This Is How It Started . . . One Look by Kiszel Derouche
A girl entered the classroom. The teacher assigned her a seat in the front, but she refused. She walked to the back of the classroom and sat there. The teacher was shocked but didn’t mind it. The teacher projected her voice and said, “New student, what’s your name?” The girl kept her head down and didn’t respond. The whole class turned and faced her as she sat there in silence. She picks up her head and says, “Morgan, Morgan Smith,” in a low, timid voice. Morgan and her mom Pamela had just moved to Richmond, Virginia to escape Morgan’s wild past and start fresh. Morgan has always been a shy person. She has never really had good friends that she is able to express herself to, which led her to do some crazy things that a person wouldn’t imagine an introverted 16-year-old would do. There was this one time where Morgan was having a terrible day and she was on her way home from school. She passed by a burning house with an extreme fire that was happening two blocks down from where she lived. There were firefighters, police, ambulances, and news reporters. As Morgan was hurrying down the block on the narrow street, feeling frustrated from her day at school, a lady and her crying baby were in the way. “Excuse me, hello . . . pardon me,” she said in an attempting-toyell voice. The woman turns around. “I’m sorry. All this baby work is stressful,” she said. “I’m sure if you had no legs you would be a handicap and have a wheelchair and would be going faster than what you are going at now,” Morgan said in a joking manner to the lady. Morgan never has the best humor. “Why would you say that?” Morgan walked past and bumped the lady and the baby. The lady fell and the baby’s stroller tipped. This was all happening while a disastrous house fire was going on. The next day Morgan and her mom Pamela went to the grocery store and the store’s TV was playing the news, showing the house that happened to be where Morgan just was. 257
