Day 3 – New School, Same Anxiety

First day at my new school. The building is huge. Like, if my old school was a sandwich, this one is a whole buffet. Kids were everywhere—laughing, running, yelling, trading Pokémon cards like they were stocks.

I wanted to talk to someone, but my legs said “Nope.” So I pretended to tie my shoe five times. Smucky would’ve walked straight in, tail wagging like, “Hello world, admire me.” Smucky has the confidence I want.

My teacher, Mrs. Crackleberry, has teacher eyebrows. The kind that say, “Don’t try me.” But she also smiled when she said my name out loud to the entire class.

“Buckington Carter”…which made me feel… horrible. I hate that name. I don’t know why mom gave me a name that sounds like she got it from the American Revolution back in the year 1770. Mom says the name sounds distinguished, like the name of someone important. I think it sounds like a Of course the kids all laughed and I quickly corrected Mrs. Crackleberry and told everyone to call me Bucky.

There’s a lot of jokes I could make about the name Crackleberry, but I’ll save that for another day. Today I just wasn’t in the mood. I think I was missing all my old friends at my old school, in our old neighborhood.

I guess that’s the only reason I’m sharing this stuff. Mom has me seeing this therapist lady who says I should practice writing out my thoughts every day because it will help me feel better with all these new changes with moving to a new city and a new home, making new friends at a new school, and getting settled into our new life. That’s way too much “new” stuff, when honestly, I think I liked our “old” life more.

But anyway, I ate lunch alone on my first day at my new school. I sat near the window. Watched a house fly try to escape. We were the same fly today.