Currency: A Short Story

It was early winter 2013 when we first landed at O’hare Airport. I thought everything is different now, since back in my country I had everything, I was a princess. My head was so clear that I would have a new life but it never showed that things will go south. Life was new and exciting but there were struggles because Vietnamese currency is way less when you exchange it to U.S dollars. I have nothing, I wanted everything that I had before- toys, technologies, clothes. But it was all harder to get not like before when everything was at my fingertips. I felt miserable, shouting to my mom that I wanted to go back. She simply said: “Let’s give it a try”. My stubborn head couldn’t process that and never realized what she really meant. I was sent to 6th grade according to my 5th grade score back home, although I was younger than most of my classmates because I was born in November 2002. I was always eager to be a sixth grader, I was always proud of myself for “skipping a grade” but that’s the reason why I had no friends. I eat lunch by myself, watching all of the cool kids getting in

I thought I speak English pretty well, but it was still not easy to understand everything especially math and science. Until one day, there was a girl, H. , from other 6th grade class, borrowed my dictionary because it was cool and had games on it. Without hesitation I let her borrow it because she was one of the cool kids not knowing what I put myself. She told me she would return it later, so I took the burden and went a whole day without any English. At the end of the day, I go and look for H. to get my dictionary back. But she said that I have to give her a dollar and she’ll give it to me. So I did what she told me to do and all I get was Mr. Murphy the assistant principal took it. Without my dictionary I can’t just go and talk to him. I was hopeless and thought this would never had happened if I never came