Dear diary,
I’ve been in this new school for about a month now, I’m in this new place I’ve never before. I moved from the Bronx to Albuquerque. It’s crazy; everyone looks at me weird like I’m some kind of freak show. I know I’m not, I just know it. But somehow they see me differently, but I look exactly like them so how can that be? I know its crazy but I have this inner feeling like I know I’m different but I won’t admit it at all! But shhh. You can’t say a word, got it? Oh great now I know I’m crazy, I’m talking to my diary like its going to respond back to me. HA! When I look in the mirror, I see myself as a regular person. But when my mom looks at me I can tell she sees someone different. What is wrong with me?

I’m Anastasia, and this is my story.

So, this crazy feeling that I got, happened in September, I started to fell so different. I don’t exactly what it was or why I can’t “see” a difference. BUT I do know what caused this change to happen. So I was walking down the hill on Bordega Blvd. on my way home and I was thinking in my head about this girl who I passed. Usually I’m a very nice person, but this girl, she was literally CRAZY! I saw her talking to this tree, like seriously? It’s not going to talk back to her. Anyways, she had really long nappy hair that was this UGLY shade of brown, her face was just gross, it was as if she was some pig, it was obvious she didn’t take showers on a daily basis, I could smell her stench and I was like 30 feet away! So, I was thinking all this bad stuff about her in my head, she must have been some kind of witch or something because I guess she heard me, because right after I finished all my thoughts, she was like “What did you say about me? You better stop talking about me right now or I’ll do something to you, and you’ll regret ever saying anything about me!” I turned around and looked at her, I was like “I didn’t even say anything you need to calm down and stop acting all crazy!” then she went on about all this stuff on how she wasn’t crazy and then she said something and was like “now you’ll regret what you said” and then she laughed all crazy. The girl’s name was Glendis, and she ruined my junior year.

So I went to school, the new one I started this year, Haylow Oaks High. The first day seemed perfectly normal, a new fresh start. There were kids everywhere I’ve never seen, it smelt of paper, pine-sol, fresh metal, and boy’s B.O. I saw kids in clusters, you know like in “cliques”. I guess you could saw it was like a movie; the halls were like perfectly clean. But anyways, my first day was great, I felt fine and everyone saw me as me, and not some freak girl that I soon became. Then a week after the first day of school is when I stepped into HELL!

I couldn’t see it myself, but everyone said I was different, like I had this extra thing to me. And then I saw it. I had fins for feet, it went from my hips all the way down, I was a mermaid, if I had feet, and my body would be perfect. I hate the water, I only like showering and drinking PURIFIED water, I don’t even know how to swim, was I supposed to live in the water? I was so lost and confused, I didn’t know what to do, what was I going to eat or how was I going to live. I was afraid, pure down, straight up afraid. I guess my mom started noticing before anyone else, once my fins were out in the open, she told me “sweetheart, I knew something about you was changing but I just thought it was my little baby maturing, I’m so very sorry this happened to you, but you have to admit, you’ve always loved watching the Little Mermaid, and now you’re her!” I was so mad at her for saying that, my mom doesn’t know anything about me; she’s one of those clueless mothers of a teenager. My father dies in a car accident when I was five so it’s just my mom and I. She is purely oblivious to the fact that I’m not that little girl her lost her daddy anymore, I found myself and him in my heart. But anyways, after our “discussion” I went on a mission to look for that Glendis girl who made this crap happen to me.

I searched everywhere, and I couldn’t find her. I looked in the dirtiest places I could find but nothing, it was as if she vanished off the face of the earth or something. Then when I went back down Bordega Blvd. There she was talking to that same old tree that didn’t ever talk back to her. I went up to her and tapped her shoulder, she creeped me out but I needed to be normal again, I hated looking this way, it was harshing my mellow.

She had a cracky voice that sounded like an old haggy lady with loogies all up in her mouth. When she spoke, nothing but saliva and words came out her mouth, she obviously had halitosis; her spit burned when it touched your skin. While she was talking to me I had to hold in all my tears from the pain of my burning skin. “Why are your eye’s so watery girlie? Ya need some water” She shrieked at me. “m-m-m-my sk-sk-sk-skin b-b-b-burnssssssss” I stuttered. She then spit on me and walked away and said “when you can think of what you need to say, you can come to my cottage and talk”.

I went to her cottage because I can’t stay this way forever, I need to change. But all I could think about was what my mom always told me: “mija, a first impression always sticks in a persons head so always try and make it a good one. I love you” I then though to myself, why should I change who I am if everyone is just going to remember me as the girl with fins as feet. So then I just went home and started to build my life off of my fins.