Weightless

by Sarah Bannan

  The Alabama State Aptitude test will be administered in October and teachers are preparing students for the test, which has implications in relation to funding levels for 2010/11. Results from the 2009 test were above average and the PTA thanked Principal Overton and his team for their hard work in this area.

  The introduction of a cell-phone discipline policy has been proposed and copies of the policy were circulated to those in attendance (and are available on the PTA intranet). Bonnie Moore objected to several points within the policy and it was AGREED that further comments/amendments should be forwarded to Bonnie, who will give a formal response from the PTA to the policy. It was AGREED that the policy would be put on hold until such submissions were made and considered.

  The refurbishment work in the gym and to the exterior of the buildings is now complete, and parents acknowledged the improved appearance of the school. The proposal to build an extension to the Math building is still under consideration by the Superintendent, but it is understood that a response will be made shortly. In the interim, the trailers adjacent to the Math building will be used to deal with the overflow of students/classrooms. General dissatisfaction was noted in relation to this and it was agreed that a complaint would be lodged with the Superintendent regarding the acceptance of new students to Adams.

  The next meeting will take place on the last Thursday of October (28 October) at 7.30 p.m.

  Those present extended their thanks to the Davies family, the rest of the committee and the school faculty for their work thus far this year.

  The meeting ended at 9 p.m., followed by cake (provided by Tammy Davies) and other refreshments (provided by faculty).

  OCTOBER

  Chapter 7

  Our town doesn’t change much in the seasons – the trees are green and leafy until November, December sometimes. In the old part of town – that’s Southwest, where we live, where we go to school – huge oaks line Fifth Avenue.

  The fall in Alabama – when it arrives in October – means jeans and long sleeves and corduroy jackets. It means no more flip-flops and it means lots of layers. It means football games and cheerleading and standing around afterwards in the Hardee’s parking lot.

  Our town is old and our town is new. Southwest and Southeast. Adams High School and Lincoln High. Fifth Avenue curves through the old part of town: the Regal Theater, the Old Courthouse, Anne’s Antiques, Jimmy Kelly’s Jewelers, and dozens of storefronts, empty, abandoned. You can just make out the old creepy clown on the signage for Merrymakers, and a silver balloon is still floating around inside, a full year after the Closing Down sale. Puffs Ice Cream Parlor looks creepy too, we say to each other: a giant yellow ice-cream cone outside the front door, now covered with moss and mildew and mud from the street. We heard somebody might turn it into a frozen yogurt place, or maybe it was gelato or something weird like that. Puffs was never good, we said to each other. But it had been there forever.

  The oaks are everywhere in the old part of town, and once you veer off Fifth Avenue, going further west, you meet sub­division after subdivision of houses. Brick and plaster and wood. Red and yellow and white. If you keep going, you meet farmland, red clay that sticks to our feet and gets tracked onto the cream carpets in our remodeled living rooms.

  Maybe you go east, though. That’s where Carolyn lived. Take Fifth Avenue east, then take a sharp turn at the lights opposite the Dollar Movie Theater: you hit the Stripline. We go to the Stripline for Walmart and Lowe’s and Winn-Dixie and Sam’s. Two lanes on either side, parking lots and retail as far as you can see. They have the Crown Movie Theater – twenty screens – and the country club and a middle school identical to the one in Southwest. Identical. Keep going east and you reach farmland, once again. Southeast is where the new people move, it’s where the new houses are. There are no oaks in Southeast – it’s all pine. The houses in Southeast are newer, bigger. Uglier too, our parents say. Lincoln is overcrowded – they have trailers for most of their classes now, and they’re sending new students to Adams. Our PTA lodged a complaint, but the school board overruled it.

  We’re white in Southwest, mostly. The black people that live in Southwest are doctors and lawyers and teachers. In Southeast, they could be anything. We don’t see many black kids at Adams, but we see them when we go to the Stripline, or when we go to football games, or when we travel across the county line to buy alcohol.

