by Kennedy Coleman

I walked into the Ward Parkway Target clutching a crumpled list of things I was told I would need for my first year at St. Teresa’s Academy and headed to the back where brightly colored signs screamed, “BACK TO SCHOOL!”

I was less than excited for the new school year as my first day had already been rough. I was even more unhappy to be at an all girls, Catholic school. The finalization of buying supplies made it all a bit more real and significantly worsened my mood.

My step father, Brian, told me to stop pouting and grab what I needed. Annoyed with seemingly everything, I made my way to the rows of boxes overflowing with folders, glue and other things I probably wouldn’t use.

After filling up a red plastic hand basket with over priced two pocket folders, I needed one more thing; a flash drive. Having never used that little piece of plastic in my previous nine years of schooling, I didn’t see why I needed to now. I whined to my step father about this. He, having had enough of my attitude, told me he was going to get groceries and left.

Great. I was alone and didn’t have my ever so precious flash drive. It may as well have been the end of the world.

I was ready to give up when a girl in sporting a gold class ring started walking toward me.

She must have spotted “STA” stitched into my shirt because she smiled and asked me which classes I was taking. My cheeks were surely flushed an odd shade of crimson as I quickly answered and explained my flash drive dilemma. She laughed and helped me find one.

Brian came back lugging a carton of orange juice and joined the conversation. She told us she had graduated the previous year and wished me luck in my next four. Soon Brian and I thanked the sweet girl and left for the check out. He shot me a “See? It can’t be all bad,” kind of look, and I knew he was right.

I couldn’t believe it. I had been hearing about this “sisterhood” at St. Teresa’s ever since I enrolled in Catholic school, and there it finally was in an aisle at Target. I thought “sisterhood” was just the line slapped on the front of the brochures or the caption accompanying a picture of grinning girls clutching each other on the school’s website. Honestly, I was annoyed with this claim that anyone with the same tartan skirt as me would become my best friend because I knew it could not be true.

Maybe the “sisterhood” isn’t as present at St. Teresa’s as it has been in the past. That being said, I’ll admit that in my stubbornness I was looking at this said bond all wrong. Though most of my peers wouldn’t take a bullet for me, plenty of them would stop and help me pick out a flash drive. I’m just a freshman who’s still figuring everything out, but to me those simple acts are the foundation of the sisterhood.