Emiliano Mancilla

“Mariano”

“Wake up Mariano”

I don’t really know how I ended up here. Funny how the most insignificant things shape our lives, in a way that make us take big decisions that get us in different roads.

Those insignificant things I’m referring to are usually beyond logic, external, they are sometimes palpable and sometimes intangible, sometimes an experience and sometimes a desire. An accident, the sense of belonging, an addiction.  

Mine is this girl who might have been changing from body to body through time. All my fear being defeated by the curiosity propelled by the magnetism of the sacred, such as a smile, eyes and body out of my league. 

I was about to graduate from middle school. I was doing good in this public school, pretending I was going to be the next rock star, until our math teacher had this wonderful idea for his best students to take a test to get into the most expensive high school of our little city. As I was in the list, I had to go to this place for 2 weeks for a quick course as training for the test. I must say it was an interesting experience to see expensive chairs and classrooms full of light and technology for the first time, although this was nothing compared to notice that the toilets smelled good and were equipped with toilet paper. 

There I was sitting with my schoolmate, alienated in a room full of posh boys that didn’t have the minimum intensions to start a conversation, or at least that was our understanding, leaded by the profound sense of not belonging, when she appeared. 

Her name was Regina, and it was the closest I had been to a princess, with this beautiful honey eyes surrounded by her pale porcelain skin and her golden blonde hair above her slender body. I was hypnotized, and it was an awfully delightful thing that I could watch her all the time I wanted, as I was the most insignificant person in a room full of important characters, just a ghost wandering in the land of the living. 

I did so good in the test that they offered me not only a scholarship but even financial support from a private sponsor. Everyone would have taken it without thinking, but for me it was a bad idea, a fantasy. Neither I nor my parents thought I belonged there, the high levels of elitism were visible, and I also knew that I was going to do well in the public high school. 

My parents were pretty respectful with whatever my decision was, they told me that they could pay the tuition left and that it would be a great opportunity for my future (although they were not as energetic as they were with most of other things), but that I would have to be a bookworm in order to maintain the scholarship. It seemed like my parents were as afraid as I was. 

Every angle told me that I would be miserable if I didn’t chose to go to the public high school. The pressure, the isolation, the lack of money. The only good reason to go to that private school was that I would see Regina again. 

And that was reason enough.