I was one of the first people down to the basement for Spanish that day when he came. It was a traveling Spanish class because of little space and we just happened to be in the basement from then until the end of the school year. As the rest of the class took their seats, I noticed that he placed himself in the very back row.

Mrs. Miranda greeted the class and began asking us a multitude of random questions in Spanish. I knew the answers because Spanish has always been my thing but so has being “the quiet one”.

He answered Senora’s questions in perfect Spanish and she was taken aback. She asked him what school he had come from and he replied with Stonewall, a small, public middle school down the street from my house.

Mrs. Miranda told us we needed to be more like him in speaking out and also shared with us that Stonewall has an excellent Spanish curriculum. She resumed her place in front of the chalkboard and we began to conjugate verbs.

Maybe this guy wasn’t bad; why should I trust Austin?