I had several thoughts about the Huggers right off the bat (no pun intended, Lorenzo). First: They’d had a sleepover together the night before the first day of school? What parents would allow that? Maybe their families were super close and summered together and ate dinner with each other all the time and they were some of those girls who said “we’re more like sisters.” As if sisters would actually squeal and hug each other every five minutes.
Second thought: the hugging. Really? Lately I feel like I’m irritated any time another human even touches my arm or pats me on the back. I guess that goes along with the business of needing extra space to think my thoughts, and shrugging off people like Marcy. (Maybe you’ve noticed too, Louie. Like the last time you tried to braid my hair, and I yelled at you to leave me alone, and you went to your room and slammed the door, and Mom gave us each a talk. My talk was about overreactions and yours was about respecting my personal space.) Anyway, I can’t imagine feeling so comfortable with another person (let alone two other people) that every time we saw each other, we’d hug in public. Shudder.
So that was science class. A semi-scary teacher, a baseball bat, and three Huggers. And no one I knew except Nick. I would know more people in the next class. Including one who I’d wish didn’t know me at all.
Second period. Social studies. Ms. Tedesco. Do you remember Ms. Tedesco? Probably not, but I guarantee she remembers you. She and Mom took a yoga class together about a hundred years ago, and even though they never hung out or anything, Ms. Tedesco still friended Mom on Facebook and now she thinks she knows everything about us.
For example, on the first day of school Ms. Tedesco went through the roll call and asked each of us what we did over the summer. (I’d hoped we would have outgrown that first-day-of-school ritual by middle school. But no.) When she came to me, she said, “I know what you did, Augusta! Art camp! And you and your sister made a giant sandcastle when you were at the beach with your grandparents! Your mom posted some fun pics!”
Suddenly every pair of eyes in the room was on me, no doubt wondering what “fun pics” of my summer Ms. Tedesco had seen that they hadn’t.
She laughed. “I’m sorry; I shouldn’t have hijacked your turn! Is there anything you want to add?”
Considering she’d already said way more about my summer than I’d planned to, I declined. “No, that’s it,” I answered, slinking down in my seat and waiting for her to move on to the next kid.
“Okay, well, it looked like a lovely summer! Lucky girl!” she replied, as though I’d gone to Hawaii or Europe and not art camp and Longwood Beach.
“Oh, and before I forget,” she added, “did your mom ever find an exterminator? She was looking for someone when you had ants in your bathroom.”
“I think it’s fine now,” I answered over the sound of muffled snickering in the classroom. I prayed Ms. Tedesco would move on. What else had Mom posted about that Ms. Tedesco would mention? Plumbing problems? Kid-underwear recommendations?
Ms. Tedesco’s Facebook revelations continued at least once or twice a week, especially when we started studying United States politics. Mom had posted pictures of our trip to Washington, DC, last spring, and Ms. Tedesco acted like that made me some big government expert. Any time she introduced a new point, she’d look at me and say, “Augusta, did you learn anything about this during your trip to Washington?” or “Augusta can probably tell us all about this from her trip to Washington.” Nothing makes other kids think you’re a weirdo like a teacher treating you like you’re her assistant.
But the worst was when she brought up the Smithsonian Museum of American History. As always, she looked at me to ask if we’d gone there, but this time she phrased the question differently. “Did your parents take you to that museum, Augusta?” And without thinking, I answered, “My mom did—yeah.”
Then it was like a little light bulb went off for Ms. Tedesco and she murmured, “Oh yes, only your mom. That’s right. Forgive me for forgetting.” Then her mouth did a downward turn, and I could have sworn I saw her mouth the word “divorce” as she made a little note on her clipboard. With the same expression someone might use while contemplating “cockroaches” or “nuclear war.”
Yipes. What do you think she wrote on her clipboard, Lou? A big D beside my name? Was she flagging me as though I were now some kind of high-risk case? I leaned over my desk so my hair would hide my face and started tracing an old star doodle with so much pressure that my pen almost poked through the cover of my social-studies notebook.
