This is a short story about a teen girl who feels she doesn’t belong and the place she feels she might.
She sat with her headphones in. A typical teen. Not if you looked closely. Her thoughtful expression was turned to the screen as simply a place to rest her eyes upon, her melodious Christian music, and her thoughts were far from typical. There were several unusual parts of her surroundings we must mention. She sat in one row of four van benches, surrounded by other teens and country music. Most of the teens sat unbuckled in the moving van while the driver controlled the music and texted.
This was unusual for her due to reasons we do not have time or space to expound upon. The girl was using the headphones to block out the noise of non-Christian music. She had never expected a mission trip to be the place where she was exposed to such. She had also supposed a group of Christians to be the ones following seatbelt laws. She didn’t fit in here. Once, she had supposed she must; for if not of the world, we ought to be of another as Christians, right? Her assumption was incorrect, where she was sitting at the least. She did not fit in there. They were on their phones consistently, laughed at things she didn’t, had no problem with breaking rules, and acted more immature than she had imagined. They didn’t seem to care what others thought of them, as a group they acted upon (in her opinion) base instincts, but the next moment they cared to the utmost. This pack of animals teased and tortured her while she continued to smile and socialize, judge and hold herself aloof. They seemed to regard her in the light of a no-nonsense “saint” at the end of the trip. She was neither, but they never knew her.
She sat with her headphones in as she typed on a laptop. Perhaps more similar to a typical teen. If you looked closely, you would see she was writing comments and interacting with other young Christian writers, the headphones dangling from her ears playing Narnia movie soundtracks. I belong here, I fit in. She thought and smiled.
The End