Whitney looked at the punks, who wore tight pants and band shirts. They could scream every word of the music they listened to. They were unafraid to strike up conversations with other groups, but they usually clashed with the preps. As Whitney saw it, the cliques were just too different. Whitney was certain that the punk girls thought the populars were loud and snobby. Besides, she mused, odds were that she and her friends probably had been mean to the punk girls before.
The popular guys referred to the punks as “weird” and “useless.” They called Dirk, the punks’ alpha male, a scumbag within his earshot. Whitney was as friendly with Dirk as her group allowed, which meant in hallways their communication was limited to awkward eye contact and brief exchanges. She was attracted to Dirk, a funny and talented drummer, but she didn’t tell anyone, because a popular cheerleader dating a punk would cause “crazy scandalous controversy” and further escalate the tension between the groups. She was having enough trouble with the preps as it was.
After the welcome-back hug, the preps hardly acknowledged Whitney, though she stood next to them. The group brought up inside jokes and memories from the summer that didn’t include her. Whitney recognized this weapon because she had used it before. The preps enjoyed purposely making someone feel bad for not being at an event. If you weren’t at a party one weekend, the group wouldn’t stop talking about it in front of you until the next party.
Whitney loved the power and perks of popularity. When the teachers began handing out senior schedules at the back of the gym, Whitney’s group pushed to the front of the line en masse, as students parted without protest. The teachers didn’t bat an eye at the line cut, instead complimenting the girls on their hair and their tans. We haven’t been in school for more than ten minutes and already our egos have grown, Whitney thought. Her group got away with everything. For example, students who were late to class four times automatically received detention. Not Giselle. She regularly escaped detention because of cheerleading practice, and no one dared complain.
Some teachers fawned over the popular group. Whitney’s mother was an administrator, and other preps’ parents held powerful positions in town. Once, Whitney and her friends sauntered into a school entrance prohibited to students because it opened into a class in progress. The teacher stopped them and yelled that they couldn’t go in that door. “Yeah, well, I’m going to my mom’s office,” Whitney shot back. The teacher asked who her mom was. When Whitney answered, the teacher’s expression changed immediately. Not only did she let Whitney’s group inside, but she also told Whitney to say hi to her mother. Whitney thought the staff’s sycophancy was especially amusing because her mother was sweet and unintimidating. Whitney was close with both of her parents, who occasionally tried to encourage her to be more compassionate.
Schedules in hand, the preps left the gym before they were dismissed, and strutted toward “their” hallway. Other students walked by the Prep Hall quickly, so as not to attract attention in the area where the preps heckled the “weird kids.” By the end of junior year, one such student was so fed up with the preps’ rude comments that when they made fun of him for drawing a robot, he lashed out: “You’re going to be sorry when I come to school with a gun and kill all of you.” The preps didn’t say another word to him.
“Ugh,” Bianca shouted. “I hate when stupid freshmen don’t know how to walk in the hall! You walk on the right side of the hallway! Goddamn!”
As the halls filled up, crowds parted for the preps. Some students said hello, but Whitney and her friends gave them the “what’s-up-but-I-won’t-really-acknowledge-you” head nod.
When Whitney walked into advertising class with Peyton, she spotted Dirk. “Hey, Whitney!” he yelled across the room.
“I’m not sitting with Dirk,” Peyton whispered to Whitney. “I don’t see why you like those people. They scare me.”
Whitney shrugged and grinned at Dirk as she sat next to him anyway.
At lunch, the preps cut to the front of the line, as usual, and sat at “their” lunch table in the center of the cafeteria. Whitney hadn’t waited in the lunch line since she was a freshman. In the past, when students told the preps to stop cutting, Whitney’s group either ignored them or shot nasty glares. When the protestors walked off, the preps would follow them and make loud comments, such as, “Wow, fat-asses need their food quickly, don’t they?! I mean, do you really think they need that much food? They look like they could do without lunch once in a while . . .” Nobody complained anymore. Because they favored the preps, the teachers in the room looked the other way.
