“Gimme my paper back James!” I yelled at him as I tried to reach for my papers.

“Fine, I’ll just use yours.” I snatched his papers from his desk.

“ OK OK!” Handing it back slowly we exchanged papers giggling quietly as the teacher shushed us and all the other students staring. Ten minutes later the bell rang, everyone rushed out quickly leaving some still trying to pack their backpacks to catch up. I thought James was done playing but he wasn’t. I mean it was funny and all before but I trying to go home! We were all playing and such then it got rough. We started pushing each other physically and he was a boy and I was a girl, being in 4th grade I thought it was called “flirting”.

He sat next to me in the front waiting for our rides. Then he told me a joke. It wasn’t that funny because this “physical playing” we called should’ve stopped when we stepped out that classroom. I mean I grew up being a quiet girl so I sometimes just like to sit by myself and reflect on my life or just observe what’s going on around me.

“James, can you stopped pushing me?” I yelled at him requesting him to stop at all the pushing and shoving.

“Nope!” Then BOOM, he slapped me in the face. People around us stared in shock. Me, not used to all the attention, I cried, like loud. Then I remember a 6th grader came and pushed him away from me.

“Why the hell would you slap her!” He didn’t reply but just stared back at all the attention he was getting.

“Sorry Jasmine, I’ll see you tomorrow. I gotta go.” He just left. I was too busy crying that I didn’t even ask for her name. She held me by the shoulder and brought me to the office. They asked me all types of questions like, “Where else did he hit you?”,”What’s your name?”,”What’s his name?”, “Do you know him?”, “What class does he have?”. I answered them all without thinking, then my dad came into the office. My dad asked what happened and the 6th grader and then office lady told him. Walking to the car I remembered that my dad told me to make him regret it and don’t let a guy touch me like that again because tomorrow we were going to talk to the Principal.
Tomorrow me and James got called up. Walking side by side we didn’t talk to each other at all knowing already what;s going to happen. At the end he apologized and I forgave him. The look in his eyes made me regret even having “the talk” with the Principal. I felt bad for him and pity him more than me because after all he is still a friend who just made a mistake the rough way. Even to this day I remember the scene but not because of his action but because of the results of his actions.