The Queen Bee of Bridgeton

by DuBois, Leslie

  "Did you know Nikki?" Will asked me as we filed out of Dardem Hall. I shook my head. "Then why are you crying?" He handed me a tissue.

  "Am I crying?" I snatched it out of his hand to clean my face before anyone else saw. "I didn't realize." I felt the need to explain, but I had a hard time finding the right words to express that I was a blubbering idiot who cried at everything. So, I said, "I'm a blubbering idiot," in a resigned matter of fact tone. I couldn't come up with any clever or sophisticated explanation, so I just told the bare honest truth. "I know it's stupid. I'm stupid. I just…I'm just…sensitive I guess."

  Will smiled and said, "You're not stupid…" He leaned forward, put his lips to my ear and whispered, "You're special." Then he walked away.

  ***

  The next day before school, I wandered the halls aimlessly thinking of Will. Well, that's not completely true. I did have an aim. I kinda hoped to run into him. In four days, Will had already called me unique, beautiful, talented, kind, weird, not stupid, and special. All David ever called me was Sasha.

  Unfortunately, instead of running into Will, I ran into a cow. Yes, a cow. No, I wasn't on a field trip visiting farmers or dells. I was on the third floor of the McIntyre building on the Bridgeton campus and I walked into a cow. A cow! Actually, right before impact, I slipped on something wet, which I will pretend was not cow urine, then I lunged forward and planted my face squarely into the side of the massive foul smelling beast.

  I sat on the floor for a second with my hand resting in the wet substance, which, once again, I will assume was not urine even though it felt warm, trying to figure out whether I really just crashed into a cow or whether I had slipped into a really elaborate dream. Before I could decide, Colbert Thornton approached me and frantically inquired, "Where's Sasha?" I really didn't know how to respond to that. For one thing, I didn't know. For another thing, I just had a very physical confrontation with a cow and the cow had won. I was trying to recover while wiping off the liquid that was beginning to smell more and more like urine. How could she be so concerned with my sister's whereabouts when there was a cow standing in the middle of the hallway? A cow!

  "You mean that's not Sasha?" the scrawny brunette standing next to Colbert said. I didn't know who she was. I barely knew any of the students at Bridgeton. I only knew Colbert because she was Sasha's vice-president on student council. Last year, when they were running for office, they were constantly together planning their campaign. They had professional banners and buttons made, they handed out flyers describing their platform, they even used Colbert's house as a campaign office and made phone calls to other students in order to insure their vote. Talk about overkill.

  All of their efforts weren't needed, however, because Blake Armstrong withdrew two weeks before the election and Leila Baker transferred to another school three days before. Sasha and Colbert won by default.

  "Susannah, would Sasha walk into a cow?" Colbert asked as if my awkwardness should have been proof enough I could not possibly be Sasha.

  Well, at least I knew I wasn't the only one that saw the cow.

  “Sorry, black people look the same to me,” Susannah said with a shrug.

  I chose to ignore that comment and focus on the “elephant in the room.” Well, I guess, literally, it was a cow in the room. I was too confused to ask a logical question. So, in the eloquent and articulate manner only I could accomplish I grunted, "Cow," while pointing at it like a three-year-old.

  "Yeah, I can see that." Colbert rolled her eyes and tucked her blond bob behind her ears. She had just gotten it cut and now looked like that little French cartoon character. What was her name? Amanda, Emily, Elise, Eloise? Suddenly, I wasn't thinking of the cow anymore as I tried to figure out the name of the little French cartoon girl. Madeline? No, that was the other one. Eloise, definitely Eloise. Or maybe I confused the two. Let's see, one was from France and one was from New York.

  "Do you know where your sister is or not? It's important," Colbert nearly yelled. Her voice brought me out of my thoughts of cartoon characters and back to the reality that I practically sat under a cow in a urine-like substance I refused to believe was urine.

  I looked at the cow then at Colbert then back at the cow and for the life of me, I couldn't figure out why they didn't care a cow was in the middle of the hallway. And why was the cow named Heather according to the sign around its neck?

  Colbert and company soon tired of my dumbfounded staring and stormed off leaving me alone with Heather the cow.

  "It's the Fat Tuesday Cow," Sasha explained when I caught her outside of her first period class.

  "What?" I assumed she meant Fat Tuesday as in Mardi Gras, but I still didn't understand what that had to do with a cow.

  "Every year, on Fat Tuesday, someone steals a cow from Mr. Dunn's farm, walks it up to the top floor of one of the buildings and names it after a freshman. You missed it last year. You were on an audition."

  "Why would anyone do that?"

  "It's a tradition. It takes forever to get the cow out of the building since it won't fit in the elevator and apparently cows are afraid to go down stairs."

  "But why do they name it after a freshman?" I asked as the warning bell sounded. Sasha looked at the clock. I knew she worried about me being late to class. Again.

  "Well, it's always a freshman who needs a little more…exercise than most."

  "You mean they're calling some poor girl a fat cow? That's awful. They could scar her for life." I felt a hard lump develop in the back of my throat. Tears threatened to follow soon. As a dancer, I knew how some girls struggled with body image. Just last year, Grace Younger, a girl from my studio, was hospitalized for anorexia and had to miss the spring recital. "Sasha, this is terrible. Who would do something like this?"

