My Short Story Under Pressure

Under Pressure

By Ryan Wessman

High school, the glory days as most adults would call it, but high school is really more like hell or at least hell for friendships. I have always tried to be friends with everybody, my mom always used to tell me to overlook the bad in people and just try to make them your friends. But I had a group of best friends: Toby the smart kid, Steve-o the jock and Rhapsody the ladies man. We have known each other since middle school, but high school has not been easy for us.

High school puts so much pressure on kids. Getting good grades has been a goal for a while but not until high school does it literally become a need. I have always been an okay student, straight B’s year in and year out. I really don’t care about school or what college I go to. But for my friends, it has been a different story. Take Toby, he has always been the smartest in his class, in the grade and pretty much in the entire school though recently he has got a couple of B’s and he can’t keep it together. He has been studying 24 hours a day for the past week. Skipping sleep hasn’t done much for his life, but his grades are back up. For Steve-o, he pretty much gets C’s and D’s in all his classes, which would have been an issue, if he wasn’t the star baseball player that would take are team to state. “Counting on a college sholarship”, that’s what Steve-o’s dad always says. Rhapsody, or Rhap for short, cuts class a lot. We do not even know how he is still in school. Whether there was a concert, a date or even just a TV show Rhap wanted to watch, he would cut class. Rhaps likes to say he “lives for the moment”.

Another hard part of high school is your social life, in middle school you can learn during the day and text in the night. But in high school most kids really have to choose between good grades or being popular. Luckily for me, I am pretty much friends with everyone. For my friends, there interest in social status is all across the board. There’s Toby who doesn’t give much thought to his social life and, even with all those smarts, he does not try to impress anyone. For Steve-o, he is the exact opposite, being the jock that he is, equals instant popularity. Rhap is in the middle. He has not really been popular amongst the guys, but amongst the girls he is everyone’s favorite. This difference in social lives and priorities has really driven us a part.

In middle school, everything felt perfect. People would not normally associate us together, the jock, the nerd, the ladies man, and the average kid. But in middle school we had a school where four elementary came together, and the first day of school we were put in a group together in our first class, History. We were told to “meet our new friends” as these would be our groups all year. And we took that literally and became best friends. In middle school grades don’t matter, you always have time to socialize, and your parents start to let you be free. Parents often say that they hated middle school, but I think it’s paradise compared to high school.

Now it’s Senior year with just 4 weeks left and our friendships were really tested. One of Rhap’s  cousins was having a party at his house and Rhap asked us to attend. Once we got there, Rhap’s cousin, Josh’s house was already trashed and it was just 8 pm. He told everybody that his parents were gone and to go crazy. Steve-o immediately left us to talk to his jock friends and Toby told me he just wanted to go home. I told him we have to meet up with Rhap first, so we went up to the second floor to find him. Once we got up there we found him in Josh’s bedroom smoking pot and drinking beer with some of the stoners in our grade. Rhap asked us if we wanted a hit off his joint and Toby went into a lecture about his parents telling him that pot is a form of poison and if you even try it once you could die. But we knew that was a lie. I told Rhap “no” because if my parents ever found out they would literally kill me. He told us that there was no way our parents would ever find out. Toby told Rhap he had to leave to study for a test he just remembered. Toby was never good socially and this scenario really had him running for home. Rhap then handed me a joint and I then handed it back to him and told him I was going to study with Toby. We later found out the police showed up, and arrested Rhap.

The next day at school, we had our college meetings that’s when college representatives come to try and convince us to go to their college. You get to miss all your classes as long as you are meeting with the college reps. Toby told us he was going to the Princeton meeting. He had been dreaming of Princeton and wearing the sweatshirt ever since he was 6. Steve-o said he would go to the Florida State meeting, because they were the best college for baseball. I told them I didn’t really know where I wanted to go, and I really didn’t care. The police let Rhap out of prison on a warning because he was a minor but he didn’t really need to be there as he told us he was not going to college, Toby then asked him if he was kidding and Rhap responded “no, college is stupid and there is no need to go”.

