“We’re breaking into her house?” I asked.
“She knows I’m coming and she’s bedridden,” my mom said.
Once we were inside mallet-toe Betty’s house, I realized that she was a weird person. Because in addition to having almost no furniture, and a bicycle in her living room, Betty had otters everywhere. She had photos of them. And pillows of them. And statues of them. And paintings of them. They hung all over her aqua blue walls and lined her dusty windowsills. Betty even had macaroni art that looked like fat, splashing otters hanging in her dining room.
“What’s with the otters?” I asked. “And where is her couch?”
But my mom didn’t answer. “Betty?” she called. “Betty?”
“I’m in the bedroom,” a voice answered.
I stopped. It felt weird to walk into a stranger’s bedroom.
“I’ll wait here,” I said. “By the bike.”
But my mom set the casserole down on the kitchen counter and shepherded me into Betty’s bedroom.
I was relieved to see that Betty had a bed, but I was alarmed by how terrible she looked. Her hair was greasy and gray. And she didn’t have any makeup on. She wore a blue bathrobe and her skin glowed a very pale color and I could see her blue leg veins. One of her feet was bandaged and elevated on a pillow. Her television hung from the ceiling like TVs do in hospital rooms. She was watching a show about otters.
“It’s so good to see you, Bambi,” Betty said.
My mom’s name was Bambi.
“We brought you a casserole,” my mom said. “We’ll leave it in the fridge.”
“Oh!” Betty squealed. “That is so sweet. All I’ve eaten since the surgery is frozen burritos.”
When I heard this I frowned. And I quit breathing deeply, because I realized that I smelled burritos, and that was not a pleasant odor.
“Do you need help with anything? Laundry? Yard work?” my mom asked.
I kept looking around Betty’s bedroom. She had a ton of pictures on her blue walls. They were of people who looked like Betty who were doing vacation things. Swimming. Boating. Riding donkeys.
“It’s nice just to have somebody to talk to,” Betty said.
Which was an awful thing for Betty to say, because that meant we had to stay longer and have a conversation with her. My mom sat down on a footstool and I stood next to her.
“Are you Bessica?” Betty asked. “Your mother has told me so much about you.”
“Cool,” I said.
“Bessica just had her first week of middle school,” my mom said.
“Oh,” Betty moaned. “Middle school. I’m glad I’m done with that.”
“Did you have terrible teachers?” I asked. My mind flashed to PE and Ms. Penrod.
Betty shook her head. “Middle school is a cruel institution. The food is terrible. The lessons are often meaningless. And the students are little demons. If you can survive that, you can survive anything.”
And while Betty was talking, I heard something besides Betty. It was a squeaky sound. And it was coming from outside. When I looked out the window, I saw somebody I knew bouncing into the air. It was the dimpled girl who’d been absent from math class. Raya Papas. And she was jumping on a trampoline next door.
“Demons!” Betty said.
This made me take a small step back, because if I followed Betty’s logic, she was telling me that I was a demon.
“Bessica finds middle school exciting,” my mom said.
“No, I don’t,” I said. “I find it puke-bad.”
“And it only gets worse,” Betty said.
“Now, Betty,” my mom said. “Let’s not be too negative.”
I stopped watching Raya bounce and started watching Betty. She was turning a pink color.
“It’s pure and total horror,” Betty said. She sat straight up and wagged her finger at me. “I’d rather have surgery on all ten of my toes than go back and face one day of middle school.” Then she leaned back down and her pillows made a plopping sound.
“Wow,” I said. Usually adults weren’t this honest. I looked around the room and noticed an orange prescription bottle on the floor. “Are you taking painkillers?” I asked. Grandma took those once and she became very talkative and direct during that time. Betty ignored my question.
“Are you being forced to take public speaking?” Betty asked.
“I am,” I said.
“Let’s stay positive,” my mother interjected.
“Know this,” Betty said. “You can’t win. Say what they want you to say. Do whatever they tell you to do. Keep your head down. Avoid everyone.”
