Maya was in front of her locker when she heard the final bell and while the bell rang she was ripping paper after paper due to stress . In life, she actually did need to psych herself up again. Her taped-together side-by-side sneakers are taped about to keep and protect them and her wrist is bound with bracelets, a memento at times padded by the fact that she'd outgrown them but could never part with them. She sprinted to take her measurements in the small mirror at the rear of the locker, tied on her sweatshirt, and smirkingly grinned. If only she knew all possibilities for her will be known to her and only her.
“Senior year is what I was expecting,” they said. “It was one of the best yeasr.” They smiled, and she did too, but deep within her chest the question was not amusing at all. What if I’m not ready? Needing to apply to multiple colleges and needing to make sure all work is up to date before the deadline comes. Filling her notebook with random writing out of boredom.
And still, whenever the teachers spoke to her in class, she would reply, goodness which made the rest of them think that she was innocent. Other people were able to listen to her, though she was not always ready to listen. Other children detested her, relied on her to listen, and be quiet. Teachers were amazed with her because she was quiet when she didn't mind. Maya possessed this ability to put all the other humans at ease with her. But whereas all the other humans around her were going crazy in the cafeteria, whereas all the other humans around her were in the midst of the mania of "senior year," she'd create a space between herself and the rest of them. She'd ask them if it was alright with them if other people could talk to her and touch she was learning every day in little ways about herself, and the girl that they knew wasn't always necessarily the girl that she knew herself.
I wrote this story because I wanted people to understand and feel how students often hide their emotions that many students feel when it's the end of senior year. As a senior myself I have felt the stress of deadlines and needing to constantly finish before the deadline catches up to me. Maya is a reflection of those feelings, but in a symbolic and more poetic way, Her habits are wearing worn out shoes and old bracelets and these represent the way we often held on to the past and being forced to move forward. This story was inspired by real moments of stress and a reflection that I experienced and witnessed around me.
This story touches on universal themes such as identity and change and emotional pressure, isolation. Everyone has a moment in their life when they felt pressured over whelmed as well as misunderstood. Maya's quiet struggle reflects the inner battles students face when transitions such as finishing high school. This story also raises the idea of people being seen differently by others than we see ourselves and it's a deep and personal concept people can relate to.
One key choice I made in characterizing maya was through physical items such as her taped up sneakers and her bracelets. These are not just random details but they represent Maya herself and the sneakers show how she struggles to let go of the past. And I wanted a character that holds a lot in the inside and is very quiet and is judged as “innocent’ but actually there is a lot more going on. This contrasts the appearance and reality to help the reader understand and connect with her on a deeper level.
I wrote this story to process the understanding of Maya's character and how she would struggle inside along with pressure in her senior year. . I use the books The Catcher in the Rye by J.D Salinger and the book The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky, these 2 books explain the complexity of how a typical teenager will feel when clashing with external expectations . One of the challenges I faced was finding the right balance between Maya’s thoughts and the chaos of senior year. I wanted to give a vivid image on how she actually felt so I focused more on describing and being more detailed with my characterization.