Ms. Tedesco moved on that day to describing the treasures of the Smithsonian, but I stayed stuck on her weird reaction for a while. Did Mom’s happy pictures of our DC trip seem like a lie to Ms. Tedesco once she remembered that only one parent took us?
Not that I really care what Ms. Tedesco thinks. There are other distractions in social studies anyway.
So far, Lou, it seems like you haven’t gotten many of Mom’s talks about “changing bodies needing extra care.” Probably because your body still hasn’t changed all that much. But if you’ve ever listened to her talk to me, you’ll know extra care for changing bodies is a big thing for her. Which is why she makes me shower more than you. And why she bought me deodorant. And a razor.
At first I was annoyed by all the forced showering. But last year during a lockdown drill, I started to see Mom’s point. You know how at Starling, when you do a lockdown drill, the whole class has to huddle inside the coat closet? It’s no big deal when you’re in third grade and your bodies aren’t that big yet. It’s not even that big of a deal in fifth grade, as long as the weather isn’t warm. But our last lockdown drill of the year happened in June, on a day with a high of 92 degrees. So it was easily 100 degrees in the coat closet, maybe even higher once we were all packed in there. I noticed that even Mr. Singer, who was almost always in a peppy mood, rolled his eyes when the lockdown announcement was made that day.
“This is crazy,” Marcy said. “Why would they have a lockdown drill on a day that’s this hot?”
Natalie Daniels was there beside us. “Maybe it’s not a drill,” she said. Then of course we were all quiet for a minute while we thought about that. And during that quiet minute, the smells of sweat, fear, and changing bodies that hadn’t had enough extra care mingled to create a toxic cloud in the thick air of the coatroom.
By the time the principal’s voice came over the loudspeaker to announce the end of the lockdown drill (so it was a drill after all), we were nearly suffocating.
“Wow, the smell in there was something fierce, huh?” Nick said as we walked back to our seats. Marcy and Natalie didn’t say anything, and I wondered if they were worried that they were the smelly ones. (I didn’t say anything either, for the same reason.)
Anyway, that was the day I started taking showers without being told to. I think most of my fifth-grade class did.
But Gabe Garrett, who I recognized from homeroom and who also sits in front of me in social studies this year, was not in my fifth-grade class. He went to Minter. And either his parents have never talked to him about extra care for changing bodies or he fought the shower battle harder than I did—and won.
So, yeah. Gabe Garrett is smelly. And he has dandruff. Lots of it. And when I try to hide behind him so Ms. Tedesco will stop asking me personal questions, all I can see is a world of dandruff, and I can only look at it for so long before I have to shift positions and risk Ms. Tedesco calling me out again. It’s a vicious cycle.
Lou. Maybe you will be lucky. I mean, you usually have been so far. Of the two of us, you’re the only one who can turn a cartwheel. And you’re way better at braiding hair (when someone lets you). And we both know you’re Grandma Nancy’s favorite, which is why she gives you jewelry for Christmas and she still gives me twenty-five-piece puzzles.
So maybe you will also be lucky enough to get a top locker in sixth grade. Some sixth graders do, depen
ding on how many kids are in each grade that year.
If you ask me, they should base it on height. For example, a girl who’s five foot three inches tall (like me) should not get a bottom locker below a boy who’s four foot nine inches tall. Like, for example, Davis Davis. Even if she is in sixth grade and he’s in seventh.
What’s that you say, Lou? You think you must have read that wrong, because you can’t believe anyone would actually be named Davis Davis? Well, believe it. That is his real name. The rumor is that his dad wanted to name him that so that he would be more comfortable when he joined the army someday and his sergeant called him by his last name.
