May 17 by Jessica Jun

I sat down onto the sidewalk and soon, I heard a car honk. I looked up. My mom was waiting for me in the car with my little sister. It was weird because Ariel didn’t look so well. Was she sick? Maybe I was just imagining. I gathered my stuff into my backpack. There wasn’t much to put in because I had just realized I left my stuff with Jeanette, Tyler, and the big crowd. I ran down the sidewalk and stepped into the car, closing the door behind me.

“How was your fist day of 10th grade?” my mother asked.

“It was good,” I said with a fake smile.

Of course, my mom didn’t know it was fake because she kept looking at Ariel. Plus, she couldn’t ever tell the difference.

“Mom?” I asked.

“Yes dear?” she answered, questionably.

“Is Ariel okay?” I asked glaring at my sister.

“Oh yeah….” My mom started to trail off. “I took her to the doctor to check up on her because she kept on throwing up so I was afraid something was wrong. Anyways, I took her there and the doctor had a quick check up on her. He said that she had a mucus problem. She needs to rest and throw up as much as she can. When I tell her to, she ignores me and holds it in. I’m really scared, darling.”

I heard a small cough from Ariel. I stared at her. My 6 year old sister has a mucus problem.

That really just adds to “the most important things being lost” list. I couldn’t let Ariel hold it in and make it worse. I couldn’t do anything at the moment for her so all I did was sit there and I guess, just stare.

Soon, we finally arrived home, still very worried. I carried my sister out into the house as my mom carried all the groceries. I laid Ariel onto the bed and let her rest. I ran upstairs to my room and started crying. Everything was being lost…everything I loved. All of a sudden, I heard my message ringtone, Dynamite by Taio Cruz, go off. I looked at it. Tyler had texted me. I wasn’t in the mood so I texted him back saying “I got to go and I’m busy tomorrow, sorry.” I turned my cell phone off, not caring whether Tyler was going to text me back or not. I continued to cry. I looked up to see my bookshelf. I got to admit, I was kind of in the mood to read….so I crawled to the shelf, shuffling through all of my books I had. I came down to two books and chose a book called, What would you do if this happened to you?

I started to read it. It was about this girl named Grace. Her father died in a car accident when she was 4. Her little sister had a mucus problem too, just like Ariel! Her mom remarried to a guy she didn’t like. Her little sister soon died and her boyfriend moved on the month of their dating.

Soon, she felt her life was worthless so she committed suicide. I closed the book and thought about how similar our lives were. We both had no father, our little sisters have a mucus problem, and our boyfriends were moving in the month of our dating. I was just happy that the differences were differences. I sat in my room, leaned against my wall, just thinking….about suicide. Does this really make your life better? Or does it make it worse? I wasn’t sure because this was something that I had never really thought about. The thing is, is that I wasn’t exactly thinking about how SHE