Hi. My name is Michelle, but you can call me Shelly. Let me start by telling you how I got my nickname. When I was younger, me and my family used to live at my grandmother’s house after my grandpa passed. Grandma lived in a house practically in the water, close to the beach. She used to take me walking along the water, saying the ocean wanted to play with me, the waves lapping at the shore were her proof. One day, the year my mom was pregnant, I was running on the shore, the sand crunching beneath my feet, then the bottom of my foot got sliced by a seashell. I started bleeding heavily. My grandma saw what happened and started rushing towards me, but she was 71 and couldn’t run very fast. Then, in a moment of inspiration, I pressed a shell-the same shell that cut me- against my wound. To my surprise, the blood oozing out of my foot ebbed. After that day I started collecting seashells, big, small, funky, pretty, ugly (if there are any ugly seashells,) and colorful shells. Everyone started calling me variations of shell or seashell for two years. As I mentioned before, my mom was pregnant that year, and later gave birth to my little sister. When my little sister was two years old, she called me by my name for the first time. (She used to just call me sista because my name was changing so much back then.) The first time she called me by my name, she said, “Shelly, Lydia wants a hug.” I was so surprised that I was speechless for a moment. Then I said, “Good girl! You found the perfect nickname for me!” “I just wanted a hug.” My sister said. I laughed and hugged her and spun her around in the air. “Wee!” She laughed. My sister’s name is Lydia Amy. We call her by her first name, Lydia. “Lydia loves Shelly,” she said to me. I grinned. “Right back at ya, Lyds.” My grandmother is one of my favorite people. Aside from Lydia, of course. My grandma’s name is India Opal, but I call her Opal. My mom just calls Opal Mom, which makes sense because Opal is my mom’s mom. My dad calls Opal Miss mom, because he is her son-in-law, therefore she is his mother-in-law. Lydia calls her mom of mom. I really need to get her to call Opal something different because Lydia said that Opal’s name is mom of mom and insists that everyone must call her that. Now a lot of time has passed, and so has my beloved Opal. I’m now fourteen, when I was six. My lovely Opal. Opal is my favorite jewel, of course. I’m starting high school today. Yippee skippy. Note the sarcasm. I just got used to how the middle school is set up, and now I’m going to a whole other school. I’m in band, playing the tenor sax. I’m excited to do band in high school, but that’s where the excitement stops. I am now ready for high school. Or at least to get on the bus.