The 47 People You'll Meet in Middle School

by Kristin Mahoney

  Quincy didn’t seem to notice that I hadn’t answered, because she kept going. “Here, I’ll show you a trick,” she said, reaching for my lock. “What’s your combination?”

  Again, someone I didn’t know offering to help with my lock. And this time, she was blatantly asking for my combination.

  “Oh, let me guess,” Quincy said when I hesitated. “You don’t want to tell me. You’re afraid if you tell me your combination, I’ll break into your locker after school and steal your smelly gym clothes.”

  “I just don’t think we’re supposed to…,” I started to say.

  “Whatever, I’ll show you on mine,” Quincy said. She started spinning her dial. “Okay, so my combination is eleven, fourteen, twenty-five. So I go to eleven first, then back around to fourteen, then leave it. Next time I come in here, I just have to turn it to twenty-five, and then it’ll open. It makes it way faster.”

  “Well, I guess Ms. Lewis would be happy about that,” I said.

  “Eh, who cares about her?” Quincy shrugged. “It’s mostly a good trick for your hall locker if you’re ever running late to another class. And I always am. Also, have you heard about that Gooser kid who pinches girls on the butt? You don’t want to turn your back too long anyway, with him lurking around.”

  “Yes!” I said. “He got me this morning!”

  “Yeah, he’s the worst,” Quincy said. “My sister warned me about him. If he ever does that to me, I’ll punch him.”

  “Hasn’t anyone ever reported him?”

  Quincy shrugged. “My sister says he always denies it. I guess he has to get caught in the act.” She pointed at my lock. “Okay, try the trick now.”

  I got my lock open and put it through the loop on the locker door, then turned the dial past the first two numbers of the combination.

  “Okay, it’s set,” I said. “I’m gonna try that on my hall locker too. Thanks.”

  “Sure,” Quincy said.

  I didn’t know what to say to her next. I was actually hoping Ms. Lewis would come in to get us so I wouldn’t have to think of things to talk about with Quincy. I started picking at a white spot on my fingernail.

  “That spot won’t come off,” Quincy said. “It’s under your nail, on your skin. My mom says they’re just calcium deposits, but my sister told me they show how many boyfriends you have. I have millions of ’em. Look.” She held her fingernails out so I could see. Sure enough, almost all her nails were dotted with tiny white spots. I just had one. Which was one too many, according to Quincy’s sister’s theory.

  “I don’t have any boyfriends,” I said.

  “Maybe you do and you don’t know it yet,” Quincy said. Then she laughed. “Whatever—my sister’s dumb. But it’s fun to count the spots anyway.

  “So how come you’re in here and not in band?” she asked.

  I gave the short answer. “I didn’t think my parents would let me do band.”

  “Mine neither,” she said. “They said I don’t stick with things like that. So now I’m stuck in gym with stupid Ms. Lewis.”

  Just then the locker-room door swung open to reveal Ms. Lewis with a clipboard and a serious face.

  “Time for some stretches, girls,” she announced. “Next time you’ll change into your gym clothes. And you’ll also be working much harder in gym.” She looked straight at Quincy as she said the last part. It was unclear whether she’d heard Quincy call her stupid.

  Either way, Quincy didn’t seem concerned. She turned, rolled her eyes at me, and called, “Let’s stretch, ladies!” as she led the way out to the gym.

  * * *

  By the time I got to my hall locker after gym at the end of the first day, Davis Davis was already long gone (and thankfully, the Gooser was nowhere in sight either). I opened my lock on the third try (an improvement), dumped the books I didn’t need for homework, and reached for my phone on the top shelf. I had seven missed messages.

  One from Mom:

  I hope you’re having a great first day, honey! Text me when you get home.

  One from Amber:

  OK tell me again the name of the band N likes?

  Another one from Mom:

  Also, don’t forget to walk Iris.

  A second one from Amber:

  N means Nick, in case you didn’t know. OK DELETE THIS NOW! But also tell me what the band is called. Purple something?

  A third one from Amber:

  And don’t tell him I asked you about it. But just tell me the band name, OK? RU getting these texts?

  One from Layla:

  Gus! Text me!

  Finally, one from Dad:

  Hey Gus—I just realized I forgot to tell you that you were supposed to go around to the back door this morning. Oops. Hope your day was OK anyway!

  Layla’s text had come in about fifteen minutes earlier; Parkwood Middle lets out for the day before Meridian does. I texted her back, but she didn’t respond for a while; my guess was she was on the bus, avoiding motion sickness. (Layla gets really carsick. Remember the time she went to Longwood Beach with us and we had to pull over on the way home so she could throw up?)

  I walked home by myself. I didn’t see anyone I knew. Well, that’s not true. I saw Marcy and Addison walking together, but I slowed my pace so I wouldn’t be near them. So let’s say I didn’t see anyone I wanted to walk with.

  I was tired. Really tired. Bone tired, as Dad would say. And that was just day one.

  Yes, Lou, I realize that technically Layla was someone I already knew. In fact, I’d known her since we were tiny. Or at least I thought I knew her.

  The Layla I thought I knew was one of the calmest kids ever. Like, there could be a spider on her hand and she would slowly walk over to a tree and let it crawl onto a branch. That kind of calm.

