The Reinvention of Bessica Lefter

by Kristen Tracy

  “Okay.” I thought about explaining my morning to her, but I didn’t want everybody in nutrition listening. So I tried to pull my backpack out of the aisle, and I shoved it so far underneath my desk that I put my feet on top of it and I felt very cramped. I carefully reached inside my unzipped compartment for a pen. Then the psycho-bully bumped me on the arm and asked if I had another pen. I turned to face him and we locked eyes. And in his pupils I could see little images of my own face. And I looked scared.

  “Here,” I said. I handed him a blue pen.

  “I’m not giving this back,” he said. “I’m keeping it. And I want you to bring me a pen tomorrow too.”

  And then I watched the little images of myself nod, which suggested I was okay with this arrangement.

  “My name is Redge,” he said. “You sent my brother Cola to the principal today. And he didn’t even deserve it. Sometimes Cola does deserve it, but today he didn’t. Now me and Cola and Beacher are going to punish you.”

  I blinked.

  “You’re a rat,” Redge said.

  “I am not,” I said, because even though I was scared and uncomfortable with where things were headed with Redge, I thought I should defend myself.

  Redge smirked at me.

  “No talking while I’m talking,” Mrs. Mounds said. Then she walked to the top of my row. “What’s your name in the back?”

  I looked behind me, but it was just the wall.

  “With the backpack,” she added.

  Oh no. “Bessica,” I said.

  She looked down at her roll book. “Bessica Lefter?” she asked.

  I nodded.

  Then she turned around and walked to the wipe board and wrote down my name. My name. And she didn’t even use pink marker. She used brown. Then she wrote Redge Marzo’s name on the board.

  “If you get a check next to your name, you lose ten points,” Mrs. Mounds said.

  “From what?” I asked.

  “Your first assignment,” she said.

  And I felt my eyes get warm and my throat get lumpy. Because I didn’t like what I was hearing. I’d started my first class in middle school in the hole, down a pen, stuck in the corner next to a psycho-bully.

  I reached down and touched my pink bracelet over and over. I tried to be optimistic. Middle school can only improve, I told myself. You’ll meet nice people in your next class. You’ll bump into a ton of cool people by lunch. You’ll probably end up in a fascinating lunch group. You’ll probably even like PE.

  But I was wrong about that.

  iddle school did not get any better. That first day was pretty terrible. Mrs. Mounds spent a bunch of time discussing what was in food, gram by gram.

  “A grapefruit has sixteen grams of sugar and four grams of dietary fiber.

  “An order of medium French fries from McDonald’s has nineteen grams of fat.”

  I wrote down as much of this as I could in my notebook. And when the bell rang, I hurried to my locker to dump off my backpack. But my combination was very hard to remember. I tried once. Twice. Three times. Yank. Yank. Yank. My locker really enjoyed being locked. I looked at the clock on the wall. A flood of people zoomed past me. Then I decided to forget about my locker and take my hazardous backpack and head straight to English. I wanted a seat near the front.

  Mr. Val welcomed us by playing some sort of ancient music that had a flute in it. He greeted us at the door and made little bows when we walked past him. He said he was trying to establish a mood. And I liked that idea, even though I didn’t like the ancient flute music. Happily, he didn’t say anything about my backpack. And so I picked out a seat near the front and stuffed it underneath me. Sort of.

  Mr. Val was the tallest teacher I’d had in my life. He looked younger than my parents. I didn’t know what to expect from a tall, young, flute-loving teacher, but I soon learned. He was all about work. As he took roll, he made us come to the front of the class and get our assigned textbooks.

  “You’ll need to put a cover on them by Friday. We don’t want to end a book’s life prematurely,” he said as the first boy, Toby Alda, collected his book. I got my book somewhere in the middle of everybody and sat down and flipped through it. There were assignments at the end of every unit. Bleh.

