New Girl

by Joan B. Flood

  Title Page

  New Girl

  Joan B Flood

  ...

  An imprint of

  Musa Publishing

  Copyright Information

  New Girl, Copyright © Joan B Flood, 2012

  All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without prior written permission of the publisher.

  ...

  This e-Book is a work of fiction. While references may be made to actual places or events, the names, characters, incidents, and locations within are from the author’s imagination and are not a resemblance to actual living or dead persons, businesses, or events. Any similarity is coincidental.

  ...

  Musa Publishing

  633 Edgewood Ave

  Lancaster, OH 43130

  www.musapublishing.com

  ...

  Published by Musa Publishing, October 2012

  ...

  This e-Book is licensed to the original purchaser only. Duplication or distribution via any means is illegal and a violation of International Copyright Law, subject to criminal prosecution and upon conviction, fines and/or imprisonment. No part of this ebook can be reproduced or sold by any person or business without the express permission of the publisher.

  ...

  ISBN: 978-1-61937-438-6

  ...

  Editor: Ryan Loveless

  Cover Design: Kelly Shorten

  Interior Book Design: Coreen Montagna

  Dedication

  For all my family, those by blood and by choice.

  Chapter One

  “Take a breath. Visualize,” I told myself.

  I stood in front of the notice board on the wall near Room 107 and pretended to read the flyers and notes pinned there. It was my first day at Astoria High School, the beginning of my second week in Astoria, British Columbia. I was jittery with nerves. In three minutes, I had to walk through the door and face thirty people in Grade 9 English with Miss Sapperton—the new girl coming in when the school year was almost half-way through. Again. This time, though, I had a mission, and it was more than to make the track team and win races.

  The absolute worst thing was that first step into the room. Well, actually it was worse when a teacher insisted that I stand at the front of the class and be introduced. Studying the notice board meant that I could wait until the very last minute to slide in, take a seat, and miss that embarrassment.

  Breathing and visualization: that was how I calmed myself before a race. So I visualized the walk across the room and sitting in a seat. It worked too, at least enough to make me walk through the door.

  A few people stared at me. I sat in the nearest aisle seat a couple of rows from the front. I had promised myself I’d sit at the back where I could watch everyone, but I didn’t have the nerve to walk the whole length of the classroom.

  Miss Sapperton rummaged in her big carryall as our restlessness rustled to a stop. Just before she closed the door, this guy walked in and headed for the front aisle desk near the window. He was big, solid, and wore a shirt with a button-down collar, closed right up to his neck. His face shone pink and damp like he had just stepped out of a bath. The girl at the desk behind me said into my ear, “Where’d you come from, new girl?”

  “A land far, far away. I’m an alien,” I said.

  “Okay then, you’ll fit in here. I’m Jane.”

  “I’m Carly.”

  Miss Sapperton stood at the front of the room waiting for us to pay attention.

  “Talk at break,” Jane said.

  A chorus of “Hi, Caroline,” broke out when Miss Sapperton introduced me, and class began.

  One thing about classes, they were the same no matter where you went. The teachers droned on and on, and we thought about something else. Now and again it was different; a teacher could make it all come alive, for a while anyway, but mostly it was just blah, blah, blah. Kind of like how Astoria looked the same as all the other medium-sized towns I’d ever lived in: rows of houses with front lawns and doors painted different colors, trees lined up like sentries, and dogs yapping all over the neighborhood.

  About a month ago, as soon as Mom and Dad had announced we needed a “family discussion,” I had known we were moving again. Dad had told us he had taken this new job to give him a chance to do things differently. “Create a showcase for the whole country on organizational change, and give the family more stability,” he’d said. To do that, we had to move again. Go figure.

  This time a move was okay with me. For one thing, I was fed up dating a guy from my class. For another, I had no friends. The guy I was seeing wasn’t really a friend. He was my first boyfriend ever, which was a disgrace to admit because I was nearly fifteen. We had been going out only a month, and I was ready to quit. All he talked about was football, and his idea of a good time was watching wrestling. He mistook me for a hardcore jock just because I was on the track team and won most of my races. Kissing him was like kissing my own arm, only wetter.

  A chance to change had seemed good to me right then.

  I’d promised myself I would make friends, real friends, and when my fifteenth birthday came in six months, two weeks, and three days’ time, I would have a birthday party with more than just family. Sitting here in English as Miss Sapperton droned on, I wasn’t so very sure how I was going to make that happen.

  The bell rang for break. Not prepared for the stampede toward the door, I got stuck in the crowd for a minute. By the time I got out, the corridor was crawling with people. I couldn’t see Jane, so I headed outside.

  The school was two-stories high, the front an ashen-gray brick that looked like it might have been red once, but had been left out in the sun too long. It sprawled across a whole city block in the center of town. It had a fairly decent running track at the rear of the building, one of the reasons we were going to this school. The track was for me, and the great science program was for Ryan. And the fact that it “encouraged collaborative and cooperative education for social responsibility and democracy” was important to Mom and Dad too.

