When I awoke on Friday morning, I hadn’t wanted to feel better. I wanted to still be sick. I wanted to stay home from school. I couldn’t bear the thought of all the laughter behind my back, all the teasing comments, all the mocking stares that I would receive at school.

You see, my school has a lot of mean kids in it; a lot a people who take “jokes” too far. There are Mean Girls who tease the fat kids, the nerds, and the usually normal people who happened to fall into an embarrassing circumstance. I am now in the latter category, quite literally.

It was Tuesday night. I was at my chorus concert. The night was bad enough already. I was coming down with a cold, so my singing was horrible. After a painful twenty minutes of projecting my croaky voice, my group (the tenth grade) filed off the stage. There are a set of stairs that lead off the stage and onto the floor. Just three steps. They shouldn’t be that hard to walk down.

But for me, they somehow were. I could not handle that tiny staircase. And I tripped. My shoes slipped on the waxed floor of the stage. I crashed down into Vanessa Nichols, who was on the bottom step. She merely stumbled a bit, but regained her footing. I, on the other hand, swerved off the top step and fell down on my side.

Now, the nice kids would pretend they didn’t see me trip. And the majority of the kids at the chorus concert were nice kids, since popular kids who make fun of people have better things to do than hear a bunch of sophomores sing Silent Night. But there were a handful of meanies sitting right in the front row. I was five feet away from falling into their laps.

I scrambled up onto my feet as quickly as possible and ran out the door with the rest of my chorus group. My mom found me backstage and took me home right away.

“I don’t feel so well. I’m really dizzy,” I told her.

So even though it was only 7:30, I climbed into bed and rested. The next morning, I saw two huge bruises on my elbow and hip. They were aching. And my cold was worse. My voice was stifled, like I had laryngitis. I blew my nose every two minutes. I coughed every two seconds.

Thursday morning, I was a little better. Friday, I was fit as a fiddle. And I didn’t want to be. But I was. So I had to go to school. I wore a typical sick day outfit (sweatpants and a big, warm sweatshirt) in an attempt to show that I didn’t feel like talking to anyone.

By now, everyone knew about my fall off the stairs. Everyone chuckled about it. Some called out, “Hey, Klutzy!” when I walked by, or “Have a nice trip, Rachel?”

When I entered my math class, a sea of faces stared at me. Ryan Carter, a member of the front row at the concert, smirked when I passed him.

“Hey, Rachel, I knew you were kind of a klutz, but how exactly did you manage that move on Tuesday night?” Ryan asked.

I put my head down on my desk and tried to ignore all the rude comments.