  Adamsville is dry. No liquor stores and no fancy restaur­ants. Fast food’s the thing we have, and we have a lot of it. There’s a Taco Bell in Southwest, one in Southeast. The same goes for Sonic, Whataburger, Burger King, McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Chick-fil-A, Dairy Queen, Pizza Hut, Domino’s. Two sit-down restaurants – one in Southwest and one in Southeast. Blue Bistro – in Southwest – is better, of course. We make reservations early to make sure we get tables for Homecoming.

  Homecoming comes around in November. That month, we build a float and get ready to watch a parade and attend a football game. We go to a party at some senior’s house. But, mostly, we make an official Hot List, one that’s older than the blog. We announce the names of the prettiest and most popular girls in school. We select the Homecoming Court.

  We had already predicted the four who’d be on the list from our year: Brooke Moore and Gemma Davies, of course, and probably Taylor Lyon and Tiffany Port. And maybe, if she could inch out one of the others, Carolyn Lessing. You weren’t allowed to campaign for these things, and the criteria were pretty vague: “the girls who best represent your class and the values you represent.” The year before, some senior girl – Heather Hunt, a non-cheerleader – had been voted on, but then we heard she had gotten pregnant and miscarried over the summer, and people said if they’d known that, they never would have voted for her in the first place. “Just ’cause she got lucky and miscarried doesn’t mean she should still get to do it,” Taylor Lyon told our first period. “And just ’cause I love 16 and Pregnant doesn’t mean I want it on the Homecoming Court.” She’d laughed then, and everybody else did too.

  Some senior girls put together a petition to get Heather off the Court – it did the rounds on Facebook. And then Mr Overton had brought her into his office, and when she left she was in tears. An announcement went out over the loudspeaker later that day to say that Heather Hunt was being replaced by Kerry Karle, there’d been some kind of miscount. Heather finished the rest of the year from home. People thought she got pregnant again. That’s why she left.

  The day before the nominations, Lauren Brink watched Brooke push her shoulder into Carolyn in the hall, in between first and second period. She said that Brooke pushed her so hard that Carolyn’s books and binders and purse and every­thing fell to the ground, her papers going everywhere, getting in everyone’s way.

  People walked over Carolyn and around Brooke and they rubbernecked a little bit, but mostly people kept on walking. Lauren stood by her locker and watched and listened. She told us what she heard. What she saw.

  Brooke stood over Carolyn as she tried to pick everything up. Tiffany and Taylor came running down the hall – Lauren said it was pathetic, like Carolyn had called 911 or something – and got down on their knees to help.

  Lauren said that Brooke was practically yelling, acting all dramatic, trying to get everybody to stop and look. “Oh, NO. I’m SO SORRY.” And then in a whisper, “I told you to watch OUT.”

  Carolyn, still on the floor, lifted herself up. “What did you say?”

  “I said, you should be more careful.” Brooke was smiling, but in a mean way, a sarcastic way, her eyes like slits, her lips pressed together, her head tilted to the side. She had practiced this in front of the mirror, probably, to get it just right.

  Tiffany and Taylor had moved to the sides, still gathering up loose-leaf paper. Carolyn stood close to Brooke. “Why are you so mean to me?”

  “Maybe I just don’t want to catch anything from you.”

  Lauren said Mrs Matthew was moving slowly down the hall, her eyebrows raised, like she was comi
ng to intervene or to observe or maybe she was just going for a walk. Whatever. Mr Ferris came from the other end of the hall, squinting, like he was confused.

  Carolyn’s eyes went wide, and then Lauren said they started to tear up. “Catch something?”

  Brooke looked at Taylor and Tiffany and then back at Carolyn. “Everybody knows you have herpes.” Brooke said this in a whisper, and then she knocked a three-ring binder out of Carolyn’s hand.

  “What’s going on?” Mrs Matthew’s face was full of concern.

  Lauren said Carolyn started to say something – maybe to tell, maybe to pretend nothing had happened – and then Mr Ferris came from the other end. “What happened, Carolyn? Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” she said, quietly, looking at Brooke while she said it.

  Brooke looked mad, and then she spoke to Mrs Matthew. “I was just inviting Carolyn to join our prayer group.”

