September 2020

Winner of the Fall 2019 Personal Narrative Contest with the Society of Young Inklings. A new friendship forms after a harrowing shared experience “If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands!” Clap, clap! “If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands!” Clap, clap! We were dancing on the mat in the kindergarten classroom. Music was blasting from our teacher’s magical silver box, which was sitting in the corner on a little plastic chair. Our teacher, Ms. Winnie, stood facing us while we danced, swaying to the music and clapping her hands along with us. Clap, clap! I loved dancing time. Other than playtime, it was my favorite time of day. “If you’re happy and you know it, stomp your feet!” Stomp, stomp! I turned around to see how my friends were getting along. Ella, instead of stomping her feet, was hopping on one, her waist-length, jet-black hair flapping around her shoulders. Ava, the resident drama queen and aspiring secret agent, spun around and twirled, her light-brown pigtails flopping behind her. We had all pretty much forgotten what movement we were supposed to be making at this point, and we probably didn’t care. I watched as a familiar figure with curly, dirty-blonde hair came stomping over to us. It was Chloe. She was the oldest kid in the class (she had turned six in November), as well as the first to lose a baby tooth. All of this gave Chloe status in the classroom, and she was in charge. It just seemed to make sense that way. If Chloe told us to do something or to refrain from doing something, we would do what she said; and if she made a decision for us, then we would accept it. I didn’t particularly like Chloe. But I knew as well as anyone else that she was our leader. And the leader got to choose who got to use the heart stencil when we were in the art center. People were always scrambling over one another to get to that stencil. Nearly every time, she got to it first, but she never kept it for herself. Each time, she gave it to a different person, and if you weren’t chosen, you weren’t allowed to complain because “you get what you get and you don’t get upset,” even if you were. “If you’re happy and you know it, and you really want to show it, if you’re happy and you know it, shout—” I raised my hand suddenly. “Ms. Winnie?” “Yes, Kate?” our teacher replied. She leaned down slightly in order to meet my gaze. “I have to go to the bathroom.” “All right,” said Ms. Winnie. She scanned the group of my still-dancing classmates shouting, “Hooray!” whenever the song told them to do so. She stood there for what seemed to me like a very long time, her gaze flicking over each of her students, considering them individually, for the sole purpose of selecting them to be my bathroom buddy. It was one of the classroom rules that anyone who needed to use the restroom would have to cross the hall with a bathroom buddy. It would have to be another girl, of course. If not one of my two friends, then maybe one of the louder, more eccentric girls like Olivia, who was obsessed with horses, or Jeanne, who wanted to be an astronaut and was very firm in her belief that a zillion was the biggest number. I wouldn’t really mind being with any of the girls in the class, as long as it wasn’t someone who had virtually no respect for me, someone whose name was . . . “Chloe,” said Ms. Winnie. “Can you go to the bathroom with Kate?” Chloe stopped dancing. “Okay,” she said, staring directly at the teacher without even stopping to glance at me. She didn’t look me in the eye as she crossed the carpet to where I was standing and slipped her hand into mine. Ms. Winnie, seemingly glad that neither of us had expressed any open hostility, only said one more thing to us: “Go to the bathroom and come right back.” “We will,” said Chloe, before I could respond. As we made our way across the kindergarten classroom, I made a note of how awkward it was to hold Chloe’s hand. There was no comfort in it; she held it loosely, barely grasping my hand in hers, and walked just a tiny bit ahead of me so it felt like she was pulling me along. She didn’t look at me, and I didn’t look at her. Neither of us said a word as we opened the door and stepped out into the hallway, letting the music fade away as the door swung slowly closed, falling back into position with a click. A few minutes later, I was washing my hands, pretending not to be listening to a conversation between two fifth-grade girls. Both seemed indescribably tall. One of them was blonde, standing with her back to the pink tiles on the wall, wedged into the corner of the bathroom. The other was shorter, with darker skin and curly hair and eyelashes. They were discussing some other girl in their class whose friendship they were deciding whether or not to prematurely end. I wondered how their teacher had ever allowed them to be bathroom buddies—they certainly weren’t coming right back. It was all I could do not to cry. I wanted Chloe to see that I wasn’t a baby. I thought about the way they had looked at me as I dried my hands with a brown paper towel. It was the way I felt when older kids ignored me on the playground or when Chloe started a conversation at the snack table about how many teeth we had lost and left me out completely. I remembered something Ava had told me when we were sitting on the swing set on a lazy Friday when neither of