“It’s gonna be okay,” Rebecca says with a half-smile.

Typically, she has a spotless room, has a movie playing, and is super focused on that or is taking a hard-core nap. One of those naps where if you try to wake her up, it’ll take about 5 minutes before you can get her to wake up enough to have a conversation with you.

Not today, though. I walk into her house and hear her two white Maltese dogs and a fat dog named Missy, barking to greet me. No one really knows what kind of dog Missy is, though. It seemed quiet, so I assumed she had fallen asleep, even though we were talking on the phone about 10 minutes prior to me showing up.

I walked up the tan, carpet stairs, remembering not to hold onto the handrails because they were coming loose. I heard something playing on the TV and when I walked into her room, Stop the Wedding was playing. She’s cleaning her much messier than normal room, with freshly washed hair making the sides of her face damp. Rebecca was wearing her favorite black Lululemon shorts and a light grey camo sweatshirt. She stopped for a second to say hello to me, and even though there was only the artificial bathroom light and the sun barely creeping behind the curtains to produce light in her room, I could see her skin was glowing a little extra today.

She was a lot more frantic than usual, so I looked at the time to realize that she had to be at church in 2 hours.

Rebecca grew up in church and has been involved since she was very young. She’s gone to Liberty Square for as long as she can remember. And singing has been a passion of hers since she learned how to talk. Once she combined her love for God and singing, she found her calling.

Every Sunday, she works with the Youth and leads them through worship. Every Wednesday, she gets to church at 5 to rehearse the songs her and her fellow leaders are going to be singing for the middle schoolers through young adults at 7. Her heart and soul are put into that church, as she is there almost every day.

I’ve attended Wednesday nights a few times and have loved every second of it, and it is just so amazing to see someone in their element and being so passionate about something they truly enjoy.

As Rebecca talks about what songs she’s going to be singing tonight, I notice all the water bottles scattered everywhere in her room. I knew she drank a lot of water, but I was baffled when I saw at least 20 bottles lying around.

“Why did you just take those water bottles back out of your trash?” I was genuinely confused when she pulled out empty and half full bottles from the big black trash bag hanging on her bathroom door.

“Because I can’t throw away water bottles,” she said with a big sigh, like I was supposed to know the answer.

“Why not?’

“Since Vickie decided we are recyclers!” She throws up both hands, a water bottle in each, and begins giggling.

Vickie is her mom, but I don’t see her parents as much now that we don’t need them to drive us places anymore.

“Oh, I see. You can’t throw away water bottles, so you put them… everywhere else?”

“Hush, Khloe.” She glared at me with a side smile.

I usually am the more responsible one out of the two of us. And as she blow dries her hair for the third time, I ask her if she is doing good on time.

She begins looking for her phone, then starts panicking when she can’t find it. I proceeded to lift one of the t-shirts from her bed to see her phone right underneath it. I think back to the time when she lost her keys for 3 days a couple of weeks prior, and when I came over, I found them immediately.

Ask her for advice on just about anything, but don’t count on her to remember something important, to make it anywhere on time, or to bring you something you left at her house. But she can cure heartbreak instantly. Weird, I know.

Anyway…

“What is it like to be in this world today, trying to balance school?” I forgot to bring my questions, so I started winging it.

“Skool suks,” she says. I wrote it like that in my notes and she told me to be sure to present it like that here.

“Some teachers care, don’t get me wrong. But I think some fail to acknowledge the fact that we have 8 other classes that we have to worry about. And once we get home, we want to leave all the school stress at school, so we are not motivated to do loads of homework for all 8 classes.” She looks at me irritated because she just can’t stand school, let alone, to even talk about it.

“How do you manage keeping your head on straight in our crazy world?” I know her, but we have never really sat down and talked about how we felt about what’s going on around us.

“I find it very hard to keep my head on straight, especially with me being a Christian. There are a lot of things the world believes in that I just don’t find appealing, and don’t agree with. We are really divided right now, and it is scary to think that we are growing up in this, and the future may quite literally rely on our generation.”

Her unusually happy expression drops as she realizes how nervous worldly things make her.

But as we continue to talk about life, I see her slowly relax back to a comfortable state. She realizes that there is no need to be nervous around me, even if this isn’t our typical conversation.

There is a question I’m a little nervous about asking her because I’m worried about how she will react.

Rebecca’s first year in public school was freshman year of high school. She had gone from being in a grade with just 10 people, to being in just a class room with 25. It was a huge change, but she still speaks about how she misses how close everyone was at her old school, Excel. To her, Cartersville High School is a difficult place to form life long relationships, unless you’ve been going there your whole life. At Excel, she felt that those relationships were inevitable.

“I only see you and my other friends a couple hours out of the day, but at Excel, I saw the same people everyday from 8 to 4. I miss it, but I’m glad I got the chance to experience Cartersville High School.” She says with somewhat of a sad smile.

Back to the question I am so nervous to ask her…

“While you talk so highly about Excel, I remember you telling me about some difficult situations and hardships you experienced while there, and it took a toll on you emotionally. What would be your advice to your past self, whether it be that girl from years ago, or the girl from yesterday?” There was a few seconds of silence, while the reminder of hard times played through her mind.

“Um… I think that everybody just gets so worked up and caught up in the drama, when in reality, a week from then, it’s probably not even going to cross your mind. I’m still working on remembering that. Like today, I was so stressed at school about all the assigned work, but now I realize there was seriously no need to stress. Like I’m fine. I just think a lot of times you get caught up in things that don’t matter.”

She took a second to breathe.

“So to sum it up, what would your advice be?”

“It’s gonna be okay,” Rebecca says with a half-smile.