While Betty was talking, I heard a panicked scream from next door and I saw Raya Papas fly off the trampoline. Then I heard a thud. And that was followed by moaning. This made me gasp a little, because it was like mallet-toe Betty and my mom didn’t know that Raya Papas might have just gotten killed. I was the only one who knew that.
“Hey,” I said. But my mom interrupted me.
“Betty, Bessica likes her public speaking teacher.”
“No, I don’t,” I said.
“The institution,” Betty said. “It wants to flatten you. Don’t join their clubs. Don’t eat their food. Don’t play with the demons. Tell the world to leave you alone and it will.”
“Okay,” I said.
But really, I thought that mallet-toe Betty might be crazy, and I was hoping we could get out of there and possibly check on Raya.
“You think I’m joking,” Betty said. “And I’m not. The institution is a system. It will turn you into a potato.”
But then Betty started snoring.
“She’s tired and medicated,” my mother said. “She didn’t mean any of it.”
“I think she did,” I said. I’d never thought of middle school as an institution or a system. “Middle school wants to turn me into a potato.”
It sounded totally crazy, but not any crazier than psycho-bullies or Dolan the Puker.
“That doesn’t make any sense, Bessica,” my mother said.
But it did. Mallet-toe Betty made a lot of weird sense. And as we left her house, I told my mom that I wanted to go check on Raya.
“I saw her fly off the trampoline,” I said. “And that was followed by moaning.”
“Why didn’t you say something?” my mother asked.
“Betty was talking,” I said.
When we got into Raya’s backyard, there wasn’t anything but a trampoline and a pair of shoes.
“These are just like my shoes!” I said, picking one up. Then I looked to see what color tongues she’d attached, and they were yellow. I hadn’t used my yellow tongues yet.
“Do you want to knock?” my mom asked.
I looked around her yard and it seemed empty. Her house seemed empty too. I figured either Raya was in a hospital dying or already dead, or she was sleeping, and I should probably wait to see her again in school. Because it wasn’t like she was my friend. She was just a person with dimples who sat next to me in math and ignored me.
“I’m ready to go home,” I said, putting the shoe down.
As we rode along, even though my mom had said that she thought it was a bad idea to stalk Sylvie’s block, she drove past her house. But I didn’t see anybody. Her house sat in her yard and looked like an empty shell. And I watched that empty shell until it faded away.
ven though Yearbook hadn’t turned out so hot, I hadn’t given up on becoming an official member of something. That week there were a lot of lunch meetings with a variety of clubs: chorus and math among them. I liked the idea of buying vending-machine cookies and eating them during these lunch meetings. And cheerleading tryouts were coming up too. They happened after school. And I couldn’t help thinking that if I made the squad, I wouldn’t have to worry about finding a lunch group. I’d have an automatic one.
I waited for the bus in my driveway. The sun wasn’t up yet. In fact, I could still see the moon and the North Star. I stood beside the road, wearing my cute red jac
ket and matching red sneaker tongues. The cold morning air made me shiver a little bit. Even though fall had just begun, I was going to need to start wearing my winter coat. It was a bummer, because I liked my cute red jacket more than my blue puffer coat. I looked back at my humming porch light. No other lights in my house were on. My mom had probably gone back to bed.
I waited and waited. Then, even though I knew I shouldn’t abandon the bus line, I decided to go check on something important. I set down my backpack and crossed my yard to get to my neighbor’s yard. Noll Beck was still sleeping, so it seemed like a good time to spy on the Mustang.
I knew Noll would never be my boyfriend, since I was eleven and he was fifteen. As Grandma had pointed out several times, those were four very important years. But I couldn’t keep myself from daydreaming about him. Noll was tall, so I could see his gorgeous head popping up over our redwood fence when he played basketball.