  The schoolyard was dotted with groups. I looked for Ryan, but didn’t see him. Jane was easy to spot by the fence next to the road with a group of other girls. She waved me over. She was tall—taller than most girls—and dressed in a boy’s shirt and vest, her feet stuffed into a pair of sneakers split across the toes. One of the other girls had long hair dyed flat black. It hung on either side of her face with just enough of an opening for her nose and eyes to show through. Three thick silver bangles hung on her left wrist and her makeup was half an inch thick. She looked a bit scary. My last school wouldn’t have let her in the door looking like that.

  As I crossed the yard toward Jane and her friends, I tried to suss out the different cliques. The guy from the window seat caught my eye. I stopped to watch as he made his way across the yard, paused now and again, talked to one person or another, and then strolled on.

  “Look at him,” Jane said into my ear as she draped her arm across my shoulder. I was so busy watching him, fascinated by his confidence and calm, I hadn’t even seen her come to meet me. “Walks around as if he owns the place.”

  We both watched him for a minute. He stood for a while and took in a couple of boys playing hacky-sack.

  “Who is he?”

  “Just a loser. Tommy Mack,” Jane said. “Hey, come meet Corinne.”

  She hooked her arm through mine and dragged me off to meet her friend with the black hair.

  Corinne was a goth. I’d never had anything to do with goths. All that attitude scared me. To be honest, Jane had an attitude too. Something about her I couldn’t qui
te pin down, a swagger, maybe a fearlessness that I envied and was wary of at the same time. Corinne was friendlier than I expected, though. I hung with them until after break that day. They included me in their group at lunch too, and that was better than hanging around by myself. Jane said she and Corinne would be meeting up at the park on Saturday.

  “Wanna come along?” she said.

  I said yes so fast I blushed.

  Chapter Two

  Most of my clothes, except for my running gear, were on the bed or the floor after I went through my closet. It wasn’t like I had anything that would fit in with either Jane or Corinne, anyway. My clothes were just lots of things that looked the same: T-shirts, shapeless hoodies, and jeans. When I left the house I looked the same as always, no makeup.

  I got to the park early, afraid that if I were late they’d go somewhere else without me. They were both late, so I ended up worrying that they’d changed their minds and not told me. About ten minutes after they were supposed to show up, I got up and walked around the block.

  When I came by the park again I was relieved to see Corinne on a bench, her long black dress flounced across the seat. She looked romantically goth and mysterious there among the park greenery and blossoming tulips.

  “Hi, good timing.” She gave a quick nod of her head over my shoulder.

  Jane loped along in her tatty sneakers. Red nail polish glinted through the tear over her small toe.

  The park was the size of a city block, tall pines scattered here and there and a slope into a hollow near a huge oak. A line of wrought iron benches with curly legs curved with the walkway, and a small plaque set into the concrete in front of each one said things like: In loving memory of James Rice, who liked to watch the sunsets from this spot.

  Jane hopped up and walked along one of the benches as she came to meet us. Her long legs stepped up on the seat and down easy-peasy. She’d make a great hurdler.

  As we strolled along the path, the two of them caught up on gossip and stuff. My ears pricked up when they mentioned some guy who became a little weird after his dad got laid off. I was glad that it had happened before we moved here. Even though Dad insisted this new job would have no layoffs, I wasn’t so sure. Another thing I found out was Corinne had just broken up with a guy called “Stoner.”

  Apart from a man lying on the grass reading and a woman walking a poodle that yapped at the birds, we had the park to ourselves. We headed over to the hollow on the south side. Halfway there, Jane took a bottle of wine out of her knapsack. She held the bottle in front of her like a divining rod.

  Beneath the oak, nestled into a little valley, we were out of sight of the rest of the park. Two mergansers drifted slowly across a tiny pond. Jane unscrewed the wine and took a slug. She passed the bottle to Corinne, who wiped off the top and then tilted the wine into her mouth. She passed the bottle to me.

  If I went home with alcohol on my breath, Mom would freak. Once Ryan had turned sixteen he’d been allowed wine at special meals, like Christmas and birthdays, but no way did I get any. “Not suitable for your age,” Mom would say. Ryan had slipped me a taste once. It was sour and made me cough. After that, I didn’t care that I was the only one at celebrations drinking sparkling fruit juice or some other wussy drink. I took the bottle from Corinne, closed my eyes and took a small sip, and then passed the bottle back to Jane. Next time I gave it a miss.

  “Here, Carly, you’re not drinking,” Jane said and tried to give me back the bottle. “Don’t tell me you’re a goody-good girl.”

  “I don’t really like the taste.”

  “It’s not about the taste, dummy, it’s about getting drunk. Enjoying an altered state.”

  Corinne took the bottle from Jane and had a quick slug. “No problem. More for us.” Although she accepted the bottle every time, Corinne didn’t do more than sip, so next time it passed to me I just barely wet my lips. At least nobody tried to persuade me to drink, but I worried they wouldn’t ask me out with them again.

