(Comments and criticisms welcome!)
Every year, the football team threw a huge party. Anyone who had any sort of social standing attended the event. Cheerleaders, populars, and jocks alike could be seen at one house near the Californian shore.
Justin, tight-end for the Hornets, pushed past a couple dancing dangerously close to the punch bowl and squeezed between a few others so he could reach the back door. On the porch he unexpectedly bumped into Chuck Hastings, the football team’s prized quarterback. This high school senior was the picture of perfection: slicked-back blonde hair, a winning smile full of evenly-sized pearly whites.
“Hey, Justin! Where you goin’?”
“Just need some air,” he answered, hardly able to look Chuck in the eye.
Chuck shrugged and joined up with another group of teens. There were plenty of other people to hang with. The loss of one partygoer was no big deal.
Justin made his way to the shoreline, walking just out of reach of the incoming tide without a purpose except to think. Why did I do it? he kept asking himself.
Last week, after Math tutoring, Justin had to return to the gym to get the book bag he’d left there. He’d gotten to the gym in time to see three members of the football team spray painting graffiti symbols on the gym walls. The ringleader of this group was Chuck.
The next day, Justin went to the school office to report what he’d witnessed, but the principal had already received a report of the basketball players doing the graffiti. Justin suspected that Chuck was the ringleader of that as well.
Justin turned around and looked back at the party house. He could still hear the music and the excited babble of the partygoers. Justin turned his back on them.
He reached down and dug a smooth rock out of the sand, separating it from a cluster of similar stones. He threw it into the water, watching it stay on the surface for a split second before allowing gravity to take over. Justin thought he was just like that rock: the same as the others, yet separate.
Justin wanted to return to the party. To resume the idle conversation and listen to music that was fifty decibels too loud. He also wanted to resume his aimless walk down the beach and get away from those people he had wanted to spend time with.
“Hey, Justin,” said a voice behind him. It was Sarah, a girl Justin knew from school. “I wanted to thank you for staying with me after school.”
“I’m a tutor. Some people understand Math, others have it thrust upon them.”
Sarah laughed, and even though Justin didn’t find the joke too humorous he laughed too. In that simple act he felt as if an enormous weight had been lifted off his shoulders. He knew now what was important. To worry about people who mattered.