  And she was definitely never someone who got worked up about sports, or games…or school spirit. At Starling Elementary, whenever we had a theme dress-up day (you know, Pajama Day, Funny Hat Day, School Colors Day), she would always gripe about it on the way home from school the day before. “Ugh, do we have to dress up tomorrow?” she’d ask me. “What’s the point?”

  It’s not like I was a major gamer for dress-up days. I mean, some kids would come to school in homemade hats with giant feathers on them, or temporary tattoos in school colors. I never did any of that stuff. But I did appreciate the chance to stay in my pajamas and get a few extra minutes of sleep on pajama days.

  Maybe that’s why I couldn’t figure out the meaning of all the panther emojis at the ends of Layla’s texts on the first day of school:

  Hey! I’m home!

  How was the first day?

  Can you come over?

  I texted her back:

  OK, will come over after snack. What’s with all the panthers?

  She responded:

  Yay! Panther is the Parkwood mascot. Cute, right?

  That was my first clue that Layla’s first day must have been much different than mine was. I wasn’t even sure what the Meridian mascot was. An armadillo, maybe?

  I texted Mom: Going to Layla’s. She was still at work and you were at after-school. I know that bugs you, Louie, that I get to go home on my own this year and you still have to go to after-school. I know you think that means I eat all the snacks I want and watch more TV than I’m supposed to. You’re right. I do.

  But I also have to unload the dishwasher and wash lettuce for the dinner salad and fold laundry all the time. So it’s not like it’s all a big party.

  Anyway, when I got over to Layla’s, she was sitting on the steps, tapping away at her phone.

  “Buzz Bust?” I asked her. (You know how Layla was always playing Buzz Bust last summer; it was her favorite game.)

  She hadn’t even noticed me standing there.

  “
Huh? Oh…no,” she said. “I’m texting with Jocelyn.”

  I peered over her shoulder and saw Jocelyn’s last text, which consisted only of an LOL emoji and—big surprise—a panther.

  “Who’s Jocelyn?”

  “Oh, she goes to Parkwood,” Layla said. “She’s in my math class, and we sat together at lunch. She’s so funny. She was doing these imitations of our teachers at lunch; we were all cracking up.”

  “Huh.” I couldn’t really think of anything to say to that, since I didn’t know any of her teachers. Or Jocelyn.

  “Soooo…how was it?” Layla asked me. “What’s Meridian like?”

  “I guess it’s okay,” I said. I gave her the first detail I could think of. “My science teacher has a bat named Lorenzo.”

  “Ooh, cool!” Layla was impressed. “Is it a fruit bat or a vampire bat?”

  “Um, no…,” I answered. “It’s a baseball bat. He walks around and bangs it on your desk if you aren’t paying attention.”

  “Oh. That sounds kind of scary.”

  “Well, not as scary as a vampire bat,” I pointed out. Layla laughed. I was glad she still thought I was funny. (Take that, Jolly Jocelyn!)

  “Oh, and we get to eat outside if we want,” I told her. “In a courtyard.”

  “We have to eat in the cafeteria for now,” Layla said. “But starting in October, if we get our parents’ permission, we’re allowed to leave school at lunch and go to Filippo’s or Pop’s!”

  I know you’re obsessed with Chicken Shack, Lou, but as far as I’m concerned, Pop’s and Filippo’s are way, way better. Pop’s has awesome sandwiches and old-school pinball machines, and Filippo’s really is the best pizza place in town. They’re both about a block away from Parkwood. And they are undeniably way better lunch spots than the overgrown courtyard at Meridian. No contest, really.

  “Well, that’s amazing,” I said.

  “Right?!” Layla was hiding her excitement about as well as I was hiding my envy. “And the principal stood by the door in a panther costume welcoming everyone to school today. AND all the sixth graders got the cutest little stuffed panthers and panther T-shirts. I forgot mine in my locker, though. Ooh, also I got a top locker! Did you?”

  “No.” I was secretly relieved that I didn’t yet have to endure seeing Layla’s cute new panther on top of all the other amazing stuff she was telling me about Parkwood.

  How could Layla and I have had such ridiculously different first days of school? I’d spent the day feeling like an alien, and she seemed like she already belonged. Like she already had her village. How could she be so sure about middle school when I was convinced I would never figure it out?

  It was around then that Mom called to tell me that you guys were home. I told Layla I had to go, and she said she’d ask her mom about doing a sleepover so I could stay longer and see all her panther stuff. (Yes, please, to the sleepover; no, thanks, to the panthers.)

  And not long after that was when I shuffled through the door and gave you guys my first “It’s fine, whatever” when you asked about my day. Maybe now you understand why.

  The weather stayed warm for a while, so Sarah and I kept eating lunch in the courtyard. And she was right: eventually other kids started discovering it too. Most came in with friends, like Nick and a boy I recognized from my social-studies class, who always sat by the crab apple tree and threw crab apples. They had contests to see who could hit a target they’d drawn on the wall in chalk.

  One kid, Elaine Farley, always sat alone with a book and a ham sandwich. Sarah told me Elaine had gone to Minter, but was very quiet and she didn’t really know her that well.

