by Cari Simmons
I stepped inside. WHAT IS SOCIAL STUDIES? was written in red block letters on the whiteboard. Kids wandered about, chatting and catching up on summer fun. Desks stood in a row, and huge maps covered one wall. The windows on the opposite wall were pushed open, letting in a faint early September breeze. I felt myself drawn to them.
Weird, I thought as I headed towards a desk by the window. At school in Arizona, windows were always closed, so the air conditioning could pump. Without air conditioning, we’d melt in the desert heat. Out these windows, all I could see was green—bright green grass and dark green leaves. I never knew the world was so green.
“Oh, Lyla, I love those metallic shoes! Are they new?”
My head whipped around. Lyla? Lyla was in my first-period class!
Luckily, I hadn’t sat yet. I left the window and headed towards her. She stood with two other girls near the back of the room. They all compared shoes. Ballet flats. My high-tops suddenly felt totally wrong.
Another buzzer sounded, and a woman with chin-length blond hair and a crisp white button-down shirt cleared her throat. She held what looked like the same red marker that had been used on the board. She was revving up to start class. I had to move fast.
“I saw your silver shoes in a magazine.” I pointed to Lyla’s feet.
“Really?” Lyla glanced towards me. “Which one?”
I bit my lip. I’d totally made that up. “A back-to-school issue. One of the fashion magazines.”
“Metallic is so in,” the girl to Lyla’s left said.
“Don’t you think I knew that, Sasha?” Lyla said. “Diagonal stripes too.”
“And red,” her other friend added.
“Not dark red. Cherry red,” Lyla corrected.
“And denim shirts,” I put in. Eden and I had bought them last month. “Really faded ones.”
Lyla shook her head. “That was in last year.”
“Denim is always in,” I said. “I mean, what’s not to like about jeans, right?” I gave her a big smile. My winner smile.
Lyla didn’t smile back.
No biggie, I thought. Friendship takes time.
Then the teacher told everyone to find a desk. Lyla’s two friends quickly sat on either side of her. A blond boy slumped into the seat in front of her. My choices were narrowing. I slid into the desk next to him, but I angled my body back towards Lyla.
Close enough, I thought.
The teacher introduced herself as Mrs. Murphy. She read through the class list, and I could tell she’d been teaching for a long time. She managed to pronounce everyone’s name pretty much correctly. My name is easy, but others sounded tricky. When she called Lyla’s name, I smiled at Lyla.
Again, she didn’t smile back.
“What is social studies?” Mrs. Murphy asked the class.
“History,” called out a boy near the front.
“Raised hands, please,” Mrs. Murphy corrected him. “Yes, but the history of what?”
Lyla raised her hand. “The history of our country.”
Mrs. Murphy pointed to a girl by the window. “The history of other places too,” she added.
“Yes,” Mrs. Murphy agreed, “and no. We will be studying places, both near and far, but social studies is about people. We are going to be studying human behavior over time. We will start right now.”
“Don’t we need a textbook or something?” the same boy who had called out called out again.
Mrs. Murphy mimed raising her hand, then said, “Not just yet. We’ll start by studying the people around us. Everyone take out a pencil and a piece of paper.”
I flipped open my new purple binder neatly filled with lined paper. Unzipping the pouch in the front, I found lots of blue and black pens. A highlighter too, but no pencils. I chewed my lip, realizing they were in the new green binder tucked safely in my locker.
Every year since kindergarten I’ve made a big deal about organizing my school supplies. I love how everything looks so new and the erasers smell so clean. Last night I unwrapped everything Mom and I had bought and laid it on the kitchen table. I filled and labeled my three-ring binders. This year I decided to put all my sharpened pencils in one binder, my pens in another, and my markers in another. Usually my stuff is jumbled and I can never find anything.
New school, new system, I promised myself. I’d never had a system before.
New school and no pencil, I realized now. Some system.
I turned towards Lyla. “Hi, listen, do you have a pencil I can borrow?”
“You don’t have one?” She gave me an incredulous stare.
“I know, right? Totally silly of me.” I laughed. Lyla’s eyes widened as I let out a small hiccup.
