There are a few things about Orangeville High that surprised me when I first started coming here a couple of years ago. The first was how massive the school is—three times as big as the middle school I went to back in Mexico, where almost everyone knew each other. The second was the fact that the walls were freshly painted, the desks in classrooms undamaged, the equipment in the laboratory relatively new. The third was how lonely this place can be, even when I’m surrounded by people at all times.

“No inventes. She couldn’t have said that.”

“Eso fue lo que me dijo, I swear!”

“—don’t think I got the answer right, porque—”

“He asked me que si quería ir a ver una movie after school, pero of course I said no.”

“Well, why did he even—”

The voices that fill the hallways are always a mix of Spanish and English. At least half of the students at Orangeville are Latino, which means that if you don’t have even a basic understanding of Spanglish, you might be feeling a little left out. Not that that’s a problem for me—I speak both languages, but there just aren’t many people I talk to on a regular basis, regardless of the language. The only person I ever really hang out with is Ari, but we aren’t in any of the same classes this semester, so I mostly see her at lunch.

When I walk into the cafeteria, a feeling of dread invades my stomach. It may be easy to blend into the crowd when I’m walking down the hallways, but here, where there’s lots of open space, I can almost feel a dozen different pairs of eyes falling on me the second I walk in.

“No one’s looking at you, Sol. I promise,” Ari said to me last year, when I told her about the way I feel exposed sometimes. “You could walk into the cafeteria in your underwear, and no one would bat an eye.”

That didn’t help much. If anything, the image of me standing in my underwear in front of all these people haunted me for weeks.

Once I’ve gotten a slice of pizza and an apple, I hold on tight to the edges of my tray and turn around to face the rows of tables. I can see Ari from here, already sitting at our usual spot and laughing at something that one of her new friends must’ve said.