  “Let’s read the preface together,” Mr. Val said. He half sat on his desk and started reading. “ ‘The essentials of English grammar can be broken down into thirty-six categories.’ ”

  And this really cut into my ability to be social or make friends, because after the preface, Mr. Val immediately started to “refresh our memories” about language. Which required a lot of writing and rule-remembering about parts of speech, which I couldn’t remember all that well. Because that wasn’t the sort of thing that Sylvie and I talked about over the summer. Also, he announced that we would have something called permanent homework. Which meant that he would hand us a poem to take home every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and that we had to read it at home four times in our heads and one time out loud and then write a response paragraph. I’d never had to write one of those before.

  “You will be responding to poems written by some of the best poets of yesterday and today,” he said. “Wordsworth! Keats! Bishop! Millay! Frost!” He sounded so excited. But I wasn’t. Because permanent homework felt like a drag. And instead of making friends and solidifying a lunch group, I had to remember what nouns were. And verbs. And Mr. Val also expected us to remember modifiers, prepositions, and articles (of both the definite and indefinite variety). It was impossible. And he never turned off the flute music.

  By the time I left English and walked to math, I felt so fuzzy, I had a hard time concentrating or finding my classroom. And once I got there, I had a tough time staying awake. I was so sleepy that I didn’t even pick out my seat strategically. I just sat in an empty desk in the middle of the class. Luckily, I ended up next to a girl who had a pretty good smile. Also, she had dimples, and I liked those on people. But I never actually talked to her, and the whole class was very forgettable. It was just numbers and problems. When the bell rang and I left, I couldn’t even remember what my math teacher looked like. He may have been wearing a hat.

  There I was. It was time for lunch. Everybody streamed down the hallway in the direction of the cafeteria. I didn’t have a group of friends or a single friend or a random acquaintance to partner up with. It was the biggest bummer ever. When this happens, it’s pretty obvious to everyone, even yourself, that you are alone and don’t have anybody.

  I walked toward my locker and thought about the odor girl from the library. And then it was like I could predict the future, because after I thought of her, she walked right past me with a group of friends. But I didn’t notice an odor. She smiled at me, but I didn’t want to eat with the odor girl and her friends, so I kept walking toward my locker and hoping that a miracle would happen. And then a miracle did happen, because somebody from my tap-dance clinic recognized me.

  “Bessica Lefter!” she said. She was short and blond and had big ears and a round face.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “I’m me! Annabelle Deeter!” And she hurried up to me and started asking me all these questions about what I’d done since tap dance. I didn’t know how to answer them. Because I barely remembered tap dance. Sylvie and I mostly talked about my gorgeous neighbor Noll Beck in there. Also, we tapped a lot.

  “Is Sylvie here?” Annabelle gushed. “She had the best buffalo pullback.”

  I stared at Annabelle and decided to ignore some of what she was asking. Because I didn’t remember Sylvie ever doing anything buffalo-like ever. “Sylvie went to South.” And then even though I didn’t really know Annabelle, I wanted Annabelle to invite me to lunch with her.

  “We’re headed to the cafeteria!” Annabelle said. She looked so excited. Sort of manic. And I didn’t know why. Then she waved to a group of girls. “Do you want to sit with us?”

  And I was so grateful, I accepted right away.

  “Yes,” I said.
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  “Do you want to put your backpack away first? We’ll wait,” Annabelle said.

  But I worried that I wouldn’t be able to get my locker open. And I worried that if I took too long, these people might leave me. So I declined.

  “I’ll bring it,” I said.

  We walked in one big clump to the cafeteria.

  “Bessica was in my tap clinic. So was her friend, Sylvie. She was the best tapper in the class,” Annabelle told her friends while we walked.

  This surprised me. Because I hadn’t realized that Sylvie had been the best tapper. It had been her first class. But after Annabelle brought this up, it was like I couldn’t get Sylvie out of my mind. Tap. Tap. Tap. Her favorite step was the crisscross cramp roll. Step. Dig. Heel. Toe. Step. Dig. Heel. Toe. Sometimes, when I was bored, she’d even do that move for me in my kitchen. I followed Annabelle.

  “That is so sad that you two got separated,” Annabelle said. She made a big frowning face.