The funny thing is, I think Davis Davis might actually make a decent soldier one day, because his locker is incredibly neat and organized, and he opens it with military speed and precision. At the beginning of the school year, I would still be trying to figure out which books I needed in the amount of time it took for Davis Davis to unlock his lock, open his locker, return the books from his morning classes, take out his books for the afternoon, close his locker, and lock the lock. This was all before I even started turning the dial on my lock, a process that took ages.
At middle-school orientation, the principal will tell you to spend the summer before sixth grade practicing using combination locks. You should listen to her. I didn’t.
I guess we could have opened our locks at the same time. But with Davis Davis being the height he is and me being the height I am, it made for an awkward configuration. I’m not just going to barrel over to my bottom locker while he’s standing at his top locker. You know how I need my personal space. Luckily, it seems that Davis Davis is the same way. So as I tried to get my lock open, on the first day of school, he stood off to the side waiting with increasing impatience, judging by the amount of sighing he was doing. I kept looking up at him and saying “Sorry, just one sec” as my struggle continued.
Finally he said, “Do you want me to help you?” I was tempted, Lou, but for him to help me, I’d have to tell him my combination. And according to every adult ever (Mom, Dad, Mr. Smeed, Mr. McCabe, the principal), telling someone your lock combination is the dumbest thing you could possibly do. But here I was, already considering it on the first day of school.
While I was kicking Davis Davis’s question around in my head, he got tired of waiting for an answer. “Look, can I just go real quick?” he asked. “I don’t want to be late for my next class.”
“Okay,” I said, even though I was starting to figure I’d be the last person in line for lunch. But I knew I couldn’t make Davis keep waiting too; it was getting awkward. I stood up and watched as Davis opened his lock in a blink. As I was marveling at the perfectly arranged contents of his locker (color-coordinated binders, spiral notebooks lined up in size order), I felt a sharp, stabbing pinch on my bottom, followed by a braying cackle.
I was about to come face to face with one of the worst parts of middle school.
“OUCH!” I yelled as a wave of pain went through half my backside.
“Geez, grow up, Gosley,” Davis Davis said with a roll of his eyes.
The cackles continued, and I turned and saw they were coming from a tall, pale boy with pimples on his face.
“Gotcha, Four Eyes!” he said with another cackle. “What were you staring at Davis’s locker for, huh, Four Eyes? See something you like in there?”
“I’m just waiting to get to my locker,” I said. “And don’t pinch me!” I looked around, hoping maybe a teacher had seen what had just happened. But there were only kids in the hallway.
“Keep your eyes on your butt and not on Davis’s locker, and maybe you won’t get pinched again, Four Eyes!” he said.
Which of course is completely stupid. How can someone keep her eyes on her own butt? But Ronald Gosley is beyond stupid. He’s a mean, pitiful jerk. In fact, he’s actually kind of famous for those things, but what he’s most famous for is pinching girls’ backsides, also known as goosing. Does he care that there’s a person attached to the butt that he’s pinching? He does not. It’s like what Mom says about how she doesn’t like commercials where men objectify women, or just treat them like they’re objects for entertainment. I don’t think I got it until I met this kid. It’s a stupid game for him, leaving bruises on the female backsides of Meridian Middle School. (Crazy, right? That someone could get away with pinching people so often that he’d actually become famous for it? I know that would never fly at Starling Elementary. Ronald Gosley would have landed in the principal’s office the first time he pinched another kid. But grown-ups aren’t always with you in middle school the way they are in elementary school. Jerky kids can get away with stuff they never would have when they were younger. Sometimes you can’t depend on teachers to save the day.) These were all things I didn’t think about until later. From the way Ronald Gosley laughed, and the way Davis Davis and the other kids walking by barely reacted, it seemed like this was just a part of middle school I had to put up with, like strict teachers and tricky locks.
Anyway, because pinching girls’ butts is his favorite pastime (and also because of his last name), I would soon find out that Ronald Gosley is known as the Gooser. He would eventually get what he deserved from another kid. A girl, actually. More on that later.
But I’ve already said too much about him. Up next: lunch.
