Everday

I have a friend at my school. He’s a guy, I’m a girl. He’s shorter than me, and weaker than me, but we get along fine. Unfortunately, over the past few years, we’ve kind of grown apart. We’re fifteen now, three years away from leaving school, A lot has changed since we were twelve. So he hangs out, with a group of guys, some of which are cool, but most of which pick on him, pushing him around, and treating him like dirt. I see this when we have Automotive together (I’m the only girl in my Auto class, but that’s normal for a country school(did I mention we live in the middle of nowhere?)) and last year, when we had Physical Education together. I first noticed this, when we were playing a game, and I was the only girl in the team that had bothered to play. As per usual, none of the boys would pass to me. As I have mentioned before, I am used to this, but it doesn’t stop me from wanting to make a change. After, walking back to the changing rooms, I found myself walking next to him. I was too mad to trust myself to speak, but luckily, he spoke first, muttering something along the lines of, “I’m sorry.” I ground my teeth. “Yeah, well, that game sucked more than usual. That substitute sucks.” We had a substitute teacher, and our normal teacher would have made a rule, that you had to pass to a girl in your team before you could score. I hated that rule with all my heart, but it helped sometimes. He shook his head. “No, I should have passed to you.” “You should have, why didn’t you?” I was slightly mad at him now, it only just occurred to me that there were several moments when he had the chance to. “I wanted to, but [one of the boys] said he would bash my head in if I didn’t pass to him.” “You should have passed to him anyway. If he wanted to beat you up, he’d have to get through me first.” [When I say we were good friends, I mean it. The following year, we’d had to learn ballroom dancing, and we had to do it with someone from the opposite gender. The funny thing was, he and I got to watch the kids who chose their girlfriends or boyfriends, fall into absolute jeopardy as they broke up half way through the unit.] He turned to me, more serious than ever. “Eadie, promise you’ll never do that. You’ll only make it worse.” I was shocked to silence, and didn’t get to ask what I wanted to most before he left for the boys changing room. ‘But what if they’re beating you up?’ Though I’m sure I know what his answer would be. ‘Then I’ll have to deal with it myself.’ And that crooked smile of his, which does not reassure me at all. True to that, I have never stepped in, and though it boils my blood to see them treat him like that, I stuff it away for later. But I just wish more people knew that sexism does not just happen to women.