Because the party was such a disaster, Toby and I thought it would nice to invite Steve-o and Rhap to the movies. Soon we’d have the defining moment of high school success, Senior year finals and college acceptance letters. We decided to go to Spiderman, but we didn’t really pay attention to the movie at all. Toby told us that he might not be able to go to Princeton and it was the only school he applied to. His parents both attended and he was certain he’d get in, so why waste those other applications fees. He explained he was getting a “B” in Spanish and then he started to cry. We tried to convince him that it would all be okay and that he would get in. To help Toby feel better, Steve-o said he might be home next year too. Florida State did not offer him a scholarship, but they said he could join the team as a “walk-on”. His parents hadn’t save a dime, so Steve-o was frantically emailing coaches of other schools worse at baseball. Rhap said he cut the college meetings and have an amazing day hanging out with two girls. Toby and Rhap then got into an argument about who was screwing up their life more. Toby told Rhap that he “was making the biggest mistake of his life”. And Rhap responded with the same message to Toby followed by yolo.

Two weeks later, everybody in the school got their college acceptance letters, so I decided to have a hang out with the guys to see where everybody got in. Steve and Rhap showed up both pretty happy with their plans. Steve-o then told us he got into Vanderbilt on a Baseball scholarship. Rhap said he still was not going to college and looking forwarding to traveling around the world. I was the one kid who got into Notre Dame without wanting to go there my entire life. It was so great to hang out with my best friends who I barely saw anymore, but we were worried about Toby, who never showed up.

A couple days later Toby was still missing, so we decided to go to his house. When we got there, no one was there. Toby’s parents were traveling in Asia. Luckily, Toby gave me his spare key to his house just in case I ever needed it. We went in and no one was on the main floor, so we went up to his room. Rhap fainted upon seeing him, Rhap was never to good around blood. Steve-o started to cry, and Steve-o would always tell us he never cried. It was Toby, he was dead. There was a letter next to him it said,

“the world is not fair. I tried my entire life for one goal, and it was for

shit. I loved Princeton, so much. Why do bad things happen to good people?

I do not want to live in a world where one letter can ruin your life, but I do.

So good Bye Luke Rhap and Steve-o you have been more like a family to me than my parents ever where, and for that I will always be grateful.

In complete shock, all I could think was “Toby was always a great writer”.

Our high school had a day off for Toby’s funeral and hardly any kids from school came. But in the final couple days of school, everyone in high school treated us like babies, “are you okay?” “Do you need any help?” And other shit like that. We stayed at my house everyday that week, it felt as though as bad as this tragedy was it finally brought us close together again. Rhap and Steve-o and I will be friends forever. But it won’t be the middle school fun that glues us together. It will be that moment in Toby’s room – the sight, the smell and quietness. It will haunt us for the rest of our lives.

The Littlest Hitler by Ryan Boudinot

First off here are a few lines that caught me off guard "My dad helped my make the [hitler] costume"Davy , "What made him [hitler] so mean" Teacher "He only ate Vegetables" Davy, "He [davy's dad] let me watch R-rated movies, showed me how to roll joints, and told me how to sneak into movie theaters",And those are just some of the many messed up things about this story.  Honestly I thought it was a good story, it was very interesting and I never felt bored throughout the story. But the story itself is so so so so so so so so so so messed up, his dad showed me how to roll joints let that sink in that would be bad if this kid was in 9nth grade our grade if his dad was showing him how to roll illegal drugs but he is in f**king 4rth grade. This kid is in 4rth grade and he is doing things that would be considered bad if he was 5 years older than he is. Another thing that was really weird about this story is how the teacher is explaining the story of anne frank to 4rth graders, and how concentration camps work as if it is nothing. That school, town, city, state is messed up messed up bad.

A story from my childhood, honestly I do not have a stand alone memory from my childhood. A lot happened from when I was born until now, if I had to state one specific story I guess switching schools for the first time was a big part of my childhood. So the first time I switched schools was from Lincoln elementary to Burley elementary, I went to Lincoln Kindergarten through second grade, then to Burley third grade to fifth. If you have not switched school there is just no way to know what if feels like, it is very tough. I felt as though as just a young kid I was going to lose all of my friends and possibly not be able to make new friends, or that the new school would be horrible and I would flunk out. Just stupid things a child would think, but just leaving everything you have built for three years is hard very hard. The reason I had to switch schools was because my brother did not get into Lincoln, I tried to convince my mom for a while to just let me continue going there but that never went anywhere. My brother finally got into burley because its a lottery to get in, meaning its completely random. The new school was nice, I made friends I didn't flunk out. I all worked out really, I still keep in contact with people from both of those schools. The second time switching schools is much easier, from burley to parker. I knew what would happen, and it did I made friends I didn't flunk out. It all worked out.

