by Liz Moore
He looked at her ruefully. “Don’t take them too seriously,” he said finally. “Don’t take anything too much to heart, Ada. All right?”
She nodded solemnly. And then she watched her father as he walked away, carrying his own briefcase down by his side. She longed in that moment to go with him: to run after him, to sigh deeply and contentedly as she settled into her work at the lab. Instead she turned, finally, and walked in the opposite direction. Her head was down, like David’s head. From above, they would have looked like mirror images of one another, one larger, one smaller: a Rorschach test; a paper snowflake, unfolded; two noblemen pacing away from one another in preparation for a duel.
It was a short walk to Queen of Angels from there. She tightened her right hand around the handle of the briefcase; it made her feel professional, secure, as if she were clasping her father’s hand. When she arrived, she found she was alone. No other students were in sight; and the first-floor windows were too high to see inside from street level. Ada walked up the steps, feeling increasingly ill at ease. At the top of them, she tried the handle of a door and found that it was locked. She tried another. Locked. She stood for a moment outside, wondering about her next move; a large part of her wanted to turn and walk home. I tried, she imagined saying. The door was locked. She did not feel yet that she had any obligation to the school; she did not feel, yet, that she lacked agency, or the right of self-governance. In her life, Ada had rarely been told that she could not do something she wished to do, because all of her desires aligned so completely with the desires of those around her, because her deference to her father and all of his colleagues meant that her requests were usually very reasonable and very small. All of her life she had operated in the world of adults, and the world of adults had welcomed her.
Now she decided that it was reasonable that she turn and walk home, but as she reached the bottom of the steps, one of the dark blue doors opened behind her and a low voice issued forth.
“Where do you think you’re going?” said the voice.
Ada turned around. The man in the doorway was small and stern. He had gray hair parted sharply to the side of his head, and brown pants, and a wide, short, brown tie.
“Nowhere,” she said. She was surprised into saying it.
“Were you leaving?” the man asked.
“I was trying to get in,” said Ada. “The door was locked.”
“And knocking is something you’re not familiar with?” he asked her. She had never been spoken to in this way, so harshly.
“I’m new,” said Ada, by way of explanation. She began to dig in the pockets of her skirt for her schedule so she could show him, but the man was already coming toward her. Shockingly, he took her by her elbow. She had not ever been handled in this way. He brought her forward, up the steps, pushing her ahead of him as if she might try to escape. And once she was inside he pulled the door closed behind her with a crack.
It was explained to her by the secretary, when she reached the office, that although her first class began at 8:00 a.m., homeroom was at 7:40 sharp. The front doors were closed and locked at 7:38 a.m. exactly, and after that students were required to ring a bell to be let in, and their lateness was noted on their record. Ada was certain that this had not been explained to her on her first and only visit to the school, but it felt futile to protest—they were so certain of her guilt that it seemed better, more effective, to hang her head and nod.
The secretary, Mrs. Duggan, donned her half-moon reading glasses to take a look at the schedule that she still held in both of her hands. She glanced up at the clock on the wall.
“8:01,” she said. “You should be in Sister Margaret’s class right now.” And she walked Ada out of the office, down a short hallway, around a corner.
“If you’d gone to your homeroom you would have gotten your locker assignment. But we should get you to class now. You’ll get it tomorrow,” said Mrs. Duggan.
Although it hadn’t occurred to her yesterday, Ada now noticed the smell of the place—the famous schoolhouse smell she had read about in many of her favorite books. Chalk and soap and dust and metal. She took it in. Overhead, fluorescent lights flickered from time to time distractingly.
She reached Sister Margaret’s classroom, and Mrs. Duggan turned to her.
“I’ll introduce you to your student ambassador first,” she said. “You were supposed to meet her this morning.”
She opened the door and popped her head inside. “Sister,” she said, “could I borrow Melanie McCarthy for a moment?”
After a pause, a girl emerged from the classroom and into the hallway. She looked at Ada unblinkingly. She was beautiful: the sort of girl that Ada suddenly and irreversibly realized she wanted to look like. It had never really occurred to her to want to look any particular way before. Melanie had very fair blond hair that fell back and away from her face, held there by what seemed like a permanent breeze. She had smooth unblemished skin—Ada had noticed that lately her own had been less cooperative—that was tan still from the summer. Ada imagined she spent a great deal of time lying on a beach someplace, or performing some wholesome athletic activity like field hockey. Her skirt fit her perfectly and fell to the tops of her kneecaps, which themselves were perfect. Her white socks were pulled to the top of her shins and folded over precisely. Ada was wearing ankle socks, scrunched down by her shoes, because she had nothing else to wear.
“Ada, this is Melanie,” said Mrs. Duggan. “She’ll be your ambassador here at Queen of Angels.” And Ada could tell by the way she looked at Melanie that here was a girl she approved of, a tidy girl with brushed hair and a family who donated the correct amount each year. The name of the school seemed, in that moment, to apply to Melanie herself. Ada extended her hand ever so slightly, the way she would have upon being introduced to a graduate student, and then retracted it. A handshake was not correct.
“She’s in Group B with you, so she has the same schedule you do. If you have any questions,” said Mrs. Duggan, “she’s the one to ask.”