“Sorry. Don’t have one,” she said, turning away from me.
I stopped laughing. That was mean.
“For you.”
A pink pencil waited on my desk. I swiveled to see who’d given it to me.
“I heard you didn’t have one.” The girl to my left grinned.
“Wow, thanks.” I rolled the pencil on my palm, then squinted at the gold lettering. WRITE ON BLEEKER! “Bleeker? Is this a regift?”
“Regift?” Her dark blue eyes looked confused.
“You know, when someone gives you a gift that they got from someone else. My aunt Kelly used to have a regift party the week after Christmas. It was hysterical. You bring the gift you don’t like and rewrap it. Everyone picks one. You just have to hope that the person who picks your gift isn’t the one who gave you the ugly thing in the first place. That’s what happened to my cousin,” I explained. I held up the pink pencil. “Who’s Bleeker? A bank? A bookstore?”
“It’s me.”
“Oh, sorry.” I felt my cheeks go pink. “Thanks, Bleeker.”
“Roseann. My name’s Roseann Bleeker. Mom had personalized pencils made. There’s a lot of us, so she only put our last name on them so we could share.”
“So, not-so-personal personalization,” I teased. “I’m Molly Larsen.”
Her face brightened with recognition. “You’re new.”
“How’d you know?” Could every kid read the newness on me? Was it that obvious? I thought I was doing a good job fitting in.
“You’re on the list.” She tapped her pink polo shirt, and I noticed her green enamel star pin. “We get a list of the new kids.”
Mrs. Murphy started talking about a get-to-know-you exercise.
I recognized her matching pink headband. Roseann was the student-ambassador girl on stage.
“Everyone stand,” Mrs. Murphy instructed. Chairs squeaked. “I’m timing you. Exactly one minute. Pick a partner. Go!”
At first, no one moved. Eyes scanned possible partners. Then, as if an on switch were suddenly flicked, everyone jumped into action, worming between desks to reach their targets. I stayed frozen.
I know no one, I thought, my heart thudding. No, wait, I did. Lyla!
I whirled around and stepped in front of her. This was perfect.
“Hi! I’m Molly!” I said as cheerfully as I could.
“Hey,” Lyla said, then turned to the girl to her right. I was left staring at the back of her shirt. Total snub!
Lyla quickly paired up with that girl. The other girl in their trio linked arms with a different girl. I stood nervously in their circle. Lyla acted as if I wasn’t even there. I could do the math. I was the odd girl out.
My palms sweated, and I squeezed the pink pencil. Behind me, I heard Roseann’s name being called. A swarm of girls and boys surrounded her. Her whispery voice rose above their voices.
Now what? The seconds ticked away. All around me, kids paired up. The plan wasn’t supposed to work this way. I should’ve talked to Lyla by now. I should’ve, at this moment, been securing an invite to her lunch table. I squeezed the pencil harder. Mrs. Murphy would put me with some other leftover kid. The class would label me as the girl no one wanted.
The pencil gave a crack, and I jumped. I stared at the two pieces in my hand.
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br /> I gulped. The pencil wasn’t even mine.
“Wow! You’re strong.” Roseann raised her eyebrows at me. She’d stepped out of the crowd and moved to my side.
“I am so sorry—” I began.
“No biggie. I’ve got tons. My mom had to order one hundred to get a good price.”
“I didn’t mean to—”
“Do you want to be my partner?” Roseann cut me off.
I blinked, confused. All those kids had come over to be Roseann’s partner. What had happened?
“Don’t you have . . . ? I mean, everyone came—”
She cut me off again. “You look like you could use a partner.” She smiled. Not a pity-the-lost-puppy smile. A you’re-okay smile.
“Yes!” I exclaimed.
Other kids grinned at us as we pulled our desks close together. No one seemed upset with Roseann. Everyone liked her!
And so did I.
Roseann lent me another Bleeker pencil. For the next twenty minutes, we filled out a worksheet together. It turned out we both like the color pink. Our favorite snack is brownies. Extra chewy, not cakelike. None of our other answers matched, but that was okay.
