Smart Girl

02.02.17

or when your maestra de español thinks it mandatory to emphasize your ranking.

sitting in a congregation at one of the tables, she finished explaining our assignment. from there, the seven of us whom had mastered the concept plus señora just talked for a bit.

jokingly, i tried to take a jab at my friend. let's call him kamal.

number two in the class, second only to me. smart guy, but what's more, he was seen as more than just that. the band guy, the percussionist, the joking one.

i envied him for it.

nonetheless, i—like everyone else—had been tasked with correcting others' spanish sentences, specifically spelling, conjugations, and everything else under the freaking sun.

thinking back to the many errors which i had found on kamal's paper, i said, "you wouldn't believe how many corrections there were to be made on kamal's sentences!"

of course, this pulled an out of laughter from my peers, even an exasperated chuckle from kamal.

señora, always jovial and full of jokes, said, "i can just imagine wren marking the errors and saying in a singsong voice, 'this is why i'm valedictorian, this is why!'"

i blushed furiously as everyone in the group laughed. they all bobbed their heads that yes, they could imagine me doing it, too. as they bombarded me with the noise of embarrassment, i wondered what was making me feel so strange. it wasn't a sin to be smart, but this felt more like a jab at me than just a joke. jokes didn't make me feel more alone than ever.

i slowly realized, in that moment, that they saw me only for that one attribute, and down the rabbit hole i went, wondering if i truly was only that.