Agata Karpinski                  Speak out and

804                               don’t hold back                                       

  

    High school can be tough. Especially when you’re all alone and feel like everyone hates you because of your past and your secrets. Reading the book “Speak” by Laurie Halse Anderson made me think a lot about people who hold back their feelings. Teens who just started high school, have been taken advantage of, or lost a lot of friends should read speak. In the story, Melinda was a freshman who got hurt by someone and held that secret back. This caused her to lose all her friends. What Melinda learns throughout her freshman year makes “Speak” a good book for teens who are learning to survive high school.

  One mistake or one huge secret that you hold back can keep you from enjoying life. Melinda was really close to her best friends and their friendship was torn apart because of this secret. The worst part is her friends didn’t know what it was. Melinda feels overwhelmed, alone and hated. She stops talking about her problems because she feels like there is no one to talk to and no one who would listen to her. This shows people that holding back something huge can hurt you and people who you thought were your “best friends”. Melinda explains her feelings towards this by thinking “I stumble from thornbush to thornbush -- my mother and father who hate each other, Rachel who hates me, a school that gags on me like i’m a hairball. And Heather”. She feels as if she cannot enjoy high school because this one secret caused her to have problems that she does not know how to solve, everywhere. Now when I see teens who look sad, alone, or not talking to their friends, I think of Melinda’s situation.

  Coming to high school as a freshman can be hard. After reading this book, I would be terrified. Many new comers can learn a lot just by reading this story and they can also relate to it. Melinda was a student who hated high school. She’s not just an average 9th grader, but she is known as “the freak who lost her friends because she called the cops at Kyle Rodgers party”. I feel that Melinda wants to tell people the reason she did that but she is afraid that she will be judged even more. I also feel that she doesn’t feel safe. Who would she trust to keep her secret? That makes me wonder if that’s really what high school is about, getting judged without people hearing you out, especially by your ex best friends.

  Sometimes things can be hard to forget. This is also a good and relatable book for someone who has been taken advantage of or has been tramatized by something that happened in their past. Melinda was young and innocent when she was hurt by someone who was older than her, in other words, she was too young to know she was taken “advantage” of. Teens can learn from her mistakes. They can avoid what Melinda has been through. Her reaction to her situation was “ I just want to sleep. A coma would be nice, or amnesia, anything, just to get rid of this, these thoughts, whispers in my mind”. That shows how she regrets her mistake, how she regrets trusting someone who she thought was also innocent.

  Reading this book, I realized people who have gone through something huge, something they want to forget about, usually keep that secret to themselves. they must feel alone or like they have no one to talk to. That secret they are hiding is so big, they feel like they’re going to explode. And like Melinda, she found someone to tell her secret to. Someone she would have never even thought of telling until she felt it was the right time. She told her ex-best friend Rachel. Even though it was a bumpy road, she was more open to expressing her feelings and talking about “it”.