May 17: Camp Del Mar

I got up from bed quickly, trying to understand the noises around me. My eyes were still trying to adjust to the room. There were alarms ringing, my mother screaming, and dogs barking outside. Finally, I could see, and I peeked out the window – the sun was not yet up. What was going on?

But I couldn’t stop to ponder on this. I needed to leave now. I dressed quickly, in anything I could find, and packed only the necessities. I was ushered out the door and followed my mother into the car. Out on the road there were other cars and large trucks surrounding us. My head was ringing – I wasn’t used to waking up this early. From the side of the road, I could see the sun emerging from the hills. It looked like a beautiful day, but I didn’t have the time to enjoy it. I was forced to look down, cramped in my seat. I felt dizzy and nauseous from the ride. I had no idea where I was going. After just minutes, I felt the car stop in front of a seemingly abandoned building. Shortly after, dozens of other cars and trucks appears behind the car I was in. They contained young prisoners my age, many nervous and scared.

Many were allowed to exit their cars and trucks to meet friends and other acquaintances. They greeted each other with relief, and surprise for those who had not seen each other for a long time before this day. It wasn’t long until we were ushered into the building. It was cold in there. The walls were bare. The ground was concrete with hundreds of worn out and abused tables for us. Each seat was labeled with a number. There were guards all around the modest building, each keeping an eye on us.

The registrars there were strict but efficient. Unsmiling, they asked for our first and last names and identification. We were then given cards and papers. At that moment, I was no longer a human being. I was a number. I felt a sense of doom engulfing me. I trudged to my seat, which was unfortunately in the front, and sat down. After the other 300 numbers sat down, it began. The doors were locked and the guards stood around us. Then the torture began.

For hours were were forced in the same place in the cold. My back ached and my hand was sore from the forced labor. My eyes were tired. I was hungry. I couldn’t understand how they could even think that we could survive such conditions. A small bell rang, and a tall man announced that we were allowed a break. Immediately everyone began to talk at once. “ATTENTION!!! QUIET!!! EVERYONE QUIET!!!” He yelled immediately. The building fell silent. He stared us down for a few long moments before instructing us to not escape, make contact with others, or anything else that would be breaking the rules. Then we were allowed to disperse into our own groups, trying to find friends to confide in after the stress. The guards dispersed as well, trying to mingle in with us in order to continue watching us and listening to our conversations. There were guards in the bathrooms, also listening to our conversations. The break was then over quickly. For another long period of time we had to go through the same conditions. This time, I was colder and hungrier than before. I could now barely move my hand, it was that sore.

Suddenly, the tall instructor yelled at us again. We had 10 minutes to prepare to leave. I cannot express the joy I felt from these words. I imagined the food I would eat, the activities I would do when I escaped this concrete chamber. The guards collected our paper, and outside were cars and trucks to carry us away back home.

My first steps were slow – I had not walked for a long time. My eyes needed to adjust to the bright sunlight outside as I walked with the other 300 people. I took what seemed to be my first breath of fresh air. I searched and waited for a while with my bag on my back until I saw my mother. We reunited and traveled home together.

—-What really happened—-

I didn’t bother to look up where the AP testing center was; my mom would do that. I set up 3 alarms the night before, and there’s always an annoying neighbor who walks her dogs at freaking 4 am. I was half-asleep, half-reviewing my AP World History note cards in the car. I saw a few friends there, and the building WAS really cold and bare. The desks sucked too. The proctors were actually pretty nice. They gave us our AP testing numbers which are used to identify us and our scores. The test was just a couple of hours. They did watch us during the break and in the bathrooms, though. And the main proctor guy did yell – to jokingly scare us out of sleep. That test was okay.

And this Holocaust themed thing? I was reading Maus

Better Days

The school year is ending quickly, although many of my classmates do not realize it. The weather is nice, and a touch of summer can be felt. People are stressed out about the barrage of standardized tests this spring, but I’m worried about something different.

