Bessica 1 - The Reinvention of Bessica Lefter

by Kristen Tracy

  My jaw dropped. “The motor home was your idea? And so was the cave exploring?” I thought Willy had put her up to that. It was part of the reason I thought he was a maniac.

  “Focus on the outcome you want, and picture it.”

  I pictured Willy falling off a cliff and smiled. Then I looked at Grandma and felt guilty, so I mentally put Willy, unharmed, right-side-up on the cliff again.

  “Bessica, I want you to have a fabulous time at orientation. I want to hear all about it when you get back.”

  Then Grandma left before I could ask her to buy me a headlamp system or medical kit or knee pads, because those seemed like cool things to keep in my locker.

  After Grandma left my room, I thought about what she said about the power of visualization. I pictured Sylvie in her house standing next to the phone. I pictured myself calling her on my own phone. Then I pictured Sylvie answering. But I got so mad when I pictured this that I started yelling at her in my visualization. Because all she had to do was stick up for me and tell her mom that she wanted to go to North. Not South! North! Then my mom knocked on my door and asked if I was getting ready, and I decided that I would try to visualize this stuff later because I needed to go down into the basement and get some pants out of the dryer.

  When I got to the last stair, I saw something that made me very sad. Grandma had gotten out her big duffel bag. Looking at that thing made me want to visualize something else. I walked to Grandma’s bedroom. And I pictured Grandma and Willy breaking up. But then Grandma looked sad and lonely. And it bugged me that Grandma liked dull Willy so much. Because what did he even bring to the table? So I decided to go online and get into Grandma’s E-Date Me Today account and learn more about him.

  It wasn’t hard to figure out her password, because she had written it on a sticky note attached to her computer: My password is Bronco. Typing the word Bronco and clicking open Grandma’s E-Date Me Today account made me excited. Grandma didn’t have to be stuck with dull Willy. There were a ton of pictures of single people. And they sounded so much more interesting than Willy. I mean, I found out that he was a retired auto mechanic who enjoyed welding, walking, and salty snacks. He was a terrible fit for Grandma! The last thing she needed was more salty snacks. Why couldn’t she see that?

  I clicked on the other photos. Edgar in Seattle had been skydiving and was much younger and looked like a lot of fun! Peter in Portland had a face like a movie star and had once played in an orchestra. And I counted at least six retired doctors who owned boats. Why wasn’t Grandma dating one of them? We loved going swimming together. It didn’t make any sense. I couldn’t see any logical reason why she should be dating Willy.

  Reading through Grandma’s profile, it became clear why she and Willy had ended up with each other. Grandma had filled out her profile all wrong. First, she’d turned her profile to the inactive setting five months ago, which meant that future boyfriends would not be contacting her. So I changed that and made her active. Then, I noticed that she had described herself in a very unflattering way. Where it asked for her body type, instead of selecting slim or athletic, she’d chosen carrying a few extra pounds.

  Then I got to a major problem. Grandma’s picture wasn’t so hot. She was sitting down, so you couldn’t even see how tall she was, which was one of her best features. So I looked through our photo files until I found the perfect shot of Grandma. She stood in front of the camera smiling, wearing bright red shorts, stretching her legs. It looked like she was about to run a big race. It must have been before I was born, because I’d never seen those shorts. And I didn’t ever remember Grandma running. But the picture was perfect! Because Grandma looked happy and fit and adventurous and fifty.

  Then I got to another huge problem. In a section called Tell Us About Yourself in Your Own Words, Grandma had gone on and on about her interests in opera and history and Scrabble and exploring, and it made her sound very dull. So I fixed this by deleting everything and typing: “I am a great cook. And I love water sports!” Click. Click. Click.

  I knew Grandma might get a little mad at me for doing this. But I also knew that when she ended up with a much-better boyfriend who owned a boat, she would get over it. And probably be very thankful. And eventually invite me waterskiing. Visualization was a lot more effective than I’d realized. Especially when you were as sneaky as I was. When I closed the computer, I hardly felt bad about what I’d done.

