Karla Calderon

Why did I let it happen? How could I let an innocent person go through such humility? I know I did a stupid thing to just stand there, but how are you supposed to go against your best friend? My best friend is named Jackson and he's on the football team. Jackson is a tall, buff, smart guy. He was never an athlete, but since we're in high school now we thought it was time to try something new. I decided to join the cheerleading team so I could cheer him on at the games. I am a skinny, short, blond haired girl. Jackson and I were the classic white teenagers. We were never in the "popular" crowd, we hated the idea of people divided into groups because of the people they wanted to be friends with. At least that's what we used to think. We both started to change once Jackson and I got a taste of popularity. We got invited to parties, got tons of new friends, and started to drink and smoke too. Yeah we were changed into everything we used to think was wrong. We treated people like they were lower than us, and picked on them so much just to get a laugh out of it. That's when the incident happened. The cheerleading and football team got a group of nerds to do our homework for us. We thought we had too much things to do then focus on homework. You might be wondering how we got them to do our homework? Well that's why the group of cheerleaders were around, to make the nerds think they had a chance with us. Yeah, we were very cruel to them. Now that I think of it I'm sickened by the way we acted. Anyway, the incident happened on a boring day. Football season was over, so known of my so-called “friends” had anything to do anymore. The whole month we were doing the same old things, but for some reason Jackson decided to do something different. When my group of friends and I went to get our homework from the nerds something sparked in Jackson, something bad. We took our homework and when we were about to walk away I saw Jackson turn to one of his football teammates named Freddy and whispered in his ear. Freddy started to laugh and told the rest of the teammates. What ever Jackson told them they all thought was a good idea. I didn’t even bother to ask what they whispered to each other was I just went with the crowed. The guys graved one of the nerds named Timmy and dragged him into the boy’s locker room. All the girls waited outside. All we could hear was our friends laughing and one high pitch scream of pain. You can smell cigarettes coming from the locker room, and foul stench of sweat. I had no idea what was going on and frankly I was scared. A few minutes later the team came running out of the locker room. They were laughing and giving each other high-fives. They had a pile of clothes in there hands and Timmy was nowhere to be seen. Jackson graved me and told me to keep start running, so I did. As I turned around I could see Timmy slowly walk out of the locker room naked. He was crying and there was cigarette burns all over his body. I couldn’t believe that my innocent best friend that used to stand up for boys like Timmy did this. A few seconds later the bell rang and everybody was getting out of there classes. Timmy had nowhere to go without someone seeing him. So he just stood there as other students walked out of the classrooms laughing and taking pictures of him. Why didn’t I go back to help him? Why didn’t I stand up to my best friend and make him apologize to Timmy? But what will an apology do? We caused him so much trouble that an “I’m sorry” will mean nothing. A few days later, we got called into the principles office. His face was red with anger and he looked as if he was ready to explode. We all knew that he found out about the joke they pulled on Timmy. He demanded to know whose idea it was to do those things to Timmy. No one said anything at first. Then the principle said if we didn’t tell him we would all be expelled. We all looked at each other knowing we couldn’t tell him it was Jackson, but also knew that we couldn’t get expelled. I looked at Jackson with a frightful face, but he just smiled. He already knew that he had to tell the truth because he didn’t want me to get expelled. Jackson stood up and told the principle everything. The principle was furious and expelled him immediately. Jackson had to get all his stuff and leave the school as soon as possible. Jackson went to his locker to collect his things and I followed him. I was devastated that I was going to lose my best friend, but happy he will never do anything horrible to anyone ever again. As Jackson was ready to leave he came up to me and hugged me hard. He looked into my eyes and said, “I’m sorry. I know I don’t deserve this…. I deserve a punishment that is way worse then this” then walked away.