Something different. There were many words to describe him, but somehow I can never choose just one word. He was kind, but at the same time cold to the world. He loved to joke around, but comprehended things that many would never begin to think about until much later. He wasn’t exactly happy, but he wasn’t exactly miserable. He was who he was, and he was my best friend.

He was my best friend. He is my best friend. I may not be his best friend, but to me, he is like a brother who is constantly there when I need someone to talk to. The people I’m surrounded by never take me seriously. They don’t know me. They don’t care. My best friend listened to me. He got me to where I am today, and taught me valuable things through our conversations.

Our conversations. He used to be in my class last year. We would talk occasionally, but it was usually shallow things that neither of us actually cared about. Out conversations were online, typed out on different keyboards, expressing different feelings. After a stressed day I could feel my tense hands loosening as the lines of words and emotion icons covered the screen. In truth, I’ve never talked very long with others. Everything was fake and shallow for them. It was tiring on my part to pretend to be interested in a classmate’s new notebook, or a joke our teacher made in their period. It was tiring to have a conversation die out within minutes after the simple greeting. But it was not like that with him. Our conversations could last hours if we both didn’t have school work to do. It was great.

It was great. For me. Sometimes I like to think that it’s me against the world. Everyone hates me. Everyone is out to get me. Maybe he doesn’t really like talking to me. Maybe I am not his friend. Maybe I am annoying him. Maybe he is tired of pretending to be friendly to me in our conversations. Maybe he has nothing better to do, and I am his last resort. I might never get a straightforward answer to any of these questions, but none of it matter to me, because he is the equivalent of a brother to me. He is more than a normal best friend.

He is more than a normal best friend. He isn’t stereotypical. He was one of those people where I could sit next to them without talking and it wouldn’t feel awkward. He is a great friend to me. But these traits won’t matter. He’s a brother to me; he is an older brother, and he is graduating.

He is graduating. I have a feeling that I’ll only see him once or twice a year, and once I graduate, I’ll never see him again. Both of us want to leave the shell of our community, but I would truly hate to lose such a friend. I’ve never had a great friend that lasted more than a few months. He was my friend for almost two years. But I know for a fact that friends don’t last. Hoping for an exception will not change my situation. But there is something I can look forward to.

There is something I can look forward to. I will be free to make decisions that will benefit myself, without having to fear the opinions of others at school. I will be free to be who I am without getting hate from people who are tired of me. I can look forward to knowing that my best friend would be doing something he loves, in a place he can get along well in. Because even though I know that there cannot be a fairy tale in real life and we both cannot have happy endings, I will be optimistic for both of us, that we will reach the better days of our lives. We will reach the days we have long dreamed of.

Lucid Inception

If this seems weird, don’t worry. I don’t understand my dreams either.

I didn’t really know how I got there, but I didn’t feel lost at all. I looked around. It was some sort of museum, but only a handful of people were there. There were exhibits of strange inventions, all large, squiggly, and metallic. I was standing next to my mother, and in front of us stood a young Asian girl of about 11. I felt like I knew her from somewhere else. She was wearing gray sweatpants and a white long-sleeved shirt. she fidgeted with her small hands while peering nervously with her shy brown eyes that were almost curtained by her bangs. Her hair was short, and just reached her shoulders. She opened her mouth to speak, and thanked us for helping her before.

Somehow it all made sense to me. She said she knew hoe to have a lucid dream, and in fact there was an exhibit that showed how. I got excited, for I’ve always failed in having a lucid dream, no matter how hard I tried. My mother said yes, we’d love to see the exhibit, and before I knew it, we were following the girl through the wide white hall of the beautifully sculpted machines to a glass room in the corner. Inside, I could see a beige bed. It was very large, and looked exceptionally comfortable.