  Mrs Matthew brightened. “Oh, that’s super, Brooke. Just super.” And she put her hand on Brooke’s back.

  “Yeah, I was just saying that Carolyn would really benefit from prayer group.” Brooke didn’t look away from Carolyn as she spoke.

  “Is that right? Carolyn, is that right?” Mr Ferris looked annoyed, Lauren said.

  “Yes,” Carolyn said, quickly. Tiffany and Taylor nodded.

  “All right then.” Mr Ferris looked around at everyone, then at his watch. “The bell is about to ring. Y’all better get to your classes.”

  Lauren said that Brooke walked with Mrs Matthew down the hall, sucking up, pretending like she was all nice, all friendly, and that Carolyn stood close to Mr Ferris, until the bell rang and he turned and walked back down the hall.

  Chapter 8

  By now, our days, our weeks, they had established a rhythm. We drove and then sat and then listened and then talked. We ate our lunch and did our homework. We walked the halls and crossed the greens. We sat at our tables and we walked the same way, day in, day out. We said hey to the same people, we ignored the same people, we did everything the same. We complained that life was boring, that everything could be predicted, that things in Adamsville were lame. Looking back, we wouldn’t necessarily agree with that. It was nice to know what was coming next.

  The day we selected the Homecoming Court was different, something to look forward to. No matter how ridiculous, you couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like to hear your own name called out, for someone to pick you. The teachers asked for the nominations in first period and we raised our hands and waited our turns and then called out a name and waited for somebody to second or third it. But even if the day was slightly different, the results were always predictable, always the same. Every once in while, somebody would try to put a pretty band girl forward – Amanda Morris or Ashley Anderson – but this always ended up the same way. Even though the band had 220 members, they didn’t vote for their own. They voted for who should be in the Court, who they would most like to be in an alternative life. It wasn’t even girls we liked, not at all, and if you were to analyze beauty objectively, they might not even have been the most beautiful. But these girls had something we didn’t, and so we put our hands up and voted, ensuring the outcome was always the same.

  Carolyn was nominated in our homeroom and so were Tiffany Port and Brooke Moore and Gemma Davies and Taylor Lyon. Seconds after the nominations were recorded, Lauren Brink sent a text to say Carolyn was nominated in her class, too.

  Coach Cox stared at the ceiling and asked us to put our phones away, or he’d take them. We obeyed. After class, we all told Carolyn congratulations. She smiled and blushed: “Thanks. I don’t even know what it means.” It means a lot, we told her. It means a lot.

  Miss Simpson must have had things to do outside of school, but what they were, none of us knew. She had gone to college out of state and studied Literary History and Russian, and she talked about teaching English in Japan. She had a chin-length, strawberry-blonde bob, and she wore leggings and holiday sweaters and scrunchies and she talked about aerobics and cake-making and we heard she was into online dating. She was another teacher/Adams alum, like Mr Overton, but she freaked us out more, basically ’cause she was so pathetic. She had lived in New York, she told us, right out of college, in an apartment with a “girlfriend.” The guys called her a dyke and it was humiliating to be praised by her. She called on the girls more than the boys – this was weird – and she offered to spend time after school with those of us that were already making As.

  During teaching, she made eye contact and smiled and she always had lipstick on her teeth. Her bra straps fell down and she reached inside her top to pull them up, like, every fifteen minutes. She ate during class, which wasn’t allowed. As we filed in, she said hello to each of us individually but tried to vary it: “Hey there!”, “Hiya,” “How you doin’?”, “What’s up?”, “He-ey!” She was in a weirder mood than usual that day, and we guessed it was because Homecoming made her reflect on her sad-o high-school life. We were sure she was a reject back then. We couldn’t imagine otherwise.

  As we took our seats, she hoisted herself up onto her desk, dangling her legs from the front. She smiled and started unwrapping a PowerBar, drinking a Diet Coke. We were always amazed that she was still overweight, based on what we saw her eat. She probably night-binged, we thought.

