Work Text:
Miya Chinen
College Application Essay
January, 20XX
Who I Used to Know
To be honest, this is the second draft of my college essay. This first one was the one I gave to my parents and advisor, the one about all my skateboarding achievements as captain of the national youth team. But that’s not what I wanted to write about. Sure, that was important to me, but it led me to find something even more important- my friends, the people I used to know. They were the ones who promised never to leave my side, who built me up, before we came crashing down, the ones who shaped my life the most. They are the ones I want to write about, to tell you about the most, so here we go.
When I was in elementary school, I learnt to skateboard with my friends. We thought it would be fun, so we all bought boards together and started learning how to ride them and as many cool tricks as we could. It was all so exciting, until I started getting better at it a lot faster than they did. I mastered an ollie in two weeks and just kept improving from there, but my friends couldn’t keep up. They stopped showing up to play and practice with me, and when I asked them why, they told me that heroes couldn’t team up with slimes. That broke me for a while. I pushed everyone away, thinking they were just slimes like my old friends, like they’d all leave me eventually.
Not long after, my parents discovered I had a particular talent for skateboarding and took it upon themselves to control my life. They regulated what I ate, what I wore, where I went, and what I did without even really thinking about what I wanted. But I followed what they said and soon ended up the youngest person on the national youth skateboarding team while still in middle school. My ego and urge to push back against my parents were out of control and I needed a way to expel that frustration. For that, S was perfect.
S was an underground skating ring, holding races at an abandoned mine at night. I got an invitation from someone I knew from the team and was hooked after only one night. Though I’ve long forgotten who gave me that invitation, I will thank them forever because it allowed me to meet the people who changed me. Everyone there was older than me, usually high school age and up, but I still managed to beat most of them. Here I got to wear what I wanted and race on dangerous tracks, making my heart race for the first time in a while. There were all the usual winners: Cherry, an older guy with long pink hair; Joe, who owned a restaurant and somehow never wore a shirt; Shadow, a punk rock florist in love with his manager; and me, the middle school prodigy. I still wasn’t happy though. I knew how most races would end and almost never lost. Until he came.
It was a typical day. Shadow was racing some guy that would definitely lose, but Reki, a teenager who thought he was better than he was, didn’t bring the guy’s board. Reki ended up being ordered to race Shadow, even though Shadow had beaten Reki in a race the previous night that left Reki with a broken arm. I didn’t really care what would happen because, whether or not Reki’s arm was broken, he wasn’t going to win. He didn’t have enough skill to beat Shadow. That’s when he stepped up. No one had ever seen him before, with his blue hair and odd accent. He was a transfer student in Reki’s class and came with Reki that night. He took Reki’s board and some duct tape and sat down, securing his feet to the board. No one could believe their eyes, and when the race started, he just sat there, not knowing how to get going. But when he got going, he raced down the track, pulling off moves I’d never seen before. We all ran to the ending point to see if he could beat Shadow. I didn’t shut my eyes until he finished his race, not wanting to miss a second. That night, a boy that didn’t know how to skateboard, flew through the air and won his race. I thought I’d finally found another hero.
His name was Langa. He was Reki’s classmate, a transfer student from Canada, and he’d gotten experience snowboarding, but that night was his first time skateboarding. I heard he’d learned an ollie in only two weeks, just like me. I was so excited that I might have found a hero, someone like me, so I challenged him to a race at S. I had to see what he was made of. But that slime Reki was always around him. Langa didn’t need a slime, he needed another hero, so why did he smile so brightly when with him?
I trained so hard for that night, looking forward to it so much. I was going to beat Langa and invite him to be friends, be heroes, with me. But it didn’t go to plan. I lost. I was so alone in the idea that I’d lost in the only thing I was good at, but the slime Reki came up to me. He told me that he and Langa would be my friends, that they’d never leave me behind. I was going to tell him that I didn’t need a slime like him, but I saw the way he and Langa smiled at each other, then back at me. I started crying. Suddenly I didn’t need to be hero anymore. I didn’t have to be better than anyone else. I just had to be me to have friends. Reki and Langa weren’t a slime and a hero, they were just people, and so was I. I think I was finally happy.
