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Show Inside Out, 139 Terra was quiet. I realized what I had just said, and that it pretty much described how I had been all my life. "I think," I said, "I think that I used to be like that, too. But I'm changing, I hope. Because of her." Wow. I couldn't believe that I was spilling my guts like this to someone I hardly knew. Someone who had always seemed so disgusted with me. Terra just said, "Yeah." I wasn't sure what that meant. Yeah, I used to be a shallow grade-grabber? Yeah, I was changing? Or did she mean that she was changing, too? I thought about the pictures I had seen of her in the yearbook-the old ones from the Honor Society and all that-and then about the way she dressed now and the people she hung out with. Were these changes that she had made all bad? Was she finding a way to be more genuine or just acting out some anger about her brother's death? We worked in silence until the bell rang, but she sort of smiled at me and said, "See ya" when she left. I considered it a success. I couldn't wait to tell Joseph. Oh, but I wasn't speaking to Joseph. And then I thought about how shallow that was anyway-"success" and "tell Joseph." I was still going at this in a manipulative way! Suddenly I was disgusted with myself. Shallow, shallow, still. By the time I got to English I realized that there really was no way to win. I could come to actually care about Terra, but I would always wonder if I was just doing it to get what I wanted from Joseph. The question was, was it worth it, ultimately? |
