Marcelo

“Marvel or DC?”

I look to my left. A kid around my age, chubby, glasses, short hair.

“What?” I responded.

He points at my Spider-man comic.

“I think DC has better characters and tells better stories.” He says.

I stay quiet and just stare at him.

“You don’t talk much do you?”

I take a moment to say something.

“I’m more of a Marvel fan. Mostly because of Spider-man. He’s cool.” I say.

“He is cool. Okay next question. Who would win in a race, Flash or Quicksilver?”

“Flash.” I say.

He makes a buzzing sound, similar to the ones you hear when a person gets an answer wrong in a reality show.

“Trick question. It would be a tie.” He says.

“Depends on which version of the character it is.” I say.

“I don’t think that matters at all. It's the same speed, just different people.”

The bell rings meaning I only had five minutes to get to class. It was the first day of first grade and I did not want to be late. I start to pick up my things and get up.

“What class do you have?” The kid asks me.

“Math.” I respond as I start walking to class.

He starts to walk with me. Normally I would mind but his company felt good for some reason.

“Same! Let's walk to class together.” He says.

As we walk to the classroom he keeps talking about why it would be a tie and no one would win. I don’t talk through the entire time but I’m fine with it since I’m not much of a talker. When we arrive at the classroom, he stops before opening the door.

“I’m Eduardo by the way.” He says as he reaches out his hand.

I shake his hand.

“What’s your name?” He asked me.

“Hernandez. I’m-” Suddenly everything turns black.

1

I woke up from a dream that I wished was real. Instead I’m in my grey, boring room lying down in a bed that feels like I was sleeping on a rock. It's five in the morning. Time to get moving.

I drag myself off from bed and grab my clothes for school. I pick up my towel from the ground and when I get up a punch to my face happens as I look at myself in the mirror. I see nothing but disappointment and mess. Red, greasy, pimples, nose as big as Pinocchio, dead eyes, and eyebrows so thin that it looks like someone drew them. The only thing that saved me was my beautiful, soft, curly hair and my physique. Without these, I would be nothing.

I started to lift because everyone at my school did and it felt like an obligation to do it or you’ll look weak and insecure and before you knew it, no one talked to you.

I get a flashback from Freshman year. My parents decided to put me in a private catholic school instead of a public one, since they thought it would be a better fit for me and my sister. While my sister fell on her knees with the school, I hated it. Years of struggling to find a friend group just for it to not matter.

For the first few months, I stayed as quiet as a library. I didn’t bother to talk to anyone and they didn’t care about me anyway. It wasn’t until I returned from my trip from Mexico that people started to notice me.

My shoes were covered in snow as I walked into school. As I walked through the halls, looks of envy and jealousy followed me. I headed towards my locker and that’s when the real faces of the people there showed.

“I heard about your little trip.” A familiar voice says. It was Walter who was the typical “good boy" who followed the rules with his shirt tucked in, standing up straight, and the biggest teacher pet.

“So Mexico? I didn’t know you were rich.” He says.

“How did you hear about that?” I was confused since I hadn’t told anyone about the trip.

“You left your Snapchat location on for everyone to see how better you are than us and how you get to travel and we don’t.”

I looked around and saw people staring, murmuring. I remember my heart beating faster than usual and my hands started shaking. Why did he care? I’ve never talked to him before. I took a deep breath before I could respond.

“I didn’t mean to make you feel like that Walter. Sorry for offending you.” I said as I struggled to breath.

The only thing that seemed reasonable to me was to apologize and move on. I didn’t want to fight in the hallway and I knew that if I got into a fight with him, I would have four rough years of high school. As I apologized his face suddenly went from dead serious to his usual “good boy” face with a smile so big that it creeped you out.

“It's fine. I guess. You don’t talk much do you?” He said.

I nod and stay quiet. I just wanted everyone to stop staring at me so I could keep going with my day.

“We have the same classes together don’t we Pablo? Let's go to class together. I’ll introduce you to everyone.” He said it in a way that let me know he wasn’t asking.

I had no choice but to accept and follow him. I was going to correct him about my name but I couldn’t even get a word out. After this happened, I realized how messed up this place really was. Walter introduced me as Pablo which became my name there. When I met everyone, they asked questions like “Is everyone related?” or “Do you guys have tacos for Thanksgiving dinner?”

I initially thought it was just jokes, nothing serious. But after the months passed by, I realized that they were dead serious. It made me mad but I still didn't have the courage to say anything so I just took the beating and let people treat me how they wanted to. Everyone was taller, bigger, and better looking than me so I felt like there was no point in defending myself.

When Spring came, I tried out for track. I was excited since I have always been fast so this was my chance to stand out. Everything started well, I ran well and people saw the talent in me and started to treat me better. It wasn’t until I had to lift with the team that I would humiliate myself.

I had never felt the need to lift or work out in my free time since after school I just wanted to go home and watch TV shows with my mom. But now I had to do it in front of everyone. One of the coaches gave us a routine to do and I had no idea on how to do any of the exercises so I stuck around with people that knew what they were doing. I felt intimidated by everyone. Everyone knew what to do and was lifting insanely high weights. They were Greek gods compared to me. While I wasn’t extremely fat, I wouldn’t say I was fit either.

The first exercise I had to do was bench press. I had no idea how to do it so I asked for help but as soon as I asked people looked at me funny. Some asked me if I was serious and some just laughed. My face got as red as a tomato but I decided to keep going. They asked me how much weight to put on and I just told them to put forty-five on each side. Big mistake.

Everyone started to look at me. Once again, my heart was beating fast, my mind about to explode, and hands shaking like crazy. I grabbed the bar as tight as possible and I pushed. The bar started to go up and as I was doing this I thought to myself that I had it. A sudden boost of confidence made me lift the bar up with confidence.All I had to do was go down and up as many times as possible. But as soon as the bar went down, I did too. The bar went down so quickly and fell on my chest. I tried so hard to make it go up but I couldn’t. My face was burning and I started seeing stars. Everyone was looking at me and yet nobody was helping me. It wasn’t until the coach showed up and helped me out.

After that incident, I was expecting everyone to make fun of me, but that didn’t happen. Instead, everyone was nice about it which was odd at first. Everyone cheered and was happy that I tried. For a moment I thought people saw me for who I was, but no. Turns out, people thought I was special needs which is when everything clicked. People were nice to me during track season because Walter had told everyone I was special needs and that I had trouble speaking English so he told everyone to be nice to me. When I found out, my heart sinked and my eyes were full of tears. I should’ve told someone, but I didn’t.

Freshman year ended with me quitting track and realizing that if I wanted to belong there, I had to change everything.

Sophomore year was my “Rocky” phase, where I would lift and run like no other to earn the respect of everyone. One by one, people started to notice my physique and started to treat me better and started to make a name for myself. But that wasn’t enough. I also had to change my personality. Junior year I embraced my stereotype, made jokes of myself and suddenly I was going to parties.

Senior year was no different. It was the same thing as the previous year but I started to hate it. When I got home, the first thing I would do was feel like trash for letting myself act like this.

The only thing that kept me going was the gym but it wasn’t fun anymore, it was a job. Without realizing, I had lost over 30 pounds and yet I still felt like I was too fat and I needed to lose weight even though I was 120 pounds.

And here I was, looking at myself in the mirror, barely recognizing myself. Strong, popular, and yet hollow inside. I walked to the bathroom to get ready for my shower. Cold. Quick. All I needed to get going.I got out of the shower. I put on my leave-in conditioner, put on my uniform, grabbed my keys, put on my backpack, grabbed a banana, and got in my car ready to leave. It was time to put on one last show.