Before cheer practice that afternoon, Whitney and Giselle claimed their gym lockers. It hardly mattered that they always took the lockers in the back corner of the last row. When the prep cheerleaders changed their clothes, the younger athletes waited until the preps were dressed and gone before going to their own lockers. Once, an underclassman tried to squeeze by and accidentally stepped on Whitney’s Ugg boot. “Jesus Christ! Seriously?!” Whitney yelled. The girl looked mortified, blurted out a meek “I’m sorry!”, and ran away.
As much as she loved being popular, Whitney wished other students understood that it wasn’t so easy. Preps were stereotyped like everyone else, she said. “A prep talks like a Valley Girl, thinks she’s better than everyone, is obsessed with looks, sleeps around, is usually a cheerleader, doesn’t eat, parties all the time, and gets away with murder. Basically, emos want us dead.”
Whitney insisted that the prep description didn’t fit the “real” Whitney. “I’m not snobby,” she said. “I have to be this way because it’s what my friends do. If I wasn’t like this, I wouldn’t have any friends.” She loathed the immediate judgments students made about her. She was a cheerleader; therefore she was a slut. She was a class officer; therefore she was stuck up. She wore expensive clothes; therefore she was spoiled. She said “like” too often; therefore she was flaky. She was a prep; therefore she was a bitch.
The funny thing was that if Whitney could have chosen any group at school to belong to, she wouldn’t have chosen the clique that intimidated other students with cruelty. She would have chosen to be in what she considered the most nonjudgmental, down-to-earth crew at school: the punks. But it didn’t matter. There was no changing groups. Once you were in a group, you were stuck there until graduation, no matter what. That was just the way high school was, Whitney was sure. So she didn’t tell a soul.
REGAN DAVIS, GEORGIA | THE WEIRD GIRL
Here we go again, Regan thought, opening the yellow double doors of James Johnson High School. She loved her classes, but the social scene and high school bureaucracy dampened her enthusiasm. She had never walked through these doors on the first day of school without feeling a sense of impending doom.
Regan headed straight for the first-day-of-school assembly. She looked around at her peers, many nervously speculating about the principal’s new rules. There had been rumors that the administration was going to enforce the dress code more stringently this year, partly to prevent students from exhibiting gang affiliations on school grounds. Regan usually wore innocuous sundresses and long necklaces, but she worried that the dress code would rein her in. Her long, often wild curly hair had been some permutation of every color in the rainbow since she was thirteen. She had removed her tongue piercing a few years ago, but had kept the orbital in her right ear. She would have to be extra careful this year not to expose her tattoos.
Regan merged into the crowd with some acquaintances, grateful to have her new, beautiful girlfriend, Crystal, at her side. Crystal had a calming effect on Regan. A hip-hop artist whose band seemed on the verge of hitting it big, Crystal had dropped out of school to pursue music. She was here this morning, only for the assembly, to give Regan moral support on her first day of school.
Crystal raised her hand as if to touch Regan’s face, then quickly retracted it. “Oh . . . never mind,” she said.
“What?” asked Regan.
“You . . . you have something on your
face. I wanted to wipe it off for you, but I forgot we’re at school.”
Regan swiped her cheek and sighed. Is this what I have to look forward to? A year of secrecy?, she thought. Regan was in love with Crystal, but it was difficult to be gay in the Bible Belt. Her Georgia town was an urban mix of white conservatives and black families relocated from a rough neighborhood. Most Johnson students were black. So was Crystal; the town was more accepting of interracial dating than same-sex relationships.
Regan wasn’t openly gay at school. Her friends knew, but at school she played the pronoun game, referring to her social plans using “we” instead of “she,” or “significant other” instead of “girlfriend.” She knew people wouldn’t care enough to ask why she brought Crystal to the assembly.
Regan surreptitiously nudged Crystal’s arm. “In the pink,” Regan whispered and gestured with her eyes toward Mandy, the blonde queen bee, laughing ahead of them in line. “That’s her.”
