helped her dad make sure they had money for bills and food budgeted out. Sure, she never went hungry, but that’s because they were smart with money. She was far from privileged.
But she was smart. She was smart enough to pull out before she regretted it even more. She was smart enough to give herself as reasons and not point fingers at anyone who drove her to it. But just because she was smart didn’t mean that their words didn’t hurt.