I stepped inside the thick soft covers and laid down, waiting. From the speaker in the ceiling, I could hear the girl talking from another room. She gave me instructions, and I knew what to do. I closed my eyes and after a few moments I found myself awake in a different room, but in the same bed. The room felt familiar, yet like a cozy bedroom out of a movie. I hopped out of bed and looked around. Was this real? Had a truly achieved lucid dreaming? This feeling! It was exhilarating. I could do anything, everything! I bursted out the door and onto an indoor wooden balcony with stairs on my left to see a large old-fashioned house. I could see beams of a sunset peer out from tall, narrow windows. Everything felt so cool and cozy. I couldn’t stop myself from grinning as I jumped over the railing and landed walking on the first floor.

I saw a table set before me, but then my heart sank. Surrounding the table were objects that symbolized my memories. They were all my embarrassing ones. They were all my angry ones. They are all shameful. The memories I tried to destroy long ago were back, taunting me around the dining table. I couldn’t hide them; they were too large to cover up.

A voice yelled for me. I whipped around to see my mother upstairs, walking along the railing, observing the house my mind had conjured up. I laughed loudly and ran (more or less flew) towards her, hoping to distract her from looking towards the table. She didn’t notice, but I still felt nervous.

Then I had an idea! I told her that I could try to enter inception, and dream again, in this lucid dream. She said why not, and we walked back to the bedroom. She waited outside, and I hopped back into the large bed. I closed my eyes, smiling from ear to ear, ready to conjure up an amazing place where I could fly. I began to sleep.

I opened my eyes, not to see a vast sky or a calm forest or even the old-fashioned house I was in. I was in my own brown bed, in my own small room, in my own house. I had woken up. My mother was yelling at me from downstairs to get up and get to school. It was all a dream. I groaned, realizing that I had not actually achieved lucid dreaming, like I had tried to all week. But it was inception… or was this a dream, too?

Foolproof 3: The Conclusion

I’m not going to really finish Foolproof because I don’t think my ending is very good, and the worst feeling is reading a story with a terrible ending. I’ll tell you what it was, though. Don’t read if you hate bad endings.

The group continues to argue, but this time Alex is gone. He’s tired of hanging out with different people, and wonders why he was even with them in the first place. He gets into an argument with a bystander who was whispering to his friend and pointing at Alex. Alex beats up the kid, and gets suspended.

Brian did not see a reason to stay with opinionated people like Alison, and after another confrontation, he silently walked away, not looking back. He continued school as if nothing had happened.

Alison, furious with the week’s events, got moodier and more sensitive each day. She became self-conscious of what she was saying, and punished herself for making accusations without doing proper research. She yelled at everyone, and her charismatic personality turned into a violent one. Soon, people avoided her and nearly all the club’s members left.

David was still level-headed but concerned for everyone else. He was strong inside, and even the largest disaster could not make his smile falter. But lately he was smiling less, and although still approachable, his mind wandered elsewhere. He still thought about the times the group would hang out. The times when they’d have lunch, or start a new spirit week, or throw a party after finals. He missed those days, and he missed those people. But he knew better than to regroup everyone. It was Bethany’s group, not his.

Bethany was no where. Who was Bethany? She was nothing without the group. Now she had no power, nothing of her own. The group was perfectly balanced, but too perfect. When one member was gone, everyone else fell. And since everyone was gone, it was as though all the legs of her chair gave out underneath her. She was on the ground, below everyone else again. She was not a queen. She was not a star. She was not a leader. That was the end of her group, the group she spent so long to assemble. She was nothing now.

Just Forever

I’ve known and said for a while
That nothing lasts forever
Nothing is unending
because all things die with time

I’ve known and said for a while
That somethings simply don’t work
Sometimes there’s a reason
But many times there isn’t

I’ve known and said for a while
That people are not perfect
A single person can’t do everything
Even Superman has his flaws

I’ve known and said for a while
That friends don’t last forever
They are not perfect
They cannot always accept me
They cannot always understand me
They cannot always relate to me
So the term “best friends forever”
Has no impact on me

Because I know
That all things die
Whether a flower or a tree
A strong emotion
Or friendship
One day, it will happen in an instant
And it will disappear

Because I knew
That even if I like you
And you like me
We wouldn’t be friends for long
Only “forever”