Flannery O'Connor's A Good Man Is Hard to Find

My initial reaction was wow another sad messed up story to add to the group, yay. I thought this story was not good at all, before the misfit shows up the story is very boring and then he and his goons just kill them all. How is that interesting, why would someone spend time to make this a story. If Flannery O'Connor's goal was to make the reader feel sad at the fact that people get murdered (like what happened in the story) every day than congrats A+ job. If her goal was to make an interesting story about a family's trip to florida that gets tragically messed up, she did a terrible job.

The title is A Good Man Is Hard to Find, and that is relating to the story because the grandma on numerous occasions calls the misfit a good man, when in fact he is not at all he is a murderer.

Joyce Oates Where are you going, Where have you been?

First off this is the most f**ked up thing I have ever read ever, and sorry for swearing but there is just no other way to put it. This story almost made me cry out of sadness for Connie. But besides it being so so so so so weird and messed up and sad, I thought it was the best short story we have read so far, because its really interesting its the longest but I felt as though I needed to know what was going to happen next. The fact that this really happens in the world makes me want to cry, because in all honesty there was nothing connie could have done to prevent it. I also thought it was interesting how many times Connie repeated the line you're crazy, I think it showed how she had never been really  taught  that stuff like what happened to her (child abduction, and rape) really happens.

The song that I thought most represented this was Sweet Child o' Mine by Guns N Roses. I thought the song was a lot like the story from Andy Friends perspective, because the song is about a guy who loves a girl who is much younger than him. On a separate note the song does not really bring the mood of the story which to me was a sort of a scared messed up mood but I thought the lyrics related closely to the story.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1w7OgIMMRc4

John Updike A&P

The thing that stands out for me in this story is how much detail there is in this story, but even though there was so much detail the actually story was pretty boring to me. I felt as though it was the diary of a cashier at the A&P, the girls really did not intrigue me at all. Overall I thought the story was bad, I would give it a solid 3 out of 10.

If I had to choose a favorite passage it would be, "I started to say something that came out "Fiddle-de-doo". It's a saying of my grandmother's, and I know she would have been please.
"I don't think you know what you're saying," Lengel said.
"I know you don't," I said. "But I do." "
I liked that passage because I thought it was a pretty good way to quit a job, it was not offensive or rude in anyway. It serves the purpose of a graceful leave from a job she needed but did not want.

Marquez's A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings

I thought it was pretty interesting, I was not quite sure what the meaning of the story was but it was better than the last story (how to date) for sure. I liked how people came from all over the world just to see a man with wings, I think if it were to happen today that would also happen. I wonder if he was really a winged man.

Questions:

1. what was the point of the story?

2.  why did the crowds lose interest in the winged man fully?

3.  was he really a winged man?

Díaz's How to Date a Browngirl, Blackgirl, Whitegirl, or Halfie

I really disliked the reading, it was boring and not interesting to me at all. I felt as though this was the story of an average date for someone below the poverty line, nothing interesting. The point of view is from the narrator. The ending really did not wrap up the story for me, it just sort of ended when the date ended. I did not take anything away from this story, at all. This could be one of the worst stories I have ever read.

I do not have any dating advice, sorry.

Atwood's Happy Endings

My first thoughts were that this was the weirdest story I have ever read, and that is not an exaggeration. Besides the first endings all the others were either sad or messed up. The point of view was from a third person narrator like an outsider looking in. I guess what I took away from the story was that eventually we all die as Atwood said the true ending was John and Mary die. I guess if I were to make a ending of my own this would be it

G. John and Mary, both live there own lives never meeting again. Eventually both getting married to different people. They eventually forget that they ever meet, then John and Mary die. This is the end of the story.