He drove around in his shiny green Mustang, and when Noll saw me, he always asked me the same wonderful question, “Hey, Messica, what’s new on the menu?” And while Sylvie thought Noll was teasing me in an unkind way when he called me Messica and asked me about menu items, I knew that Noll Beck wasn’t being mean at all. He was flirting with me. Because boys weren’t smart like girls. And so instead of saying smart, kind flirty things, they said dumb, weird flirty things. And this didn’t bother me at all. Because I really liked it when Noll Beck talked to me, no matter what he said.
When I got to the Mustang, I was bummed out right away, because other than some crumpled papers, it was basically empty. Normally, it had interesting stuff in it. And Sylvie and I would make a mental inventory and then go back to my bedroom and figure out what kind of person Noll was and what he did in his free time. Once, we’d seen a birthday cake for Noll and it was shaped like a football. So I knew that football was his favorite sport. And I repeatedly saw a chemistry book in there, so I knew that Noll must be brilliant. And I saw a bag of dog food in there once, so I knew that Noll liked animals. And one time there was a box of paint cans, so I knew that Noll liked color.
Sylvie would sometimes bring up that we didn’t know for sure what was Noll’s stuff versus other random people’s who he gave rides to. But I could tell. Noll’s stuff was cool and interesting. And other random people’s stuff was mainly the garbage in the car. One time I saw that the car was unlocked, and so I opened the door, but Sylvie got very upset and said that she didn’t want to violate anybody’s privacy. But I saw it differently. Getting in the car would teach me a lot about Noll, because if he was a maniac, it was my duty to find out.
That morning, as I waited for the bus, I stared at the backseat, trying to figure out what the crumpled papers were all about. Were they garbage? Were they break-up letters from a girl he was dating? Why would any girl want to break up with Noll Beck? My mind was working so hard that I forgot that I was on my way to school. Then I heard the bus and remembered.
I bolted through the Becks’ front yard and through my front yard, and made it to the driveway right as the bus started flashing its lights. I scooped up my backpack and raced across the road before the bus driver even flipped out the Stop sign. I ran up the stairs.
“You look so eager!” the bus driver said.
But I didn’t say anything back. I didn’t even look at him. Because conversing with the bus driver was a surefire way to become less popular than I already was.
My bus wasn’t all that crowded, so I usually sat by myself. I didn’t mind that too much. It was better than sitting next to a weirdo. And, sadly, there were a few of those on my bus. I held my backpack close and thought about all the people I didn’t want to encounter that day. There were a lot. Maybe mallet-toe Betty was right. When it came to middle school, the kids were demons. Except me. I was normal.
When the bus squeaked to a stop in front of the school, I felt my stomach tighten. Getting off the bus had become a risky activity for me, because I never knew whether I was going to bump into one of the psycho-bullies. And they always teased me by asking the same question: “Are you going to walk, or are you going to run?” And I usually just ignored them and kept walking. Jerks. I didn’t even understand why psycho-bully Redge came to school. I mean, how did anyone expect to learn anything without a pen?
I hurried into school and went to my locker. My combination was still hard for me to remember. Sylvie had gotten 2, 5, 10. Which was a basic math problem. I’d gotten 40, 6, 23. Which wasn’t any math problem. It was just a bunch of numbers with no relevance that were challenging to remember. Once I opened my locker, I realized that I didn’t need anything, so I slammed it shut. Then I felt somebody breathing on me. Her breath smelled like pancakes. I turned around.
“You didn’t stay for Yearbook Club,” Cameron Bon Qui Qui said.
“Yes I did,” I said. “I just never went back.”
Cameron Bon Qui Qui smiled at me. “I’ve been chosen to be the lead photographer.”
“Oh,” I said. Then I felt even better about my decision not to join.
“Don’t think you can miss the first month and then show up once we start taking pictures or designing the layout.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Sometimes slackers think they can skip the hard stuff and then show up for the party.”
“I’m not a slacker,” I said. “But I usually like parties.”
Cameron Bon Qui Qui narrowed her eyes. “You know what I mean.”
I nodded. A couple of weeks ago, my hair would have flown around my shoulders when I nodded. But my pixie cut didn’t move at all.
