Short Story 1: Hey, Sheena

Hey, Sheena!
By Doris Ogdoc

“Hey, Sheena! You checked my paper wrongly! This is “emphasis”. And you marked it as incorrect.”

“ I’m quite sure you wrote, “imphasis”.

Tracy, the class president, sat down and frowned. As if something that belonged to her was stolen. She was the top scorer for the English test. Among the 50 items, she answered 47 correctly.

The next highest scorer only got 38 out of 50. And the rest got middle to lower scores. Her classmates looked at her as if she was a genius. She liked it. She was the princess whom all wanted to bow down to.

Not satisfied, she’d seen a way to escalate her score for another single point.

After their papers had been checked by their fellow classmates, she saw that she almost got the answer! Except that the word was spelled incorrectly. No one could have guessed that the rhymed word for oasis and the synonym for highlighting or stress was emphasis.

She was just nine, a grade three pupil. Emphasis...who would have really known that word? Only Tracy. Yet, she was frustrated enough that she got the spelling wrongly. I deserve to take a point for this, she thought.

What she did was take the eraser of the pencil, erased the pencil written “i” for her misspelled, “imphasis”, and changed it to “e”. And went to Sheena, her test paper’s checker.

After that encounter with Sheena, a few of her adoring classmates started to ask, “What’s the matter, Tracy?” She told them, that, Sheena would not correct that “correct” item of hers.

All eyes went to Sheena with a form of disgust. Tracy simply said, like a forgiving victim, “ Never mind”.

Isabel, a large, toughie of the class took Sheena by the arm and said, “ Why don’t you correct it, Sheena?” Sheena, a bit frightened, tried to defend herself,” I’m sure it was an “i”, not an “e””.

No one would believe Sheena.

She was tall, had a long, kinky hair, had a flat nose, and a thin body structure. Most of all, she had a brain as small as a pea. Among the 46 students, she ranked the 46th.

Ron, the guy who had been crushing Tracy for a long time involved himself and accused Sheena of being jealous of Tracy.

Another girl, Bea, who was Tracy’s best friend, grabbed Sheena’s long hair. Until Sheena sobbed.
Everybody was on her.

Guilty as she was, Tracy got out of the classroom, feeling terrible.

***
After the class ended, the pupils were rushing to go out and play. Some played basketball, others were on the swing, and a lot went to play Patintero.

Tracy had to be home early. She had to do a lot of school stuff. So, she met her dad at the guardian’s waiting area.

“ What is your English score like?”

“ Oh dad, I topped the class!”, Tracy reported jubilantly.

“ Let me see the paper.”, requested her dad.

“ Forty-seven out of fifty?! Couldn’t you do any better than that?! I’m sure there are students who have higher scores than you from the pilot section. You should have made this fifty out of fifty!”

Tracy’s gaze shifted down from his dad’s to the cemented ground. She was fighting back the tears.

“ Tito, no one can be greater than Tracy. The test was difficult, and most of us got 25 and below. You should be proud of her.”

As her eyes were finding for the owner of the voice, she swallowed her saliva as she found out who it was.

It was Sheena.

Tears fell down on Tracy’s face.