Next we had to walk around the class and introduce our partner to other groups. “Should we go over there?” I asked Roseann, nodding towards Lyla. Maybe if Roseann was by my side, I’d have a good way to start. “Sure,” Roseann agreed. Then four other groups hurried over to us. I watched how Roseann greeted each kid as if he or she was the coolest kid in the room. Movie-star treatment, my mother calls it. I glanced at Lyla and remembered how she’d treated me.
How could I have forgotten the It Girl trap? Eden and I had talked about it a zillion times. Some mean girls acted like It Girls. Other girls are fooled into thinking the mean girl is the It Girl. Not so. Her popularity comes from kids fearing her, not liking her. Huge, huge difference. An It Girl is truly, totally, majorly liked.
I’d had it all wrong.
Lyla wasn’t the It Girl at this school.
Roseann was.
“Molly. Molly? Are you done?”
“What?” I stared down at the homemade pizza on my plate. My mind was still on Roseann. The rest of the day had gone by in a blur. I’d barely seen her again. “Yeah, sure.”
My mom tilted her head. “All good? You didn’t eat much.”
“The new school is a lot to think about, that’s all,” I explained. I’d already told Mom all about my classes and teachers. Or at least what I remembered. The first day was only a half day, and we mostly went over class rules and got textbooks.
“I’ll finish that.” My brother, Alex, reached across the wooden table and snatched the pizza off my plate.
“Hey, that’s not your number.” I swatted his big hand. Alex is always grabbing my food. That’s what happens when your older brother eats fast and you eat slowly.
“I ate your number once before, and I’ll eat it again!” His mouth was filled with mozzarella cheese and sauce. I watched him gobble the rest of my number six pizza.
Every year on the first day of school, Mom makes personal pizzas for dinner. She writes our new grade in vegetables or pepperoni slices. This year I had a six made from green peppers. Alex had a twelve made from onions. At the beginning of the meal, we take a big bite into our grade-number pizza, and Mom snaps a picture. When I was in kindergarten and first grade, I had sauce all over my face in the photo! Mom loves those silly photos. I thought we’d stop with the pizzas when Dad moved out three years ago, but Mom kept going.
“Traditions are traditions because they don’t change,” Mom had said. Tonight in our new house across the country, she’d made the pizzas again.
But things had changed. A lot.
“I hear you, Molls.” Mom rubbed the sides of her head with her fingertips. She was still in her navy work dress, although she’d kicked off her heels as soon as she’d come home. The layers of her reddish-brown hair fell over her tired eyes. “The new job is a lot to think about too.”
“But you like it, right?” I asked. We’d moved here for her job. She’d been promised a lot more money and a lot more power to be in charge of advertising for a popular brand of paper towels. Mom had pretended that the move was all about business, but I knew better. I’d overheard her with Aunt Kelly on the phone. She wanted a fresh start. Dad had married Carmen last year, and Mom said she needed “breathing room.”
Why did she need eight big states of breathing room? That was what I didn’t get. Eight was the number of states between me and Eden. I’d counted.
“I do like it,” Mom said. “But it takes time to get used to a new place and new people. And I’m not used to being the boss.”
“I’d like to tell people what to do,” I said.
“No one would ever listen to you,” Alex said. He gulped his water in that glub-glub way he knows annoys me.
“Be quiet,” I said.
“La, la, la, la!” Alex sang. Then he smacked his lips together. That grosses me out more than his gulping.
“Both of you!” Mom sighed. “Really now, Alex, you’re a senior in high school.”
“Molly’s in middle school. Don’t treat her like the innocent baby,” he said. “She started it.”
“Oh, please!” I cried. “You just bother me because you have lame friends.”
“Molly!” Mom cried. “Stop that!”
Alex doesn’t care if I make fun of his red, bristly hair or his smelly deodorant, so I tease him about his friends, because sometimes that bothers him. Sisters know these things.
“Ah, but that’s where you are wrong, Mollster.” Alex grinned in his lopsided way. “All has changed at Hillsbury High.”
“Seriously?”
