Danger by Kendall Curtis
The students were tasked to write about DANGER. Kendall writes about learning that an older & wiser friend “wasn’t nearly as smart” as she thought she was.
My whole life has been centered around danger… ever since I came out of my mother! My first interaction with danger was when I came into the world with a fever. They made me stay in the NICU for 16 days before I could come home. My mother stayed with me of course, but as my fever progressed, it started to become apparent to everyone that I would be in there for a while. As the days went on, my visitors list got shorter. Soon enough, it was just me and my mom. On night 15 is when my mom asked the nurses if I could sleep in the room with her rather than with the rest of the babies. This is the night my fever started to go down. Not only was my fever completely gone, it was the first night I slept soundly.
When I was first brought home, my family didn’t make a big fuss or anything. No one came to see how my mom was , or how I was. It was just a normal day. Nothing stopped or started. They had apparently started selling some of my things because they didn’t think I’d be home at all. My life since then has pretty much been just that. No big fuss or anything. I mean I don’t mind now, but when I was a kid I couldn’t understand why my family hated me. Well , it felt like hate. I would have choir shows and none of my family would come except for my mom. Then I would go to my cousin’s school shows and our whole family was there. It made me sad at first. I felt like I had to work extra hard and be at every family event.
After a while I started to feel like nothing was enough. That was probably one of the most dangerous points in my life. I started getting suspended, hanging with older people, and just doing things I had no business doing. I thought I was untouchable, like nothing bad could happen to me. Boy, was I wrong.
While hanging out with my old best friend one day, she pulled out a pill. We were in 8th grade. Mind you, she was 15 and I was only 13. She broke the pill in half and gave me my serving. I was not a pill popper and neither was she, but her mother was. I used to listen to whatever she said because I thought she was older and smarter than me. I was only right about one of those. She popped her half and I put mine in my mouth, but something in my heart was telling me not to swallow it. I went into a stall and spit it in the toilet. I could pretend to act like I was high or whatever. We said we would meet each other at lunch to see how we feel. When lunch finally rolled around, I looked everywhere for her but she was nowhere to be found. I asked someone who was in her class before lunch and they said that she had to go to the hospital to get her stomach pumped. I don’t know if she took anything else or if it was the pill. Everyone in the school made fun of her for being a pill popper. They said she was slumped over drooling on the ground. Then that’s when I started to realize she wasn’t nearly as smart as I thought she was.