  "The Bitch Brigade," she said in her 'duh' voice as if I was an idiot for not knowing.

  "Bitch Brigade? You mean they're real?" I'd heard stories about them, but I always thought they were fabrications or exaggerations. To me, the Bitch Brigade was Bridgeton's equivalent of the boogieman.

  Sasha rolled her eyes. "Yes, they're real. They're a stupid group of girls who think they own the school. I'll tell you about them later. Right now, you need to get to class."

  "I can't go to class. What if Heather sees that cow? Sasha, we have to do something."

  "I can't, sweetie. Class is about to start." Sasha may have needed her perfect attendance record, but I really didn't care about mine. What was one more tardy amongst the twenty-seven I had already accumulated this year? She must have read my mind as she looked at the clock and said, "If you're gonna to be late anyway, put on the extra uniform I have in my locker. You smell like urine."

  I wished I knew who this Bitch Brigade was so I could replace Heather's name with theirs. But since I didn't know, I had to be satisfied with just taking off Heather's sign and hoping she hadn't seen it or heard about it yet.

  Unfortunately, it wasn't as simple as just whipping off the sign. The pranksters probably anticipated someone trying that and the sign was securely attached around the cow's neck with a wire nearly choking it. It bordered on animal cruelty.

  No matter how I pulled and tugged, it didn't come off. I needed a wire cutter. But where in the world would I find a wire cutter in the middle of first period on the third floor of the McIntyre building?

  I took my blazer off and tied it around the cow's neck covering the name. Then I decided to somehow get the cow out of the building. I remembered Sasha saying that cows were afraid to go down stairs, so I thought if I led the cow down backwards, it wouldn't know it was going down stairs. Amazingly, it worked. It was slow going and awkward, but I definitely got the cow to cooperate. I had to move the back legs down one step then run around to the front of the cow and put the front legs down and repeat one step at a time.

  The bell rang signaling the end of first period. Everyone stared at me and the cow laughing as they passed me on the stairwell. Humiliating, yes, but I didn't care. I just didn't
want Heather to feel like a cow for the rest of her life.

  I continued to coax the cow down the stairs with tears in my eyes when I heard someone say, "Can I help?" Will had his blazer off and his sleeves rolled up ready to jump in and work. I nodded.

  "So, you're pretty good at this," I said after we'd been working in silence for a few minutes. "Have any aspirations to be a professional cow mover?"

  Will smiled. "It's definitely a close second on my list of dream jobs."

  "What's number one?"

  "Well, I'd love to get drafted to the NBA. But given that I'm only six foot and white, I don't think that's gonna happen any time soon. So, I think I might try to sign with a European team and develop my game oversees for a while."

  "Europe? I love Europe. I went to a dance camp in Spain one summer. I'm hoping to go there next year too."

  "Really? Maybe we'll see each other there."

  "Maybe."

  Forty minutes into second period, we had the cow out of the building.

  "Thanks," I said to him while we stood in the parking lot exhausted.

  "No problem. I hate the Fat Tuesday prank. It's cruel. It was sweet of you to try to help." Will's eyes sparkled causing me to blush and fluster.

  "You should be in class," Headmaster Collins barked, stepping up behind us.

  "I know…I'm sorry…I just…I couldn't…it's a cow," I stuttered.

  "It's the Fat Tuesday prank, sir," Will explained. "We were just trying to keep this year's victim from getting hurt." Headmaster Collins stared at us for a moment with a sour expression. I thought we were in such trouble.

  "You should still be in class."

  I dropped my head and sheepishly walked back toward the building with Will just a step behind.

  "Ms. Garrison, Mr. Maddox," he called after us. "Tell your teachers I said your tardies are excused."

  Chapter 9:

  A Warning

  We don't know who you think you are. But anyone who lives in this hell hole isn't worthy of Bridgeton. Do what we say or you're gonna pay. - The Bitch Brigade

  I read the note over and over again. When I closed my eyes to blink away the tears of frustration and anger, I still saw the words as if they were engraved inside my eyelids. No matter what I did, or how hard I worked I'd still be the unworthy, poor black girl from Venton Heights. I snatched the note off of the door and stuffed it into my dance bag before entering my apartment.

  "What's wrong?" my mother asked as she stirred a pot of what smelled like spaghetti sauce.

  "Nothing. I'm fine." I dried my eyes on my sleeve and swallowed my emotion. I didn't want to worry my mother. I sat down at the kitchen table hoping to spend a few minutes talking to her. I barely saw her anymore. When Sasha and I were little and we lived in the little white house with the red shutters, we all used to be so close. My mom only worked during the day and she would always be home in time to pick us up from school and take us to the library or to a museum. So even if I'd had a bad day at school, I could always look forward to being home. I was always part of something. I belonged to a family.

  "Well, I made some spaghetti for you and Sasha. I gotta get to work." My mother put the lid on the spaghetti sauce and whipped off her apron revealing her nurse's uniform.