Melanie said nothing. She smiled, briefly, and looked at Ada inquisitively. She was Ada’s height exactly and their eyes met quickly before Melanie turned them away, back to Mrs. Duggan, who was thanking her for her kindness. “And I’m sure Ada will thank you, too,” she added. “Won’t you, dear?”
She nodded.
Mrs. Duggan rapped on the glass once with her knuckles and then opened the door. Sister Margaret, inside, was poised with her hand at the chalkboard, about to finalize some equation. Mrs. Duggan put a hand on Ada’s shoulder and ushered her into the classroom. Melanie trailed behind, and then walked gracefully back to her desk and, sitting, tucked one leg behind the other.
“Sister Margaret,” said Mrs. Duggan. “Class. This is Ada Sibelius. She’s new here. Ada, why don’t you tell the class a little about yourself.” She and the hallway monitor had both pronounced her last name incorrectly—something like Sibellus—but Ada knew not to correct them. David would have. She had never been certain about how she’d acquired the few social skills that she possessed, which had always acted as a balance to David’s lack thereof. Genes, perhaps—the genes of the surrogate mother who gave birth to her. Or her interactions with the other members of the lab. Either way, Ada called upon them not to fail her in that moment—to produce the right response, the right introduction.
She looked out into the sea of maroon-and-navy-clad eighth-graders, boys and girls all returning her gaze impassively. She held her briefcase in her right hand and curled her first around its handle more tightly as she struggled to bring words—any words at all—to mind. She dug her nails into her palms. Anything she could imagine saying felt too far-fetched, too bizarre. I’ve never been in a school before, she could say. My name is Ada Sibelius and my favorite mathematician is Gauss.
Finally she settled on Hi. “Hi,” she said. “I’m Ada. I’m thirteen. I’m from Dorchester.”
Which was, of course, silly. They all were.
The math clas
s was incredibly basic. Ada had had a suspicion it would be, but it was so simple that it was actually interesting to watch, at least at first: Sister Margaret was spending time on the multiplication of fractions, teaching the class in a slow, methodical way, drawing Xs from top to bottom and bottom to top. Ada knew to do this, intuitively, but it had never been mapped out for her in that way, mechanically. Everything she knew of math was somehow more fluid, more instinctual, than the diagrams that Sister Margaret was putting on the board. It felt like someone telling her how to speak, or by what method to put together an intelligible sentence. It felt like someone telling her how to access a memory. How to breathe.
And yet, all around her, students were completing exercises given to them by Sister Margaret, using the same cross-hatching technique she was demonstrating at the front of the room. She wrote a list of equations on the board and then roamed the room silently as students put their heads down to work at the task. Ada put her briefcase atop her desk and carefully turned the dials into place and sprang the latches with a louder pop than she’d recalled. Several students around her turned to look, and it was then that she noticed the backpacks that were tucked neatly into baskets beneath each student’s seat: red and green and blue canvas bags with straps, the sort David called satchels. Instantly, her face colored, and she lifted and lowered the lid of her briefcase as quickly as she could, retrieving from it the pad of Steiner Laboratory stationery and the pen her father had tucked into place that morning. Then she pushed the briefcase under her desk.
She began to work. After a moment she felt a presence over her right shoulder, a shadow on the desk.
“In this class we use pencils,” said Sister Margaret, more loudly than Ada thought necessary. “And graphing paper.”
Ada looked up at her. She hovered there disapprovingly, her small mouth turned downward, her hands folded before her. How was I supposed to know this? Ada wanted to ask her. It was a question that had occurred to Ada perhaps ten times that day already. How was I supposed to know any of this? She felt anger toward her father and Liston in equal measure. Surely, Ada thought, they could have prepared her better than this.
A sharp bell signaled the end of the period, and Ada took out her paper schedule to see what was next. English, then history, then physical education, then lunch, then home economics, then something called general science. She wondered what it might be—what they might plan on teaching her in a science course with no specialization.
When she looked up again, she realized that every other student, including her ambassador, had left, and new students were coming into the classroom. She scurried out into the hallway and caught a glimpse, at the end of it, of Melanie McCarthy’s bright blond hair, her bright white knee socks as they disappeared around a corner. She ran to catch up, to follow the class to its next destination.
“No running!” came the reprimand from an unknown voice behind her, and she broke her gait, but felt a sort of panic rising inside her. She did not know where A-Hall was. Furthermore, she felt certain that she would cry if she had to ask anyone for help. She thought of her father, how easily he approached strangers, how little hesitation he had when it came to asking for what he needed. She wondered, for the first time, what he had been like in school. She had never once thought to ask him about it—perhaps because she had no experiences of her own to compare his to—but now she wished she had. Instinctively, she knew that it would be a mistake to talk to anyone.
She tucked her briefcase under her right arm and held it tightly there; it felt less conspicuous that way than it did while swinging in her hand. At last she reached the end of the hallway, and turned right. Thirty feet ahead, the rest of her class marched or skipped or slung arms familiarly about each other in a way that made her understand that they had moved through their entire education as one unit: that they knew each other’s parents, that they had gone to each other’s houses for sleepovers. That they played sports together, in and out of school. That they knew each other’s embarrassments and victories, and that they had come to terms with all of them, had settled comfortably into groups and clusters and strata that it would take Ada years and years to accurately map.
