You Are My Best Friend

I bit my lips as I felt my face soften, and, copying the students, my lips curled to a smile, a humble one. I nodded slowly as I spoke in a lower voice. “Bonjour classe,” I breathed. “Bonjour.” I took Trung’s place at the whiteboard in front of his ten students and asked, “Ça va?”

“Oui, ça va,” they all answered in unison.

I scanned the faces of his students. Many of them were familiar, but there was on particular one that I had to stop at. I locked eyes with Matty, and we gave each other a subtle wassup nod.

“Alors,” I clasped my hands together, “Allons-y!”



After the students left for the lightrail station at 3 PM, I retreated back to the staffroom to rest a little before what would probably be a really long staff meeting. With Breakthrough ‘09 commencing in less than a week, we teachers would be finalizing every huge and every minute detail of our celebration night’s in-school practices, transportation, songs, displays, and the event itself. I looked over the student song, which my co-crew leader and I would have to review with our crew of 10 students the next day. In honor of Michael Jackson’s death five weeks ago, the students had voted to sing a Breakthrough-fied version of “Beat It.”

“Hey,” Nicky, my co-crew leader, said as she sat down next to me. “Guess what came up at lunch at our crew table while you were away working with your dance students?”

“Oh my god, what large animal did Matty liken Gabrielle to this time?”

Nicky laughed. “No, ‘pig’ was just that one and only time. But anyway, we were all sitting close together playing Egyptian War when Gloria sat down and was all like, with this shady look and shady tone, ‘Yo guys, I heard Brian is gay.’ And she said it like she was all disgusted too.”

“Oooh, yeah, Gloria doesn’t like me too much because I make her do her work in my writing class. For example, today I told her to pick up her pencil. So what’d you say to her?”

“Nothing. Matty jumped right in, and he pretty much jumped down her throat. He was all, ‘If he’s gay, why does it even matter? Brian’s still Brian. He’s a great crew leader, a great teacher, and a great friend!’ All the other students agreed. He put Gloria in her place.”

“Wow” was all I could manage. I leaned back and rocked in my chair. “Wow.” Matty was only 12 years old.



All the students giggled as their heads followed me around the room. I pranced from corner to corner like a giant leaping leprechaun, waving my hands in the air and awkwardly doing dance moves. I kicked over one of my speakers trying to jerk.

“Alors!” I yelled. “Tout le monde, une fois ! Jeeeeeeeeeeee—”

They all joined in as we sang the last line of the song together. “Jeeeeeeeee suizzz uune piiiizza, tombée en ruine!”

I applauded the students. “Bravo, vous êtes toutes les pizzas! You are all pizzas.”

After class ended, I walked out with Matty to Breakthrough’s brunch time. He was excited to see me, as I was to see him. But we only got to catch up really briefly because once the picnic area came into view, I heard another familiar voice that made my heart leap.

“IS THAT BRI—”

“OH MY GOSH IT’S BRIAN!”

I was suddenly ambushed by three or four girls, particularly ones that liked to be touchy with me when I was a teacher last year. I shook them off of me and tried to individually give side hugs to each one, and then I noticed some guys lining up, including Timmy.

“Where you’ve been man?” “Brian’s back!” “Are you swimming for pool day?” “Are you teaching today?” “Stay the whole day Brian!” “Brian’s not wearing glasses any more!” “You still have your funny walk!”

I side-hugged a few more students and then decided that this would take forever if I let it continue, and I actually had to go to the copy room to copy some worksheets for Trung. They were getting wrinkled in my hand. I shrugged and ducked my way out of the crowd of students and turned around to wave at them as I ran off. “I’ll be back in a bit!” I shouted to them.

You should’ve come back, Trung had told me. It was something that he told me every night over the phone when he’d tell me about his day at Breakthrough. The kids miss you. My second French class got distracted for ten minutes talking about you. You should’ve come back. I didn’t know whether to believe I really should’ve, but the moment when all those kids ambushed me outside the picnic area—that was when I realized it was true.

Throughout the rest of my visit at Breakthrough, I caught up with several students. Timmy wants to go to a military college. Lilly and Belinda don’t like their dance teacher at their school and wish I were theirs instead (lol). Patty is going through that teenage girl phase where she feels like she’s the only sane person left on the planet. Lorenzo is crushing on Lan, one of six returning ninth graders and one who I taught in my seventh grade writing class in 2008, my first year, and in my eighth grade writing class in 2009. I remember thinking in 2008 that I would teach all the way until the end of 2010 so that I could see how much the seventh graders I started out with would grow through middle school.

The one thing that every student who I talked to told me was, of course, “You should’ve come back.” I had to watch over Trung’s English class while he went to the bathroom to poop, and they all wanted to know, “Why didn’t you come back?” I wish I could tell them. To myself, the reason was understandable: I ran my class to be extra “fun” at the expense of discipline, and some students suffered, socially and academically, and I didn’t want to subject more students to the same suffering. But I felt like all the students would just think I was too much of a coward to come back to try to improve myself. Well, I didn’t know if that was what they would’ve thought, but it was what I started to believe.

The school day ended at 4 PM. The students lined up in front of the buses, and I waved them off. Before leaving, Matty asked me if I was going to come back the next week. Or the week after the next. I was sad to tell him that I’d be back down in Irvine, but I assured him that I’d come back up in four weeks for Breakthrough 2010’s celebration night.

“You definitely should,” he said. He smiled, and I was glad to see that my assurance was enough to make him happy. There was no way I’d miss celebration night.



Matty and I sat down next to each other on the lightrail. I had chaperon duty during the last week of Breakthrough, so I was riding it back with the students to make sure that they got home safely. Matty and I chatted, and he revealed to me that the directors were helping the student make a special surprise for the teachers on the last day of teaching. Matty could not keep any kind of secret, but fortunately I already knew because this was my second summer teaching at Breakthrough, and the students had done something similar during my first in 2008.

“Sorry, I just had to tell you,” Matty said, “because I wrote you something really good and I couldn’t keep it inside.” He exaggerated a shiver.

“What is it?” I asked.

“It’s a rap.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a tiny white note. “Can I read it to you?”

“Yeah.”

“Alright, here’s the rap,” Matty took a long, deep breath. “Brian’s so Asian, he likes to eat rice with beef on the side. You love salmon, which can get a little smelly, but at least it fills your belly. You are my best friend of all of breakthrough; our friendship will always be true...ya!”

I was speechless. Matty could probably tell by the look on my face that I approved, sincerely. He handed me the note, and I reread the rap carefully. Then I flipped to the backside, where there was one last message: I will never forget you, my best friend.