Crystal looked her up and down. “Viola was right,” Crystal whispered back. Regan squinted, trying to recall what her best friend at school had said. “About her ass,” Crystal continued. “Yours is better.” Crystal pointed with her chin. “And him? With the tattoos? That’s him?” she asked, pointing to Wyatt.
Regan turned to look, her heart sinking. As little as she cared for him now, it still stung to see him with Mandy. “Yeah,” she said. “That’s Wyatt.”
Two years before, when Regan had first arrived at Johnson, a lonely, anxious Vermont transplant, she was surprised to find that she immediately was attracted to Wyatt, who seemed her polar opposite. Where Regan was a mixture of dorky and punk, Wyatt was a popular, motorcycle-riding, often tactless jock. Regan thought now that his in-your-face machismo perhaps was why she had agreed to date him, after dating only girls and slight, artsy boys. Wyatt was her chance to be with someone undeniably manly so that she would know for sure whether she wanted to give up on males altogether.
Wyatt, who had swooped in on Regan that September, had his moments of tenderness, but even months into their relationship he insisted on keeping their connection a secret because “I don’t want anyone to know I’m fucking the weird girl.” This was especially hard for Regan, who was candid and outgoing. Wyatt made fun of her constantly for “being a dork.” He told her that she was the first nerd he had ever been with. When she asked him why he was with her, he said, “I wanted to see what nerd love was like.” Wyatt was fun to flirt with, though, which made school more interesting for Regan.
After nine months, Wyatt dumped Regan via text message. She learned then that he had been cheating on her with pretty, popular, cheerleader-types like Mandy. When they returned to school in the fall, Wyatt and Mandy were openly a couple. Mandy and her inseparable friend Francesca seemed intent on humiliating Regan. They gossiped about how Wyatt showed them PG-13-rated photos that Regan had taken for him (at his insistence). Francesca flat-out refused to be Regan’s partner at a student fundraiser. Mandy spread lies, telling people that Regan was stalking Wyatt and trying to ruin Mandy’s life. Regan had barely ever conversed with Mandy, but Mandy cut Regan off from some of the few friends she had made.
Regan was mostly on her own at school and feeling adrift in a state where people who worked at the grocery store didn’t even know what falafel was. (When she asked someone to help her find falafel, the staffer said, “Tilapia?” Regan said, “No, falafel.” He apparently thought she had a speech impediment. “Aw, don’t worry. I understand what you mean,” he said. Then he took her to the tilapia.)
Now, everyone took seats in the same places as they had before school had let out for the summer. The cliques were divided mostly by subject specialty: the math whizzes on one side of the room, the performing arts department on the other, etc. Separate groups of whites and blacks sat together. Regan thought the racial divide at Johnson was “vast and offensive.” Most students hung out only with students of the same race. At lunch, even among teachers, whites grouped with whites, blacks with blacks, cliques with cliques. Regan ate lunch alone in an office. She tried to steer clear of social situations at school because they made her uncomfortable, as if she had to put on a show. “I don’t want to ‘choose’ a group to hang out with,” she rationalized. “I’d rather be an outcast.”
The black peers with whom Regan had the most interaction formed a clique called “The Seven.” Regan liked them, but they were exclusive. Once, she had walked in on them during a conversation and they immediately fell silent. When they realized it was her, one of them commented that Regan could be the marshmallow to their hot chocolate, and should therefore be included in their discussion, as if conversation could be racially segregated.
As the principal began speaking, Regan’s attention wandered to the middle of the room where Mandy and Francesca were huddled over what Regan assumed was their infamous purple notebook. Mandy and Francesca called themselves “The Divas,” referring to themselves as Diva 1 and Diva 2, even when they did the morning announcements. They had a list of Diva Rules, a Diva vocabulary, and Diva business cards. They even decorated their rooms with similar purple curtains. They brought the little purple notebook to assemblies and meetings, and wrote down the “sqs”—stupid questions—people asked, as well as the names of all late arrivals. They were the school gossips. Regan’s friend Viola referred to Mandy as “the mouth of the South.”