  “Yeah,” I said. I really hoped she’d stop talking about Sylvie. Because it was making me miss her. A lot.

  All the other girls chatted about their classes. Unlike Sylvie and me, who just had each other, these girls seemed to be in a big network of best friends. And instead of wanting to join their network, I found myself really wanting Sylvie. I wondered what would happen if I called her from school. She was probably at home. In fact, she was probably thinking about me!

  I was superbummed that my phone was sitting at home on the mail-sorting table, where I couldn’t use it. I looked around at the happy chatting girls. I needed to call Sylvie immediately. But I also needed to establish my lunch group. And as I was trying to figure out a way to do both, I got stopped at the door. Mrs. Hackett, the teacher from this morning, was standing guard, and she said, “Backpacks aren’t allowed in the cafeteria.”

  Annabelle turned and looked at me.

  “Come on,” her friends said.

  “We’ll be right over there,” she said. I glanced at the table where she was pointing. Then I glanced at the menu posted next to the door. They were serving Crispitos. And then Annabelle and her friends walked away and left me at the door.

  I didn’t know exactly what to do, so I took my violating backpack and walked as fast as I could down the hall. I figured I’d try my locker one more time. And then come back.

  When I got to my locker, I spotted something I hadn’t noticed before. On the locker next to mine there were stickers that spelled D-A-V-I-S. And I thought that was a smart idea, because I bet Davis had an easy time finding his locker because his name was stuck right on it. I didn’t know if this made Davis a dweeb, a dork, or a normal person.

  I kneeled down in front of my locker and turned it exactly toward the numbers. Yank. Yank. Yank. It opened! And as I was stuffing my backpack inside, I heard a slamming sound. I turned around and watched in horror as a group of boys lifted another boy off the ground and dumped him into a tall metal can. Once he was in there, I watched all the stuffer boys walk away. I couldn’t stop staring. Then I realized that the kid in the trash can was Blake! And I felt horrible for him. Because in addition to his parents getting divorced, he was now stuck inside a garbage container.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  But he didn’t answer me.

  “Do you need help?” I asked. “Should I get a teacher? Or the nurse?”

  But Blake rolled onto his side and tipped the trash can over so he could get out. And he never said anything. He picked up his books and walked away. And then I shut my locker. And I made sure it was locked. And then I hurried down the hallway to find Annabelle and her friends. When I got to the lunchroom again, I looked inside.

  The voices bounced off the walls and floors. I glanced across the whole room. Face. Face. Face. Body. Body. Body. Tray. Tray. Tray. Table after table looked full. I couldn’t see Annabelle. Was she still in line? I worried that if I didn’t find a group right now, I would never be able to find one. And I worried this would make me look like a loser. But wandering around alone in the cafeteria would make me look like a loser too. It felt like all my options were loser choices. I looked and looked and looked. Then I caught Redge the psycho-bully glaring at me from his table, so I left.

  I figured I would find a vending machine and eat, and then go track down my geography classroom and try to secure my lunch group tomorrow. I found a vending machine that offered a variety of corn chips and cookies. They looked good. I pulled some quarters out of my pocket and fed them into the machine. That was when I realized who I was surrounded by. This place was crawling with the alt crowd. I thought about leaving. But I needed to eat something and I really wanted cookies. It bummed me out to think that I was eating in the area where people who didn’t want friends ate. Because I did want friends. I just wasn’t sure how to make them.

  I pressed the buttons for the cookies and waited for them to drop. I hadn’t planned on buying a lunch that contained zero nutrition. But I did. I reached into the machine’s tray and took my cookies, and instead of going to the cafeteria and figuring out how to make friends, I walked to the row beside the stairs where some of the alt crowd ate. And I stood at the ledge. All by myself. And opened my cookies. And I ate them too.

  I didn’t talk to the alt crowd. That was part of what made them alts. They didn’t talk to each other. And as I ate my cookies, I didn’t try to fool myself into thinking my day was going to get better. I ate my cookies and tried to convince myself that I wasn’t going to die.