  “Bessica, are you downstairs?” my mother asked.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “What are you doing? You need to get ready for orientation.”

  And rather than tell my mother what I was doing, I just decided to get my pants and go upstairs and get ready.

  ne thing I learned about pixie cuts while I was getting ready was that it was really important to smooth your hair when you first woke up. If you didn’t do that, and you let it stick up in clumps all day, at the end of the day it took water and mousse and strenuous combing to flatten it down to normal. My mom tried to help me.

  “We might need a curling iron,” she suggested.

  “No way.” I had never used one before and I didn’t want to start right now.

  “It’s your cowlick.”

  “Hit it with more hair spray,” I said.

  And she did. I wondered if Sylvie had these problems with her pixie cut. I didn’t know if the Potaskis even owned hair spray.

  After spending twenty minutes making my pixie cut look normal, it was time to leave. That was when I noticed that my dad had a jacket on.

  “Let’s roll,” he said.

  “You’re coming?” I asked. Because I didn’t know dads even wanted to go to middle-school orientations. My dad delivered bread to all the supermarkets and convenience stores and gas stations in the area. He also delivered snack cakes and donuts and buns. After his deliveries he was usually too tired to get involved in extracurricular activities.

  “You bet. It will give me a chance to wax nostalgic about my own junior high school days. I sang in the chorus and played the lead in The Skin of Our Teeth.”

  “Doesn’t somebody get murdered in that play?” my mom asked.

  My father wrinkled his face like he was thinking very hard. “Yeah, you’re right. I think it was my child. But I’m sure it was done in service of the theme.”

  My eyes got big. They would never let kids put on a play in elementary school where a child got murdered, whether it served the theme or not. I started to feel a little bit more excited about middle school, like, even without Sylvie, maybe it had a bunch more exciting stuff to offer than I realized.

  When we parked our car at North Teton Middle School, it was already so dark that I couldn’t see the lawn. I watched shadowy figures of kids and their parents stream down the main walkway toward the school’s entrance.

  “This place hasn’t changed at all,” my dad said. “The flagpole still leans east and the parking lot still has potholes.”

  Eons and eons ago, before it was called middle school, this was where my dad went to junior high.

  “Go bees! Go bees! Go bees,” he said.

  I looked at my mother like I was going to die.

  “Buck, hush,” my mother said.

  “I don’t even think we’re still the bees anymore. I think South gets to be the bees and North has to be something else.”

  “Maybe you’ll both get to be the bees,” my mom said.

  “No way,” I said. “We can’t both be the bees. So when North plays against South it would be the bees versus the bees? I can’t even picture that.”

  “Me either,” my dad said.

  As we approached the building, I noticed an official greeter at the front door. She waved to everybody and looked very friendly. But in a fake way.

  “Welcome to North Teton Middle School!” the greeter boomed. “Here’s a program.”

  My dad snatched it right away. And when we walked into the school, I didn’t even care about the program anymore. Because I was so overwhelmed by how big e
verything felt.

  “The floors are so shiny,” I told my mom.

  At Sugar City Elementary School, all the hallways and classrooms were carpeted. The glossy look and squeaky sound of the hallways were new to me. And they were lined with lockers. Rows and rows. It made the sound of all the people walking around bounce off them. I glanced at the crowd, but didn’t recognize anybody.

  “Do you see any of your friends?” my mom asked.

  “Sylvie is probably watching TV,” I said.

  My dad saw somebody he knew and waved happily. “Hi, Lowell!” He looked at me and grinned. “Back in the day, we sang in chorus together. I think he teaches here now.”

  I looked at Lowell and then looked away. I didn’t know what he taught, but I didn’t want him as a teacher. I wanted to be brand new, and that meant getting teachers nobody in my life knew or had had before.

  In front of the doors to the gymnasium, there was a long table. It was for picking up your class schedules. I knew what classes I’d registered for, but I didn’t know what order I was taking them in. I felt so anxious as my mom told the person working behind the table my name. “Bessica Lefter.”