For a long time, their gossip had centered on Regan, who pretended not to know that people were talking about her behind her back. She explained later, “What people say about me isn’t as important as what I know is true. If people want to talk about me, then that’s their problem, not mine.”
Wyatt sat near Mandy and Francesca, in the middle of the group known for being jocks, jokers, and chicks with reputations. They formed a tight clique, blathering over each other, holding exclusive cookouts once a month during lunch, laughing at inside jokes. During Regan’s first year at Johnson, they even wore matching custom-made T-shirts. At assemblies, if one group member spoke up in front of the crowd, the rest of them made a scene, clapping and cheering raucously. Regan was both revolted by and jealous of them.
Regan hadn’t intended to become an outcast at James Johnson. When she was dating Wyatt, she didn’t talk much to people at school because Wyatt told her not to; he said their schoolmates didn’t like her and, being new to Georgia, she believed him. Although Regan was generally strong and independent, she listened to Wyatt because, she said, “I was lost and scared. I was in a new place with new people, and I didn’t really know what else to do.”
Regan no longer cared that people at Johnson thought she was weird. She knew she was different. She was a self-described histrionic “artsy type” vegetarian who performed in community theater plays, went to museums, and often ate ethnic food. She was also a self-proclaimed nerd who liked documentaries, listened to spoken sonnets on her iTunes, adored English classes, and rarely watched television. She was obsessed with dinosaurs. She improvised strange skits starring her younger brother and posted the videos on Facebook. Back in Vermont, she and her best friend watched the three original Star Wars movies in a row and turned everything Luke said to Yoda in The Empire Strikes Back into an innuendo. She took Bengali lessons because she planned to spend next year’s fall semester volunteering in Bangladesh.
Once, after reading Cyrano de Bergerac, Regan and her high school classmates had to write a paper about their metaphorical nose—the single insecurity that kept them from feeling comfortable around people. Regan wrote about her state of mind. She had a different way of looking at the world. She explained later, “I don’t want to be like everyone else, so I just sort of do my own thing. Everything about my lifestyle is alternative. I’m extremely ambitious and antsy. I’m really silly. I don’t try to conform to what people want from me. I’m outspoken and very energized. In school, people don’t know how to handle me. So they’re just like, ‘Oh, she’s awkward.’ ”
At Johnson, her peers teased her for not partying with
them because she didn’t drink. They laughed at her ADD and her clothes. People who didn’t know her well joked about how she was “sunshine and rainbows,” naïve and innocent, even as Wyatt and the Divas spread rumors that she was a slut. Regan took Middle Eastern dance classes as often as she could afford to. People at school suggested that Regan was too uncool for such a sensual activity.
Classmates had called Regan weird as far back as elementary school, when during recess she sat against the corner of a fence and daydreamed instead of playing kickball. (When people asked her what she was doing, she would answer, “Going to my imaginary world.”) Her parents worried about how she usually had only one close friend at a time. But Regan felt that once she found someone who understood her, she would stick with that person forever. And she had; she’d made lifelong friends back in Vermont. Although she was gregarious, she inadvertently separated herself from people because she was so often inside her own head, focusing on her creativity. From an early age, she knew she was “different” sexually too, though for a while she dated boys, confused about what she wanted.
Once, in elementary school, she told her aunt that students made fun of her. “Always be yourself and don’t change for anyone,” her aunt said. “When you get older, you’ll be glad that you did.” So far, her aunt had been right. It was hard to be excluded, but gratifying to be herself. She explained, “I’ve had issues with being the odd one out my entire life, so it’s nothing new to me for people to think I’m a little off. It’s always been that way. God, I make myself sound like I’m socially awkward or something. I swear I’m not. I just . . . well, to put it in Johnson lingo, ‘I do me.’ ”
The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth: Popularity, Quirk Theory, and Why Outsiders Thrive After High School Page 3