Slivers of Purple Paper
by Cyn Balog
Every high school class has one. One person whose name is synonymous with tragedy, whispered with a serious shake of the head or a “tsk, tsk.” High school is painful as it is, but for some it’s downright torturous. I’m talking about the one who didn’t live out the four years, the one for whom all the pressure was just too much.
In my school, that person was Avery.
I had nothing in common with Avery. Avery was smart and athletic and popular, all the things people like me wished we could be. If you put my picture in front of the members of my graduating class, most would probably say they’d never seen me before in their lives. I’d been in the school district since kindergarten, and yet, I was the invisible one. My classmates didn’t think of me. They would describe me, if they absolutely
How do I know this? Because in seventh grade, my health teacher decided to do a project aimed at boosting our confidence. We arranged our desks in a circle and were each given a little Chinese takeout box and a few scraps of purple construction paper. On top of the boxes, we wrote our names. Every thirty seconds, we had to pass the boxes to the right. It was the job of the others in the circle to write one nice thing about the person whose name was on the box on a piece of purple paper and slip it into her box.
I can’t tell you how excited I was when we started this assignment. It was so different from any assignment I’d ever done. We never went around paying one another compliments, and I was dying to see what nice things people thought about me. I’d hoped “generous” and “helpful” and “smart” would be there. Maybe even “nice blue eyes.” There was plenty of fodder to fill that box, even if you didn’t know me.
I took the assignment as seriously as possible. I’d been made fun of by several of the boys in the class for my giant beak of a nose, and though it was hard to come up with compliments for those people, I managed. “Always speaks his mind” and “Honest” were a few I’d written down. For some, it was easier. It was easy with Avery. We were neighbors, and though I didn’t know her well, she was always kind. As I watched her scribbling, I wondered what people would say about her. What kind of amazing box of compliments she would end up with.
Maybe I was being naive, because I learned that day that seventh graders do not take the opportunity to build up a person when they can instead tear that person down. When I received my box at the end of the assignment, the same word was on each of the twelve sheets of paper, in different ink and handwriting:
I stared at each paper for only a second. Just looking at them hurt. Of course the assignment was nothing but a joke to most of my classmates. How stupid and pointless to praise others when all they’ll do in return is shoot you down! After all, I just looked like an idiot throwing all these compliments at people who didn’t think anything of me. I was about to stuff the whole thing into my backpack when I pulled out the last slip of paper:
There it was. The reason that I still remembered that assignment, though so many years had passed. Because I took that sliver of paper and stuck it on my bulletin board at home. As a reminder that I meant something. That I was special. I looked at it every day during high school.
Five years later, Avery killed herself. It was shortly after high school graduation. Nobody knew why. It was one of those big mysteries; even her closest friends shrugged and complained about the senselessness of it all.
A few years after that, her mother finally got around to cleaning out her room. Avery had a lot of books, and her mother thought I might like them. When I went up to her room, I noticed all the trophies and awards. She was a great student and athlete, and I couldn’t believe that with all these things that screamed how special she was, she could still feel that life wasn’t worth living. I ran my eyes over the room, stopping at her bulletin board. There was a sliver of purple construction paper. On it, I recognized my own handwriting.