  “PE last. PE last,” I chanted. Because if I had to sweat, I wanted to do that right as school was ending, not at the beginning of my day.

  My mom took the papers and gave them to me. “Don’t lose them.”

  “Duh,” I said.

  “What?” my mom asked.

  Then I realized that saying duh probably sounded rude and so I said, “Okay.”

  We walked into the gymnasium and it smelled like pine trees and chemicals. The floor shined worse in there than it did in the hallways. I felt like I needed sunglasses. I mean, I could see my reflection.

  “I played basketball on this court,” my dad said.

  I watched in horror as my dad dribbled an imaginary ball and shot it at the folded-up basketball hoops. I clutched my schedule closer to me.

  “Can you tell Dad to please chill out?” I asked.

  “Buck,” my mother said. “Let’s find some seats.”

  My dad moved in a bouncy and excited way. “Let’s go up.” He climbed the gymnasium stairs two at a time.

  “I usually like sitting closer to the floor,” I mumbled.

  “Is this good?” my dad asked.

  He was on the row farthest away from anything.

  “Is that okay?” my mom asked me.

  “Will I be able to hear anything?”

  “You’ll be able to hear everything!” my father boomed. “The acoustics are great in this place.”

  It was almost like my dad thought that he was going to start middle school. Which he clearly wasn’t. Because he was over forty and worked full-time. If Sylvie had been there with me, watching him act this way, we could have laughed a little. But watching my dad act hyper, without Sylvie, didn’t make me want to laugh at all.

  “After the orientation we’ll go find your locker and stop by all your classrooms so you know where they are,” my mom said.

  I noticed my dad waving to somebody else. “Mom,” I whined. “Make Dad stop doing that.”

  “He’s just being friendly.”

  “It’s killing me,” I said. Because it was.

  “It’s your dad’s friend, Mr. Bradshaw. They work together. He just got divorced. Be nice.”

  I got a little excited. “He should try out E-Date Me Today. There are a lot of single people on that website. Some of them own boats and are very good-looking.”

  “Do not bring up dating websites,” my mother said. She wrinkled her forehead at me in a grumpy way.

  Then Mr. Bradshaw came over and sat next to us. And he brought his son. And I couldn’t even tell whether or not that kid was cute, because he wouldn’t look at me.

  “Bessica, this is my friend Mr. Bradshaw and his son, Blake.”

  I waved. But he still didn’t look at me. Then my mom started pointing to different rows.

  “Do you see anybody you know?” she asked.

  I looked behind me. I looked to my left. And right. Then I peered down at the heads in front of me.

  “Mr. Bradshaw and Blake,” I said.

  “You know what I mean, Bessica.”

  I looked around the gymnasium. I knew that my mom was worried about the same thing that I was worried about. Without Sylvie, I wasn’t going to know many people. When most people start middle school, they do it with their friends from grade school. But that wasn’t going to happen to me. Because the middle school got too crowded, and until they could build a new school, they decided to split the sessions. And so all the kids who went to elementary schools in the north part of the county—Flat Creek, Snake River, and Buffalo Valley—got assigned to early-day sessions at North Teton Middle School, and all the kids who lived in the south part of the county—Powderhorn, Teton Village, and Sugar City—got assigned late-day sessions at South.

  Sylvie and I lived so close to the border that we got to choose, and I chose North and so did she. Even though we wouldn’t know anyone from Flat Creek or Snake River or Buffalo Valley. Because we wanted to be brand new. Now I wasn’t going to know anybody.

  “You’ll know somebody from dance class,” my mother said.

  “Dance class?” I asked. “You mean the tap clinic Sylvie and I took last spring? The only person I talked to in that class was Sylvie. And the teacher, Mrs. Chico. Is Mrs. Chico here?” I glanced around.

  “You’ll know people from your book group at the library,” she said.