  And then there were kids who knew about the courtyard but would never consider eating lunch there. For example, Addison, Marcy, and Heidi, who walked by the courtyard door one day on their way to the bathroom. They peered in for a second and started whispering to each other, but not quietly enough that I didn’t catch bits of what they were saying.

  “Who are you talking about?” Heidi asked.

  “You know,” Addison said, shrugging and half trying to appear as though she weren’t talking about us. “The one with glasses.” When Heidi still looked clueless, Addison hissed, “Come on—she’s the only one with glasses.”

  There was no point in looking around the courtyard. Obviously they were talking about me. They did that a lot: look at people and whisper about them. I guess that day it was my turn. Even though I knew this whisper game was their regular hobby, it still felt like a spotlight was shining right on me. I stared into my chip bag and waited for them to move on. As they started walking away, I heard Heidi giggle and say, “Do you think she’ll wear her glasses to the dance?”

  And Addison answered, as though she knew us so well, “Ugh, they’re all so weird. They probably aren’t even going.”

  The Sadie Hawkins dance wasn’t happening until November, but Heidi had joined the planning committee and talked about it every morning in homeroom. It was clearly very important to her.

  * * *

  Do you remember the date of my eye doctor appointment last year, Lou? I do. It was November third. I probably wouldn’t remember that, except for the fact that something big happened after it. Have you ever noticed that the ordinary parts of a big day suddenly become much more memorable long after the big thing happens? Like the way Grandma Dotty says she remembers what she was wearing, and what the weather was like, and what they had for breakfast the day President Kennedy was shot? Because of all the terrible things that happened that day.

  Anyway, November third wasn’t just the day of my last trip to the eye doctor; it was also the day Mom and Dad told us that Dad was moving out and they were getting divorced. I know your parents getting divorced isn’t the same as the president dying, but you see what I mean. It marked the day on my brain. That’s how I remember when my eye appointment was.

  Up until then, November third had been a pretty good day. Mr. Singer had let us watch March of the Penguins, and Layla had brought her mom’s shortbread cookies to share at lunch. And I didn’t have to go to after-school because Mom left work early to take me to see Dr. Sherman.

  Nothing about the appointment was out of the ordinary. Dr. Sherman asked how school was, did my eye exam, and said my eyes had gotten a little worse. Then she said, “I know when you were here last year, you asked about getting contacts once you were in fifth grade. Are you still interested in that?”

  I was about to yell “YES!” because, as you know, I’d been wanting contacts for what felt like forever, and Mom had said I could get them at my next appointment if Dr. Sherman thought it was okay. So I figured today was the day.

  But before the word was out of my mouth, Mom said, “I think we’ll need to discuss it more. I’ll let you know.”

  I looked at her. “Wait, what? I thought you said I could get contacts this year.”

  “I said we’ll discuss it later, Gus,” Mom said, and she was using that voice that told me I’d better not push my luck, especially not in front of Dr. Sherman.

  Mom turned back to Dr. Sherman. “Just the new lenses for today, please.”

  I brought it up again in the car. “Mom, what was that about? You said I could get contacts this year. I’m going to middle school next year. I need to get used to them before then. I am not starting middle school with glasses!”

  Mom sighed and told me to stop freaking out, and that contacts were expensive. And then she said something we’ve since heard her say many more times over the past year: “We just need to think about the money.”

  So that was weird. I mean, it’s not like Mom and Dad were the kinds of parents who bought us anything we wanted all the time. But when there was something they’d promised—something that was a medical necessity as far as I was concerned—they never changed their minds and said it was too expensive.

  The next weird thing t
hat happened that day was when we pulled into the driveway: Dad was home. Wearing jeans and a T-shirt and raking leaves. Way earlier than he usually was home from work. You were there too, because he’d picked you up from after-school. Then they said they had to talk to us about something. And before long we were hearing their weird reassurances about how it wasn’t our fault and we wouldn’t have to choose between them.

  You know how the rest of that day went.

  That’s when Mom and Dad had to start spending money on things like the divorce lawyers. And the apartment for Dad. And his furniture. And the extra clothes for the extra “home” for us.

  And that’s why I started middle school with glasses.

  Anyway, almost a year after that eye appointment on November third, I wanted contacts so bad I could taste it. It wasn’t just because my glasses start to slip down my nose when I sweat in gym class. Or because they get all fogged up when it rains. Or even because the stupid Gooser called me Four Eyes.

  I think it had something to do with what I told you before: the wondering about what other people thought of me. At Meridian, what did I look like to the people I passed in the hall? Every time I looked in the mirror and thought about that, I couldn’t even really tell what I looked like to other people, because all I saw was glasses. And judging by what Addison said to Heidi, I wondered if maybe that was all other people saw too.

  * * *

  After Addison, Marcy, and Heidi moved on, Nick’s friend by the crab apple tree called over to us.

  “So, are you?”

  Sarah looked at me. “Are we what?” she yelled back.

  The boy took a bite of his tomato. (Why was he eating a tomato like it was an apple?)

  “Going to the dance?” he asked.

  “Why do you want to know?”