  "Mom, do you ever feel like you just don't belong?"

  "Oh, Baby girl, are you getting picked on at school again?" She looked at her watch. "I really gotta get out of here. My shift starts at seven and I still have to catch a bus across town. Just tell Sasha who's bothering you. I'm sure she'll take care of it."

  My mother grabbed her purse and kissed me on the cheek before dashing out of the door leaving me alone.

  I went to my room and turned on Mozart's symphony number 25 in G minor in order to drown out the ghetto symphony of gunshots and sirens. I strapped on my pointe shoes and practiced my échappés and bourees to Mozart's stirring string composition while trying to stamp out thoughts of the Bitch Brigade. Dance was my way out. Ten years from now, when I'm dancing for the Russian Ballet, I'm not even going to remember those bitches. What did it matter what they thought of me?

  I felt my courage rise along with the crescendo of the music. Who cared about them? The fact that I lived in this hell-hole and I went to bed to the sound of gun shots and police sirens actually made me stronger in some sense. If I could grow up in this place and not end up dead or pregnant by sixteen, I think I could handle a little second grade-like threat from a couple of blond bimbos. I grabbed the note out of my bag, crumpled it up, and tossed it into the trash.

  Already feeling a bit relieved, I sat down to watch a video of Natalia Karleskaya with the Russian Ballet. As I watched, however, my mind kept wandering back to the note. I had been invisible at Bridgeton for two years. Most people didn't even know my name. So why did I suddenly become a target? It must have been because of Will. That was the only explanation.

  And what exactly would they do to me? Name a cow after me? Big deal. Revealing where I lived would be embarrassing, but I'd get over it. It would actually affect Sasha more than me. So I had nothing to fear, right? But for some reason, a sickening sense of dread plopped in my stomach and grew at an alarming pace.

  My thoughts drifted to that girl in the stairwell. What if that was the result of a Bitch Brigade threat? And what about the sudden rash of honor trials? What if the Bitch Brigade had somehow caused those too? Something told me these bitches were responsible for much worse things than Fat Tuesday cows. It was about time I figured out what these girls were really up to.

  I didn't know exactly where to start my little investigation. Since I didn't have any friends at school, I didn't really feel comfortable walking up to a virtual stranger and asking if they knew any bitches. I guess I could have asked Will, but our…relationship, if I could call it that, was still pretty new. That would've been a pretty bizarre question.

  That left Sasha.

  "How much do you know about this Bitch Brigade?" I asked her while we ate lunch at our tree on the West Lawn.

  "Why do you want to know?" She didn't even look up from her planner.

  "Well, the cow incident was pretty mean and I'm starting to think they had something to do with a naked girl I found in a stairwell."

  Sasha's head snapped up. "What?"

  "That didn't come out right." I briefly explained what I knew about Emmaline Graham. When I finished, she returned her attention to her day planner. How could she seem so unconcerned? "Plus, I found a note from them on our apartment door."

  She looked up again. "In Venton Heights?"

  "Do we have another apartment?"

  Sasha slammed her planner shut. "I have to go."

  "But you said you would tell me about them. I feel I should know the people threatening me. I need to know what I'm up against."

  "I'll take care of it. Don't worry about it. But you should really stop asking questions, especially about Emmaline." Sasha crammed her barely touched food into a trash bag.

  "So it was them, huh?"

  Sasha didn't respond, but I could tell by the way she bit her bottom lip that I was right.

  "And you know who they are, don't you? How can you let them get away with this?" I asked.

  "Sonya, it's a little more complicated than that. Trust me, you just need to stay out of it. For your own good, no, for our own good, just stay out of it.

  Chapter 10:

  Cherry Picker

  I tried to take Sasha's advice and ignore the possible danger of the Bitch Brigade. I knew Sasha could handle the situation. She'd take care of them the same way she did LaPorscha. I had nothing to worry about. So why was I still so worried?

  The only thing that got my mind off the Bitch Brigade was spending time with Will. And we spent a lot of time together. Most mornings Will would meet me at the studio with flowers and a bagel and then help me clean. Some mornings, though, he was mysteriously absent. On those days, he'd meet me outside of my chemistry class with a single white flower. Then he'd apologize for be
ing late, saying he'd had to press snooze three times. Then after school he'd meet me at the dance studio after basketball practice so we could have dinner together. And if he was late to that, he'd say it was because he had to shower three times. Hmph. I wonder if those were just excuses. Maybe he had another girl on the side.

  Anyway, when he wasn't mysteriously missing or being weirdly obsessed with the number three Will was really fun to hang out with and I knew he felt the same about me. In fact, he had even started calling me Sony, saying I was more entertaining than his Sony Playstation. I looked forward to spending time with him even though it counteracted my desire for invisibility. People noticed me when I was with Will and that was not a good thing.

  "So, has he drilled you with his power tool yet?" a girl said to me in a low threatening voice as I loaded my books into my locker one morning. I was so tired from cleaning the studio that at first I couldn't register who the girl was. Then it struck me. Ashley Carter, a pretty blonde senior. I only knew her name because she often helped Lauren DeHaven with her numerous charitable events.