Barnes & Noble in 14

I went to Barnes & Noble the other day. If you didn’t know, David Hogg and his sister from the March for our Lives movement wrote a book. It was all over the place, like, you couldn’t walk 10 feet without seeing it. Me and my sister read a bit of it, but I couldn’t even handle reading through the first chapter. It was Lauren describing what she saw the day of the shooting, and it was so heartbreaking. Lauren wasn’t even in the building, and I started thinking “how can’t I handle reading a description of this, while my brother who was there, in the freshman building can stomach it all”. I get really scared for him, and wonder if he’s alright, but then he’s always goofing around, annoying me and my sister like nothing has changed.

It seems like there’s been a lot of change, and barely any at the same time. At school they gave us IDs to wear, and they added more fencing. They even added a metal door to the sidewalk, which doesn’t really make sense to me. It’s just some huge random metal door, twice the size of the chain link fence around it??? Like, you could just climb??? over??? the fence??? maybe??? The kids at school are also a lot more political, talking how we need gun control and should hold protests, or saying ‘why raise the voting age to 21??? It’ll make people drink and shot at the same time!’ which, i don’t really understand or agree with. It’s a lot of arguing. They also made announcements before the fire drills now because hearing alarms make some kids panic. I remember one day my friend during a fire drill when my friend was just sobbing. She didn’t want to talk about it, but she wasn’t the only one I saw that was crying.

I sorta started getting hung up on thoughts like that when I read the book, so I put it away. This is going to be one of those metaphorical things about “looking on the bright side” because I realized something. Just looking around this Barnes & Noble, there were so many books about LGBT. I’m not apart of the LGBT community myself, but it was really comforting to me. My friend told me that day that they were changing their feminine name to a different, more masculine one, and how they preferred it if I used, they/he instead of she. It’s really touching to know that there are -I don’t really know how to say it in words- that they’re not alone. That they’re books about them, that they’re represented.

I remember finding Rick Riordan’s books in 6th grade, and realizing that in one of his new series that there was a hijabi girl as a main character. It was the first time I could remember reading about a Muslim character. Me and my sister looked around the kid’s section at Barnes & Noble and I noticed how many books and dolls they had for people of color. I don’t know if I was just really emotional that day or something, but I kept looking around at all these books, with a black girl scientist, or a girl who builds a robot doll, or how the new American Girl doll is about a Hispanic astronaut. I don’t know why it amazed me so much, seeing these books about girls coding and stuff, but I was running around pointing them all out while she asked to leave.

There’s been a lot of negativity lately, but it’s important to remember That yeah, life’s shit but it’s also pretty great. It’s getting better, we’re not completely there yet, but it’s a little bit better.