The Day I Met Him (Short Story by Leanna Rose Jimenez)

It was a sunny Wednesday morning. I was sitting in Mr. Charles second period math class. Although I was physically there, my mind sure wasn’t. I would typically spend this class looking out the window in the back of the class and count the cars in the parking lot, or daydream, things like that. Math wasn’t my thing; I had no idea how to find the equation for a line, or the orthocentre of a triangle. For others, I’m sure this was easier, but for me not so much; and I never asked for help. Not because I had no care to learn what Mr. Charles was attempting to teach, but because, I guess I never learned how to ask.

Since I was a young girl I was forced to depend on myself and no one else. My father was always at work, and I never knew my mother, she passed when I was only two. My father told me she was a wonderful woman, but that’s all he would say on the subject. So, growing up without a mother and a father who worked most of the time I learned to take care of myself. But now that I needed help, I wasn’t able to ask.

Class went on as usual. Mr. Charles would teach and the class would listen. The bell rang and everyone got up and headed to the door. I gathered my books and placed them carefully in my backpack when Mr. Charles stopped me and asked if he could have a word with me. I waited behind until there were only three people in the room; the third person was the new kid who moved here from Ohio.

He called us to his desk and spoke. “Victoria, I’m sure you already know Keith. He is very skilled in math and I was thinking that maybe he can help you, and you could show him around the school.” We both agreed with him and went on our ways to our next class.

This was the day I met the person who would change my life for the better. Over the next few months we would get closer, and he would teach me how to trust someone other than myself, and how to depend on others for a change. I fell for him, and years later I’m still falling for him. Six years after meeting him in our grade 11 math class we have become best friends and lovers. Who would have thought I would meet my soul mate because I was failing math. I guess it’s true what they say, “Everything happens for a reason.”