  We did the “How many brothers and sisters do you have?” thing. Corinne had two of each, and Jane had two brothers. I told them about Ryan. He was such a geek, but he was also pretty awesome. He always looked out for me when we moved. I didn’t say that, about looking out for me, because I didn’t want to look like a baby as well as be suspected of being a “goody-good girl.” I remembered how great it felt when Ryan and I walked shoulder to shoulder into Astoria High that first morning. It was our ritual at a new school. I didn’t tell Jane and Corinne about that either.

  We compared the bands we liked and sang some of our favorite songs. Jane’s voice was lovely—rich, and mellow—even when it was blurry with wine. By the time we left the park, it was getting on to suppertime, and Jane was tripping over her feet now and again. I thought it was dumb to get drunk, but I was glad that I had friends to hang with.

  Chapter Three

  Jane lived across town from me on a street of old apartments three stories high, with the outside walls crisscrossed by a rusty, iron fire escape. The building hulked at the end of a block of small shops, just a short walk from the park where we’d hung out a couple of weeks ago.

  A huge kitchen table, set with a blue and red-striped tablecloth and five big round plain white plates, took up the end of the room by a window that overlooked a crop of dandelions on the empty lot across the way. The walls were hung with photos, some of them really old with women stiff in long dresses and embarrassed men standing next to them.

  Before I had a chance to take a really good look around, Jane had us climb out onto a tiny square of metal where the fire escape turned. We sat on a couple of dusty blue cushions, high above the street. The sun warmed our backs and the orange-red color of the brick glowed in the light. Before we had a chance to say much, her brother came out. He looked scruffy and had a scraggle of hair on his top lip trying to make up its mind what it was. Jane didn’t even turn to look at him.

  “Hi,” I said. “I’m Carly.”

  “Bart.”

  He said nothing else, just ducked his head and leaned against the wall, his musky smell taking up the space between us. My foot jiggled back and forth in the silence. He got up and left after a couple of minutes.

  “He’s a moron,” Jane said. “Let’s get out of here. C’mon, let’s go to the park, it’s just over there.”

  The grass was long, soft, and cool when I took off my sandals and worked my toes into it. Jane asked me where I had lived, so I listed some of the places, like calling out bus stops. Edithville, Holden, Glenwood, Lowell Falls, Concord. I told her my father was an executive, but then felt it was a bit snobby, so I shut up. I tried to think of some way to get the conversation away from my family. Tommy Mack was sauntering along the edge of the park and I pointed him out to Jane.

  “Oh, him. He thinks he’s such hot shit!” Jane said.

  “What makes you say that?”

  “The way he goes around. He has nothing to be so full of himself about, you know.”

  Away from school Tommy Mack looked smaller, but he still had on his button-down shirt. He moved like he was totally comfortable with himself, like he had all the time in the world to walk through this park.

  “Do people not like him? Is he awful?”

  “Some people like him. He swans around chatting to everyone, but he hangs out with no one. His father shot himself, right there in their kitchen about a year ago. People feel sorry for him, that’s all. He’s just another loser who thinks he’s great.”

  Having a parent who shot themselves seemed a lot worse to me than one who axed jobs. That’s what my dad did. “Right-sizing” he called it. To my schoolmates whose moms and dads were “right-sized,” my dad was evil. To them he was the Axe Man. Or the Hatchet Man. I didn’t think people were sorry for Tommy; in the schoolyard it looked like they thought he was okay without trying to smooch up to him. He didn’t seem like a loser. It seemed he just didn’t need to please anyone to feel special.

  “Why don’t you like him?�
��

  Jane scowled at Tommy’s back as he crossed the street at the end of the park. Then she shrugged.

  “Because there’s nothing to like.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Oh, don’t be an idiot. There’s just nothing to like. Take it from me.”

  Jane’s shoulders were up around her ears. I’d get no more out of her. Besides, she was getting mad at me, so I just shut up.

  As I walked home I thought about Jane and her brother. Ryan was okay, but he’d never try to hang around with me and my friends. Then again, he was a geek, so I didn’t know what he’d do if he were a regular guy.

  Chapter Four

  Tommy Mack seemed to be everywhere those first weeks. When I didn’t hang out with Jane and Corinne, I watched him. He was so calm and easy with himself. I studied him to figure out how he achieved that. I began to track him around the schoolyard too. What I expected to happen, I have no idea; I just hoped the way he was okay with himself would rub off on me. I needed it.

  Whenever I saw him at break, he was on the move. He talked to everyone, but didn’t hang with any group, or even any one person. In English class, he always had something to say when Miss Sapperton asked people what they thought of poetry or plays. He said that Hamlet was afraid, that he just wanted to figure out what he believed, he wanted to be sure before he acted. He said it straight out, and no one laughed, they began to talk about all the things Hamlet needed to figure out. Before then I thought Hamlet was just a drip who couldn’t make up his mind.

  That was how Tommy Mack was, he could say things to make you think and you need never worry that you might say something stupid. He made it seem okay to take time to think stuff out for yourself.

  He would turn up on the bench in gym with the rest of us, where we’d wait be picked for teams. He was the same as always, relaxed and solid. As I waited my turn I tried to be like him, but my feet wouldn’t stay still; one leg jigged up and down, telegraphing my anxiety, yelling “pick me, pick me” to the whole school.