Alex nodded smugly. Mom turned to stare too. Since the divorce, Alex had been really moody. He grunted more than he spoke, and he didn’t seem to have many friends. Mom called it a phase and said it would pass. I hoped she was right. I’d never tell Alex, but even with his moodiness, I thought he was pretty great.
“Seriously.” Alex pushed his plate away and stood. “The kids here are cool. I’m meeting some of them at the library now.”
“Hold up,” Mom said. “You need to clear the table before you go anywhere. We talked about this, right? If I’m going to work these long hours, everyone has to do their part.”
Alex grumbled as he gathered the plates and glasses.
I tried to make sense of what I’d heard. My shy, unfriendly brother had made friends on the first day. What about me? Had I made friends? I wasn’t sure. Roseann hadn’t said anything else to me all day.
Mom reached over and ruffled my hair. “It’s just the first day, sweetie,” she said, as if reading my mind. “Great things are going to happen. You’ll see.”
I thought about Eden and her mom’s blog. I wasn’t supposed to wait for great things. I was supposed to make them happen. I was supposed to grab happiness.
“I met this woman at work today,” Mom continued. “She’s not in my department, but I saw her in the bathroom.”
“You made a friend in the toilet,” I teased.
“Yes, my bathroom buddy.” Mom grinned. “She said she has a daughter your age in your school. The girl’s name is Sheila. How about I arrange a playdate?”
“A playdate?” I cringed. “Alex is right. I’m not a baby. I don’t want a playdate with a stranger.”
“I thought it would make meeting friends easier,” Mom said. “And she’s not really a stranger.”
“No offense, Mom, but everyone here is a stranger.”
“It takes time,” she reminded me as she stood to wipe down the table.
I looked at the clock. Back in Arizona, with the three-hour time difference, Eden would just be getting out of school. I thought about Roseann. “Thanks, Mom, but I’ve got the friend thing covered. Right now, I need to make a call.”
CHAPTER 3
All I could think about was lunch.
All morning long, as the teachers began to actually teach,
I counted down the minutes.
And I wasn’t even hungry.
In first period social studies, Roseann had leaned over and whispered, “Eat with us.”
“Okay! Great!” I’d planned to ask her that same thing. Eden and I had worked out how I should say it. Now I didn’t have to. Big relief. I didn’t know who “us” was, but it didn’t matter. I was sitting with Roseann.
Now my eyes swept across the huge lunchroom, slowly filling with sixth graders. Roseann wasn’t here. Kids jostled to get around me. Standing frozen in the doorway wasn’t good, I realized. I wanted to look confident. I had to look as if I belonged.
I joined the line snaking out of the food area. Breathing in the tangy odor, I smelled something with tomato sauce. I groaned and glanced down at my white sweater. I wasn’t good with messy foods.
When I’d told Eden how preppy Roseann dressed, we decided I should look the part too. I didn’t own any super-preppy clothes. My style was more funky—skinny jeans, colorful shirts with studs or other embellishments, and high-tops. Mom came to the rescue with a cable-knit golf sweater she rarely wore. I paired it with skinny pink jeans, but the sweater was kind of huge on me. Now I pushed up the sleeves. At least my cuffs would be free from stains.
“You have no fear! I like it!” said a familiar squeaky voice behind me.
I turned to Shrimp. “Fear of what?”
“School lunch.” Shrimp wrinkled her freckled nose. “Marlo’s older sister warned us. Marlo brought a sandwich from home, but my mom’s not a sandwich maker. Well, she is, but she smears hummus and cucumbers on pita bread and thinks that’s a sandwich. She won’t make my favorite. Nutella and banana. She says chocolate spread isn’t healthy.”
“You like Nutella too?” I squealed. “I make the best Nutella sandwich with cream cheese and strawberries.”
Shrimp considered my combo as the line moved forwards. “I’d totally eat that.”
We both gazed at the hot-lunch option in front of us. Ravioli drowning in watery tomato sauce.
“Yes or no?” demanded a pinched-face, gray-haired woman. She plunged a big spoon into the vat, sending a spray of sauce onto the clear food guard that separated us. No question. I’d be wearing that sauce.