She was the last to arrive in her next class, and in all of her classes for the rest of the day. She gained a new textbook in every class, was instructed by every teacher to cover it in brown paper before the next day. They were bulky, these textbooks; she could fit only one in her briefcase. The rest she carried in the crook of one arm, wishing fruitlessly for the use of her other one.
At lunchtime she walked into the cafeteria and froze: it was then that she realized the extent of the stratification of the Lower School, the broad and awkward age range, from five-year-old kindergarteners to thirteen-year-old eighth-graders, some of whom looked as if they might as well be teachers. And within those ages, the boys and girls divided themselves; and within the two genders, they all seemed somehow divided by levels of attractiveness or confidence. She hovered for a moment and then plunged forward, as if into cold water. Briefly, wildly, she scanned the room and saw the angelic head of Melanie McCarthy, wondered if she should approach her, as the only other student she had formally met. But Melanie was surrounded by other girls sitting shoulder-to-shoulder on both long benches, as close and tight as matchsticks in a box.
Ada found the only empty table she could find, knowing somehow that it was not hers to take, that it belonged to a group that would very likely claim it in a moment. But she had no other options. She sat at the very end of it and took from her briefcase the paper bag that David had handed her that morning, its contents now squashed. After a few moments, the other half of the long table began to fill with boys who looked her age or slightly younger. None of them had been in her morning classes. Seventh-graders, maybe.
“Nice briefcase,” one of them said, with so much force that she imagined everyone in the cafeteria had heard. Ada glanced over quickly but could not determine which boy it had been. The little group bent forward and backward, felled by their own laughter. She was holding her sandwich halfway to her mouth, and she stiffened there, uncertain how to proceed. She felt endlessly observed. She lowered the sandwich and followed it with her eyes. She had never been so directly targeted before—once or twice she’d been shouted at by another child on a walk to or from the store, or while going someplace else in the neighborhood—but on those occasions there was always the possibility of disappearance, of walking quickly in the opposite direction, pretending she hadn’t heard. Here she was a stationary target, a sitting duck. She froze, still as a deer, keeping her eyes down, waiting for the tide of humiliation to wash over her and recede.
“Nice briefcase!” the boy shouted once more, having successfully elicited a laugh from his friends the first time, and Ada saw then that it was a ruddy, freckled boy, quite small for his age. He looked back at her. “Yeah, you!” he said. “I said I like your briefcase. Aren’t you gonna say thanks?”
Later, when she thought it likely that interest in her had faded, she stood up as quickly as she could, tucked her now-hateful briefcase once more under one arm, her textbooks under the other, and asked the only adult she could find where the bathroom was. Then she walked down the hallway, opened the bathroom door, and, upon finding it empty, tucked herself into a stall. She set down her stack of textbooks and her briefcase on the floor. A wave of relief washed over her, to be unseen, hidden inside something small. To be totally alone.
She stayed there for twenty minutes, checking the digital wristwatch that David had given her, waiting for the bell. She looked at her schedule. She would not be late again. Girls came into and out of the bathroom, holding forth on various subjects in rushed, enthusiastic bursts of language that Ada sometimes didn’t understand. She noted their diction with interest, sentence structures she had never heard before, expressions she had only heard in restaurants or on the T. The 1980s marked the dawn of like as a sort of linguistic master key, a shapeless bendable word that fit into the crevices of sente
nces as perfectly as honey. The girls at Queen of Angels poured it over their speech greedily, and Ada mouthed it herself, in her bathroom stall, practicing along with them as she often did with other members of the lab.
At 11:54, when the bathroom was empty, Ada opened her briefcase on her lap. From it she took the pen, the pad of paper, one textbook, and added them to the pile of textbooks she’d made on the floor. Then she tucked the empty briefcase into the nook between the toilet and the wall. She’d leave it there for the rest of the day. Her books didn’t fit into it anyway. She let herself out of the stall and into the hallway once more, carrying her textbooks on her meager hip, and she walked to her next class.
At the end of the day, when she returned to the bathroom nearest the cafeteria, she found that the briefcase was gone. She opened every stall door to make sure. She stood for a while, pondering what to do, wondering how she would explain it to David. In the mirror, she looked unlike herself.
The foyer of the Lower School was crowded with children, all jostling against one another to exit. Outside, she saw in her path a group of older boys from the Upper School—some of them so much older that they seemed to her like men, the whole broad-shouldered bunch. They were standing in a group, some of them leaning against the wall of the school, others standing splay-ankled in the middle of the sidewalk. Groups of boys terrified her beyond all measure; typically, if she saw them ahead of her on any walk, she crossed the street to avoid intersecting with them. But she had turned left out of the school doors, and the street was too busy to cross, and to turn around completely would have made her too visible.
She continued, head down, hoping to pass them unnoticed, when she heard her name.
“Ada,” said one of them—she still had her eyes on the ground, and her instinct, really, was to keep going. But then he said it louder.