  I tried to remember who was in that group. I clearly remembered Sylvie and the librarian, Ms. Grimminck, but I couldn’t really picture the other people. We read a lot of Roald Dahl and Sharon Creech. And there were pretty good snacks.

  “Wasn’t she in your library group?” my mom asked.

  I followed her finger to an oily-headed girl in the front row.

  “Maybe,” I said. “But I think she had an odor issue.”

  “Oh,” my mom said sympathetically. “Don’t worry. You’ll make friends.”

  I looked from face to face. Sitting in this huge clump of people, making friends seemed fairly impossible.

  “You’re not the bees anymore,” my father said, pointing to the paper he was reading. “You’re going to be assigned a new mascot. There’s going to be a vote.”

  “Oh,” I said. I didn’t really care too much about mascots.

  “Either the grizzly bear or the gray wolf,” my dad said. “Pretty cool choices.”

  I started reading my schedule. Finally, good news. “I got PE last. And first period is nutrition!” I was excited to learn this.

  “Good,” my mom said. “I think they’re starting.”

  We all watched as a short woman walked out into the center of the gymnasium and stood behind a microphone.

  “Welcome to middle school! I’m Principal Tidge.”

  Everybody clapped. But I didn’t, because I didn’t want to drop my schedule.

  “We have an exciting year in store for you. Let’s take a minute to go over some important rules.”

  And then Principal Tidge went on and on about all the stuff we weren’t allowed to do in middle school. For instance, we couldn’t bring any electronic devices to school. And we weren’t allowed to use cell phones on school buses, except for athletic travel. And we couldn’t wear our backpacks in the hallways, because they were bumping hazards. We had to keep them in our lockers or cubbies. And if we damaged our lockers or cubbies, we would be fined. And if we missed a class, we had to get our teachers to sign approved absentee slips the day we returned. And then Principal Tidge listed everything that was considered a weapon, which we were not allowed to bring to school. It was a long list.

  “No guns, knives, laser pens, bats, metal pipes, chains, throwing stars, chemicals, nunchaku, knuckle-dusters, crossbows, explosives, razors, muffling or silencing devices, fireworks, or any replica weapons.”

  “I’ve never even heard of nunchaku or knuckle-dusters,” I whispered to
my mom.

  “That’s a good thing,” my mom said.

  There were a bunch of other rules too. About fighting and tobacco and truancy and public displays of affection. For some reason, during that part of the lecture, I glanced at Blake. And he did not return my glance.

  “They run a tight ship,” my dad said.

  “They have to,” Mr. Bradshaw said. “These days, kids are crazy.”

  I leaned closer to my mom. “We are not crazy,” I whispered.

  “They’re just talking,” my mother said.

  After about a trillion minutes of lecturing, Principal Tidge finally got to the end. “As for our school colors, before the split we were green and gold. We gave the color green to South.”

  The audience broke into boos. But I wasn’t totally sure why. I always thought green was a pretty lame color.

  “But we kept the gold and we’ve added purple. So they are your new school colors. Purple and gold!”

  We all cheered at this, because apparently we were all huge fans of purple and gold.

  “And as you might have read in the handout, we’re still finalizing our mascot. We’re deciding between the grizzly bear and the gray wolf. The second week of school we plan on holding a class vote!”

  Then I heard a very embarrassing sound. My dad and Mr. Bradshaw were chanting, “Wolf, wolf, wolf.” And then, as if my reputation didn’t matter at all, Mr. Bradshaw howled like a wolf.

  Blake scooted down the bench, away from his dad. I could relate. I wished Blake had sat by me, because maybe we would have hit it off.

  As the people started to file out, my dad stayed to talk to Mr. Bradshaw.

  “Bye, Blake,” I said. “I’m going to go find my locker and my classrooms.”

  Blake shrugged at me.

  I said to my mom as we climbed down the stairs, “Blake isn’t very friendly.”

  “He’s a boy. At this age they often act like clams.”

  We found my locker right away.

  “It’s in a good spot,” my mom said. “Right by the stairs.”