  And in my after-lunch class, geography, we weren’t studying beaches like I’d hoped, because Mr. Hoser, my geography teacher, was obsessed with polar regions. He wore a tie with a picture of a glacier on it and promised us a virtual field trip to Antarctica, brought to us by NASA TV. And while some kids clapped, I did not find this to be a thrilling concept. Public speaking was pretty awful too. Mrs. Moppett kicked off class by telling everybody that our major assignment of the semester would be to give a speech in front of the whole class on an assigned topic about politics. And the psycho-bully Redge Marzo was in there with me again. And the only good thing I can say about that particular psycho-bully was that he managed to hang on to the pen I gave him in nutrition, so I didn’t have to give him two pens a day.

  And my last class of the day, PE, which I knew was going to be puke-bad, was just as terrible as I had feared. My PE teacher, Ms. Penrod, took her job very seriously. Ms. Penrod used to be an Olympian. She’d thrown a shot put in the games in Korea, but she hadn’t won any medals. And I could tell right away that she was still bummed out about it. And would most likely punish us for an entire semester. Also, the PE dress code required us to wear school colors. Which meant I was going to have to track down a pair of either purple or gold pants.

  When the last bell finally rang and I went out to catch the bus, I was so tired that I thought I was going to fall asleep and miss my stop. But that didn’t happen. Because I sat near the front and watched closely out the window for my house. When I saw it, I jumped up. I think I frightened the person next to me, but I didn’t really care. I hurried off the bus and ran inside and felt relieved that my first day of middle school was over.

  wasn’t expecting my mom to be home. She always worked at the podiatrist’s office until three o’clock. But she was home! As soon as I walked through the door, she started taking pictures of me.

  “We didn’t get a shot of you this morning,” she said. I put my hands up and blocked my face. I was not in the mood for picture taking.

  “Can’t we do this tomorrow morning?” I asked. “When my pixie is fresh?” I pulled my hands down and she clicked another picture.

  “Okay. Are you hungry?”

  I nodded and slipped off my backpack and went to the kitchen, where I found my favorite sandwich already made. Turkey and pickles on sourdough.

  “This one looks great,” my mom said, showing me her camera.

  I glanced at the screen. Inside the small square I looked very tired and surprised, and my pixie lo
oked totally flat.

  “That’s the first time I’ve seen what my hair looks like in a picture,” I said. “It’s short. I mean, I got totally snipped!”

  My mother nodded. “Luckily, it’s cute.” She took her camera back. “How was your day?”

  And I thought about crying and telling her that it was a bummer, but I was starving. So I just grabbed my sandwich and started eating.

  “Tell me about your classes!” my mom said.

  But I didn’t feel like reliving my day at all. I felt like forgetting it.

  “Okay,” my mom said. “Eat first and we can talk about it later.”

  I nodded.

  “Your grandma sent you a postcard from South Dakota!” my mom said as she poured me a second glass of milk.

  I swallowed. “Why is Grandma writing me from South Dakota? I thought she was going to Minnesota.” And I thought maybe I could convince my mom that Willy really was a maniac welder and that he’d kidnapped Grandma and we had to get her back.

  “Their route takes them through South Dakota,” my mother said. “She’s having the time of her life. It almost makes me want to rent a motor home for the summer.”

  I drank my milk and stared at her. I thought that sounded awful. “Motor homes are dangerous and they pollute the air.”

  My mom dusted some bread crumbs off the table.

  “Your first day without Sylvie had to have been tough,” she said.

  I drank more of my milk and didn’t say anything. Just because I hated motor homes didn’t mean I was missing Sylvie. Which I was. “I’ve got homework.”

  “Do you need any help?”

  I shook my head. “I need solitude. And pencils. And my backpack.”

  As I got all my stuff together, I considered telling my mom about the psycho-bullies and my difficult locker and all the other bummer things about my day. But she looked so tired. And she’d tried so hard to make me feel better. She’d even gotten off work early just to be here when I got home. I couldn’t ruin her day just because mine had been terrible.