It was a cold January afternoon. I was sitting in music class on the cold flat choir bleachers watching a movie. The Little Mermaid to be exact. All thirty of my fellow grade ⅞ classmates were watching with varying levels of interest. Some boys were talking behind me, some girls giggling to the side. But I was paying attention. I wanted to watch the movie. I was playing Ariel in our school production and I wanted to be just like her. Her long red hair flowed on screen as the sea creatures began their song. I mimicked her actions as she pushed her hair back or signaled something with her hands. I’m sure others were looking at me like I was crazy but I didn’t care. I was a princess.

Sebastian began coercing the clueless prince. “Kiss the girl” he sang as Ariel started to become shyer and I copied, folding into myself just a little. The song began to near its end and I became giddy. This was me, I thought. I was going to be placed in such a romantic situation. I was the princess and he was my prince. He was Sam. A boy one grade above me. A cute boy thought as I looked over at him.

I noticed how he did not look like the Prince in the movie. He did not have pale skin with smooth black hair. Sam had dark skin. Curly hair cut close to his head. He did not look like the prince, or like me. I looked around the classroom and realised that many of my classmates looked different. I realized that in the movie I only saw myself. Ariel is white, I am white. Prince Eric is white, but Sam is not. I wondered if he was thinking about this. How he did not look like the prince he was going to be portraying. I wondered if this bothered him, or if he was paying attention to the movie at all. Maybe I was overthinking it. After all, it was just a movie and it was just a play. We were just playing a part.

I turned back to the movie and watched as the characters fell into the water. The scene changed and the bell rang. It was time to go back to the homeroom and with that, we all stood up and left the classroom. The thought left my mind as we walked down the hall in a straight line. After all, he was going to be my prince no matter what, and I was going to be his princess.