Lunchtime. First day of middle school. Potentially one of the most terrifying moments of your life. Not terrifying like jumping off the high dive at the pool, or like the dog in Dad’s apartment building that snarls at us whenever we see it in the hallway. This is worse.
First-day-of-middle-school lunch terror feels more like you’ve just landed on a new planet where all the other aliens know exactly what to do, and you are totally confused by their customs. Some of the aliens may look familiar, but even they seem to know the right things to do: what food to get, who to talk to in the lunch line, where to sit once you’re ready to eat.
So I tried to pretend I was one of the aliens. I noted what food most of them were getting (Nachos Fiesta) and avoided the ones they were avoiding (school pizza). I didn’t know the kid in front of me—or the kid behind me—in line. (Surprisingly I wasn’t the last one in line; I guess I wasn’t the only kid with first-day locker struggles.) But I acted like that was no big deal and picked at my fingernail while I waited. Once I had my tray, instead of looking around frantically for a table the way I felt like doing, I scanned the room calmly, as though I had agreed to meet someone and I just needed to confirm her location.
And the trick worked! No one gave me weird looks or told me I was doing the wrong thing, and as I scanned the room, I even saw a reasonable place to sit.
Alone at a table by the wall, sitting under a banner that said DARE TO BE REMARKABLE!, was Amber Travers. Amber and I had been friendly since first grade. We were usually at each other’s birthday parties, and sometimes we carpooled together to Girl Scout meetings—things like that. She wasn’t someone I told all my secrets to, but she was generally okay. Like I said, it was a reasonable place to sit, not the ultimate dream seat. (The ultimate dream seat would have been at a table with Layla, but I knew that wasn’t going to happen again until high school. I wondered how Layla’s first lunch at Parkwood was going. Did she have anyone to sit with?)
Amber spied me at about the same time I spied her, and she started waving. When I walked over and put my tray down at her table, she said, “Oh, thank God. I didn’t want him to think I was sitting alone.”
“Who?” I asked.
“Shh!” she said, even though I thought my volume level had been perfectly normal. “Sit down!” She said it urgently, like there was a rock flying at my head.
I sat. “Who are you looking at?” I asked, because Amber hadn’t made eye contact with me since she first saw me. Her eyes were focused somewhere off in the distance.
“What is that on his T-shirt?” she
asked, either not hearing my question or ignoring it completely. “A picture of a little girl looking in a window? That’s kind of weird, isn’t it?” She did a little nervous laugh.
“Whose T-shirt?” I asked. “Amber, what are you talking about?”
I turned around. There were so many kids behind us, I couldn’t be sure where Amber was looking. Then I noticed Nick Zambrano putting his tray down at a table with three other boys from Starling. The flannel he’d had on this morning was tied around his waist now, so I could see what he’d had on under it: a black T-shirt with a picture of a little girl in a white dress looking through a window in an old door. You’d know it from Mom and Dad’s CD collection, Lou. It was one of the ones they both wanted to keep when Dad moved out. Mom said he could take it if he made a copy for her.
“You mean Nick’s shirt?” I asked.
“SHHH!” she hissed. “Stop looking at him! Turn back around!”
“Okaaay,” I said, turning back toward her. “Yes, it’s a girl looking in a window. It’s the cover of a Violent Femmes album.”
“Violet what?” she asked.
“Violent Femmes,” I said. “It’s a band. My parents like them. They’re pretty good, actually.”
“Do you think Nick likes them too?” she whispered.
“I guess,” I shrugged. “If he’s wearing the shirt.”
“Can you text me the name of that band later?” she asked. (There is a strict rule at Meridian Middle about not bringing phones to class, and leaving them in your lockers during the school day.) “I don’t have a pen with me right now.”
“Okaaay,” I said again. “Amber, do you have a crush on Nick?”
“A crush?” She sighed. “More like an obsession. But you can’t tell anyone.”
The 47 People You'll Meet in Middle School Page 3