“I just hung up more posters.” She pointed to one so I could see it. It was about a Going Green Club that was meeting in the gym on Friday after school. And there were a bunch about our school vote for mascot next week. There were a lot of pictures of wolves and bears. “If you take any down, I will report you. I know your name now, Bessica.”
And when she said this, she blew her pancake breath on me a little bit and it sort of felt like I was being threatened by the hall monitor. And I would have preferred not to feel that way.
“Don’t worry. I already know what animal mascot I’m voting for. And I’m not going to the Going Green Club,” I said. “I’ll be attending cheerleader tryouts.”
And then Cameron Bon Qui Qui held back laughter and walked off.
As I walked to my next class, I passed a bunch of familiar-looking faces. Some of them seemed friendly. But I didn’t know their names. And even if I did, I didn’t know what to say. They looked so comfortable walking down the halls. They looked like they knew where they belonged. I wanted to look like that too.
When I took my seat in Mrs. Mounds’s class, I grabbed a pen out of my pen case and handed it to psycho-bully Redge. He didn’t say thank you.
“Do you have one with blue ink?” he asked. “Blue is my favorite color.”
The bell rang.
I dug through my pen case until I found one with blue ink. I handed it to him, but he didn’t give my first pen back.
I held my hand out. He slapped it like he was giving me five.
“I want my other pen back,” I said.
“I want waffles,” he said. Then he growled at me and I turned back around.
“Today we are going to talk about the importance of sugar and the brain,” Mrs. Mounds said. She wrote something on the board in pink letters. Then she started drawing a pink glob of something.
“What’s that?” a student in the front of the class asked.
“This is a picture of your brain,” Mrs. Mounds said.
It looked like a gigantic walnut. And as I stared at that walnut, all I could think about was my pen. I turned around.
“Okay, you can keep two pens this time,” I told him. “But this means you don’t get a pen tomorrow.”
“Who’s talking?” Mrs. Mounds asked. She turned around and showed us her pinched, angry face. “It’s disrespectful to talk when I’m working at the board.”
“It was so
mebody in the back,” a student in the middle of the class said. “It sounded like Bessica Lefter.”
I sat straight up. How did anybody know what I sounded like?
Mrs. Mounds looked straight at me. And I knew what was going to happen next. I knew Mrs. Mounds was going to ask me if I’d been talking. And I was going to have to be honest and say yes. Then she would write my name down in brown marker. And I would lose more valuable points. And I would get further and further behind. I took a deep breath. Why did middle school have to be so terrible?
But none of that happened.
Mrs. Mounds cleared her throat. “Let’s focus on the brain.” Then she kept writing. “I plan on saying some enlightening things.”
I felt so relieved. I thought I was going to have another rotten day. But then it looked like I wasn’t. Because something good had happened to me when I didn’t even expect it to, and I’d only been at school for fifteen minutes. At this rate, probably twenty more good things would happen to me by lunch. I took out a pen and wrote down everything Mrs. Mounds said about the brain.
“Your brain is about the size of a cantaloupe.”
“Your brain uses less power than a refrigerator light.”
“In one day your brain generates more electrical impulses than all the telephones in the world.”
Also, Mrs. Mounds went off track and mentioned interesting things that didn’t have anything to do with the brain. But I wrote those down too.
hen you are in middle school, it is a dumb idea to expect good things to happen to you. After nutrition I had English. And nothing good happened in there. And after English I had math. And maybe something good happened, but I can’t remember. Because I fell asleep. And when I woke up, class was pretty much over and we’d apparently discussed a formula that calculates all the fat parts of a circle.
At one point, I thought something good had happened. Because Raya Papas came in while I was sleeping. When class started, I noticed that her chair was empty. When I woke from napping, Raya was in her seat. She didn’t look like she’d broken her neck at all. She was very involved writing a note and putting heart stickers on it. And I thought that I would like to get a note with a heart sticker on it from Raya. Did she even know my name? I reached over and touched her shoulder.
Bessica 1 - The Reinvention of Bessica Lefter Page 10