  We went through the motions in class – some reading, some discussion, some stalling by us so she wouldn’t have time to assign more work. And right before the bell rang, she asked Carolyn to stay after. Blake Wyatt was sitting in the front row and he turned around and mouthed, “Trouble.” We laughed.

  The bell rang and we filed out the door. As we passed Miss Simpson we looked at her: she had a pile of papers in her hand – our essays from the previous week. She fanned them. We could recognize our titles, our pen color, our penmanship. We could see they were graded, and we wished she would hand them back.

  We looked at Carolyn and she was fiddling with her phone or something and didn’t look up. Alyssa Jennings was Miss Simpson’s aide and was using the computer to do up some assignment for the freshman class. She was pulling together YouTube clips from Shakespeare adaptations and mashing them up. She stayed in the room while Miss Simpson talked to Carolyn, and that’s how we found out what happened.

  “So, I was really quite taken with your essay.” Miss Simpson was chewing as she spoke. “Really quite taken.”

  Carolyn kept her head down and stared at her phone underneath her desk. Alyssa had headphones on, but had turned off the sound.

  Carolyn said she was glad to hear it. Miss Simpson picked her teeth with her index finger. No wonder she wasn’t married.

  “Well, I’m being sarcastic. I think you know that.” She paused, picking up the last piece of her PowerBar. She put it in her mouth and talked with her mouth open and Alyssa said she had to look away but she could hear Miss Simpson as she swallowed, taking a swig of her Diet Coke or whatever.

  “No, I actually WASN’T quite taken with it, Carolyn. I really wasn’t.” She paused again. “You defined yourself as CLEAR.”

  Alyssa said Carolyn’s face went red, and then she started laughing, just a little.

  Miss Simpson was red too now, glaring at Carolyn. “Do you think this is funny?”

  And Carolyn looked down.

  “Well, the point of the assignment was to define yourself as a COLOR. Clear isn’t really a color, is it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I think you DO know. I think you DO know that clear isn’t a color. And I think you know that the point of the assignment was to try to put a finger on what makes you unique. Can you tell me what you value about yourself?”

  Miss Simpson let out a breath.

  “You know, I hate doing this but this just has to be done.” When Alyssa told us later, we wondered why. “I think you DO know what color you are. You’re just afraid to write it.”

  She paused. For effect, Alyssa said. Miss Simpson was such a drama queen.

  “Is
n’t that right?” She was angry or encouraging maybe. Alyssa couldn’t tell.

  “I don’t know.” Carolyn was rolling her eyes around, Alyssa said. She looked mad.

  “So, I’m going to ask you to re-do the assignment.”

  Carolyn let out a grunt or a protest or a groan – Alyssa wasn’t sure which.

  Miss Simpson paused. She tucked her hair behind her ears and took a breath. She tried to throw her PowerBar wrapper in the trash can and missed. She exhaled.

  “What do you think, Carolyn?”

  “I wasn’t really sure how to, like, approach the assign­ment.”

  We could imagine the room: it was always too hot and it smelled of CK One or some other cheapy drugstore perfume.

  “You know, Carolyn, I’m trying to help you. I’ve been trying to help you since you arrived here. I’m a big fan of yours.”

  The room could be suffocating, it made it hard to breathe.

  She continued: “But, you know, the question is this: are YOU a fan of you?”

  Out the window, Taylor Lyon and some senior guys were pushing each other around the courtyard. Carolyn watched them.

  Miss Simpson sighed. “You girls. I wish you could see yourselves like I do.”

  Carolyn kept staring out the window.

  Miss Simpson sighed again. “I just want you to think about what color you are.”

  “Okay,” Carolyn said. What a totally lame assignment.

  Miss Simpson would be really smiling now, we could imagine that, lipstick on her teeth.

  Blake Wyatt looked in the window and Alyssa stared back out. He gave Miss Simpson the finger, but she didn’t see.

  “I think you are so special and unique and distinct, don’t you?’

  Silence.

  “Well, I DO. And I’d be really grateful if you’d re-write your essay along those lines, okay?” Miss Simpson waited a moment. “Okay?”