Even though I am much taller than her, my strides matched hers while we walked side-by-side. The silky blonde hair of my best friend sharply contrasted my frizzy dark curls, but at the time, I never viewed myself as much different than her. The buzz of excitement filled the air as everyone’s much-anticipated weekend plans finally arrived. 

I turned to her and said, “Did you ask your parents if I could sleep over yet?” Her skin turned pale while her eyebrows furrowed, giving me my answer before she even spoke.

 “Oh my god! I totally forgot but I can ask right now. My parents are out with my sisters, but I can Facetime them and ask,” she quickly blurted out.  

The anxious feeling I usually got when my friends asked for permission from their parents never came. I had been to her house more times than I could count, and there had never been a problem with me being there. We walked in unison as we looked around for a place to sit and call her parents. As we reached outside, the spring breeze brushed against my brown skin, sending a chill down my body. The sun’s reflection accentuated her radiant blue eyes, creating an illusion of looking down into the waters of the Caribbean.  

“Let’s sit here,” she suggested, awakening me out of the trance. 

I simply nodded as we made our way to a bench with chipped blue paint and rusted iron rods that supported the seats. We sat down beside each other while she pulled out her phone. I looked over at her phone while she typed “Dad” into her contacts. There was a blue heart emoji followed by a police officer emoji honoring her dad’s occupation. The distinctive ringing of Facetime echoed clearly as we awkwardly waited… Ding! Finally, he answered. My friend continued with small talk, slowly building up to the well-awaited question.  

“You don’t mind if Shyama sleeps over this weekend, right?” she asked nervously.  

“Oh! You mean the mini-terrorist?” her dad said amusingly as the rest of her family lost their breaths in laughter. 

“Dad!” she yelled as she laughed it off. 

The rest of the conversation was muted by the sounds of the leaves brushing against each other. The creak of the rusted iron rods in the bench below me grew louder, and my mind went blank. Just like that, I no longer thought that I was the same as her.

 After that, my reflection in the mirror portrayed what I hated the most. Whenever I looked down at my skin, rage circulated through me as I wanted to bathe in bleach to become lighter. I was ashamed to be Indian, embarrassed by my culture and South Asian features. My adolescence was spent desperately trying to fit in just like everyone else’s, but my version of trying to fit in was to become colorless.  

Our friendship ended shortly after that incident, but sometimes I still see those same piercing blue eyes walk past me in the hallway, and I am stuck between feeling gratitude and resentment. It was probably a lost memory for her, something that got swept away in the gravity of life. However, I was reminded of it every time I saw her or a male police officer that resembled her dad. So, when police officers roamed around our school for safety checks, I was hesitant to believe that I was someone they wanted to save, or if I was just another mini-terrorist to them.  

Many years have since passed, but as I looked up at my teacher after retelling that story, hot wet tears rolled down my face while my peers stared back at me in shock. I had told that same story many times, laughing it off like it never really bothered me, but this time I realized just how much it had affected me. At that moment, while everyone saw me cry, I was hugging my twelve-year-old self, telling her I was proud of her. We finally understood that it is okay to love ourselves, to find empowerment in embracing what was once hated.