The story wasn’t over for us, life doesn’t stop with the happy ending. They pulled me in and I had so much fun with them, Cherry, Joe, and Shadow when we all hung out. I would go on trips with them, do my homework at Joe’s restaurant, and we would compete in friendly races at S. As Langa grew better and better though, Reki got discouraged. He’d been skating for much longer and couldn’t keep up with this virtual newbie. I knew how it felt to be ostracized for being talented though, and I didn’t want their friendships to break like mine did, but I didn't know what to say or how to help. They were incredible though, and worked it out, even though all the tears and pain. Langa jumped into Reki’s arms when they made up, knocking him over as they hugged while laughing together. They were happy with each over, and that happiness grew into love.
We all knew they liked each other but were too scared to say it. One day after Langa won a race though, he jumped towards Reki again, but this time, he kissed him instead of hugging him. Reki was shocked, but kissed him right back. They started going out. They went everywhere with smiles spread across their faces and hands interlocked. They were so happy that no one even knew what happened until it was too late. At school, they were excited to show their happiness off, walking into class holding hands and spending all their time together, but not everyone took it well. Their classmates began to bully them for being gay, for dating each other. Despite everything, they stayed together, braving it all with each other, but that just made it worse.
The bullies didn’t give up. It got worse. Reki and Langa would show up to Joe’s restaurant, S, and occasionally my house, covered in injuries from being beat up, but they still didn’t tell us what was going on. They didn’t want us to worry. Imagine that, the ones that were hurting the worst didn’t want us to worry. The situation escalated to the point where someone even made trouble for Langa’s mom at the hospital she worked at and parents got involved. A meeting at the school turned into a shouting match between parents, with Langa’s mom being berated by the mom of one of the students bullying them even though she did nothing wrong. It was all too much for Langa. He couldn’t stand everyone around him being hurt, especially Reki and his mom, and had a breakdown that landed him in the hospital. Only then was when we found out what happened.
Cherry and Joe offered to help Langa’s mom in any way they could and I went to visit both Reki and Langa as much as I could. Neither of them were doing well. Months of abuse were finally taking their toll on them. There was one day when I went to the hospital to bring Langa flowers from Shadow’s shop, but I couldn’t go in. I saw Reki and Langa lying on the hospital bed asleep side by side, their pinkies locked together. Their eyes were red and puffy, but they were smiling softly in their sleep. I hadn't seen those real smiles from them in such a long time. I put the flowers outside of Langa’s room, not disturbing them, and left, thinking I would come back another day. I wish I’d never done that.
Two days later, Reki told us that Langa had left, moved back to Canada. Apparently, Langa’s mom just wanted to see Langa happy, surrounded by friends and people that loved him, so seeing him struggle so much hurt her. She brought up moving back to Canada, where he’d grown up, and thinking it would spare his mom and Reki any more pain, Langa agreed. Knowing how much Langa loved Reki, she even offered Reki to come with them, to live with them in Canada and start again, but Reki couldn’t leave his mother and younger siblings, so he refused. Then Langa left just like that, packed up and gone in a matter of days. That was the last time I ever got to talk to Langa.
Reki was in a terrible state. He stopped going to school for a while and stopped going to S. Eventually he quit skating all together. Only when his mother told him how worried about him she was did he go back to school, but he dragged himself to school every day. We would go visit his house and his school to see him, but he would rarely talk to us. We found out that, just as Langa had never responded to any of our texts, he hadn't responded to Reki at all either. I don’t know what Langa is doing now, but Reki now works down at a convenience store. He didn’t go to college, only finishing high school at him mom’s insistence, quit his job at the skate shop, and has never looked back at skateboarding. We still go to see him, but he continues to not talk much to us or anyone else. Only once did I hear more than a couple of words from him.
I was in high school and after school one day I went to see him while he was working. He was on a break, sitting on a crate outside the back of the store, looking more worn out than usual. The setting sun shone brightly, but he didn’t seem to see anything at all, his eyes blank. I sat down next to him in silence, and he surprised me when he suddenly started talking. Apparently that day would have been his and Langa’s four-year anniversary if everything had worked out. That night, as the sun disappeared, he told me to never give up the people I loved, to always go after what I wanted because I may never get a second chance. Those words from him hit me hard, and I still haven’t been able to get them out of my head.
The two boys that taught me so much, taught so many people so much, didn’t get their happy ending. I don’t see heroes and slimes any more thanks to them, so I want to help them if I can. I want to change people’s views in this country, to make sure no one has to go through what they did again. They made me who I am today, let me be happy, so I’m not going to give up, just like Reki told me. I want to go to college and make a change in the hopes that they can be happy together again one day. So yeah, my achievements are impressive, but if you really want to know me, here I am: I’m a product of the lessons I’ve learned from the two incredible people I used to know.