by Liz Maccie
I’m not going to lie; the beginning of freshman year at West Orange was horrible. I was alone just like in middle school, except the building was bigger. And then it was at the painfully boring homecoming dance, which my mother forced me to attend, where I met Christine for the first time. I was sitting by myself, and this girl with short black hair, torn jeans, tons of ear piercings, and a tight red tank top came up to me.
“You’re that fat girl, right?” she said.
I was so uncomfortable I didn’t know what to say, so I just nodded.
“How’d you lose all the weight?”
I shrugged and said sarcastically, “Lipo.”
And to my surprise, Christine laughed, but she wasn’t laughing at me; she was laughing because she thought I was funny. She stood there with her hands on her hips, streamers and balloons framing her body. Kids that I’d hated my entire life were effortlessly dancing behind her like they never called me fat-ass or pig or loser.
The DJ put on a new song and announced that “This one is for the ladies.” “You wanna smoke?” Christine asked me.
A perfect blonde girl in a strapless pink dress, who once poured peaches on my head in front of the entire seventh grade, danced past with her perfect blond boyfriend.
Two minutes later, I was out in the parking lot, and Christine was teaching me how to inhale.
Since that night, we were inseparable. School became less miserable, and when we would walk down the halls together, I felt invincible instead of feeling invisible. I’ll admit, for some reason all that hurt from being picked on turned into anger with Christine by my side.
I stopped doing homework, and my grades fell from straight A’s to C’s and D’s. I wouldn’t tell my parents where I was, and then I purposely came home after my curfew. And if anyone told me not to do something, I would do it just to piss them off.
I started getting into fights with other girls at school, and I wound up giving this one girl a bloody nose. When the principal asked me to explain my actions, I said, “Shit happens,” which got me suspended for two weeks. The truth was I didn’t know why I had hit that girl specifically. I guess when enough people make fun of you, after a while all their laughter just sounds the same.
Christine would still call me names, like Ricotta-Ass and Whale-Butt, but she was just joking. Even though this would hurt my feelings sometimes, I never said anything about it because she was my friend. And I was too afraid to lose her.
Anthony reached over and turned the radio on. Thick patches of static poured out of the speakers. He fiddled with the tuner, but the sound got worse. “Shit, I guess it’s busted again,” he mumbled as he turned it off.
So we sat in silence and passed through two more traffic lights.
Then Anthony reached over and gestured out the window off to my right. “There it is.”
I had passed by Meadowbrook before, but never paid it much attention.
Anthony turned right and we entered through a black wrought iron gate, passing by a grey marble plaque that read: Meadowbrook Academy Established 1904. We slowly drove up the long, tree-lined, gravel driveway. I could hear the tiny rocks clinking off the metal bumper of our car. The school was red brick with a sharp white trim. A tall black steeple poked out the roof. There were three sets of stone steps leading up to double glass doors, trimmed in gold. In front of the steps, a half-moon-shaped lawn was adorned with a gigantic pedestal marble fountain. Water abundantly spilled over the tier edges.
Kids were everywhere, hanging out on the steps, lying on the grass, and running around the fountain. There were other kids hanging out in clusters, listening to iPods and rapidly text messaging on their cell phones. Christine owned a Blackberry, which apparently her mother stole, but I didn’t own anything even close to something like this. My family still had a wall-mounted phone in the kitchen and basic cable in the basement. It’s embarrassing to feel like you’re not good enough to have the things other people have.
As we inched up the driveway, I looked over at five identical blonde girls sitting Indian style on the lawn in front of the fountain. They were all smiling and laughing and chewing gum. A couple of boys purposely threw a football at them. One of the girls, in a fit of giggles, grabbed the ball and threw it in the water.
I would never fit in here.
Christine was right.
I scanned the crowds to see what everyone was wearing. My mother had sworn on the Virgin Mary that the dress code was white, button-down, collared shirts and dress pants. Sure enough, kids were wearing everything but white, button-down, collared shirts and dress pants. Girls had on pretty, flowing dresses with fancy heels, and boys were wearing sports jackets and khakis. My mother had sold me out for a sale at Kmart.
Anthony parked right in front of the fountain behind a shiny white Meadowbrook school bus. Smoke billowed out from under our car and made a futt-futt-futtering noise. Practically everyone on the half-moon lawn looked over at us.
Staring at the school in awe, Anthony said, “This is unreal.” He craned his neck to get a better look. “It’s like a picture in a magazine.”
I threw my face into my hands. “Please just park somewhere else, would you? Or drive around again.” I took off my seatbelt and hunched down in my seat, right below the window. “Anthony, move!”
But he didn’t. He just sat there.
“What is wrong with you?” I snapped.
“Nothing is wrong with me.” My brother was getting angrier with each word. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
Anthony rarely took this kind of tone with me. “Excuse me?” I said, finally realizing he was mad.
“Look at this place; it’s absolutely amazing and you’re crying about West Orange High and loser Christine—”
“Stop saying Christine is a loser! You and mom both; you don’t know her!”
“She is a loser, Roberta, and that’s all you’re going to be if you don’t stop your shit!” Anthony reached over and turned the ignition off. The car sounded like a dying moose. “Don’t you think I would have liked to come to school here? I love you, but God, you can be so selfish sometimes.”
I slowly sat back up in my seat. I hadn’t even thought about Anthony’s feelings. I was too busy being consumed by my own. My chest filled with shame.
Anthony grabbed the paper McDonald’s napkin and shredded it. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to yell at you.”
I was biting my bottom lip, trying desperately not to cry.
“But you’re my little sister, and I’m not gonna watch you screw up your life.” Anthony threw the napkin, and its pieces slid down the dashboard. “You know, Dad picked up three extra routes on his drive to make enough money to send you here. That’s why he’s never home anymore. He’s driving a goddamn truck fourteen hours a day, six days a week just to send you here.”
My heart collapsed into my stomach. My skin got hot. My throat started to close up. And I could feel the tears pressing against my eyeballs. “Why is Daddy doing that?” My voice cracked.
“Come on, Roberta, where should I start? You’re smoking, drinking, hanging out with older guys—who, if I ever get my hands on, I will beat the crap out of—and just doing shit you shouldn’t be doing.”
“I’m not drinking—”
“Really? ’Cause the beer cans I found shoved in the garbage can out back sure as hell weren’t mine.”
I turned to look out the window. He was right, about all of it. I felt like I was going to be sick. “Does Mom know? About the beer?”
“No.”
“I didn’t even like it.”
“I’m not going to say anything.” Anthony ran his hand through his hair. “Trust me, I’ve done worse.”
I rubbed my eyes and let out a groan. “I feel terrible.”
“Well, don’t. That’s not why I told you.” Anthony laughed a little. “Actually, that is why I told you. Listen, Roberta, you’ve got a chance to graduate high school and go to college and do something great with your life. I do
n’t want you working at Gino’s Pizzeria and going to Essex Community like me. Got it?”
I looked at Meadowbrook through Chipmunk’s window. Its front doors trimmed in gold. I had never told anyone this, but there was a part of me that did secretly dream of doing something majorly important, like becoming a doctor who delivers babies or a scientist that calculates when devastating storms are coming so that people can get to safety in time. But dreaming that way always made me feel guilty, like I was trying to have something that belonged to someone else.
I turned back toward Anthony with my “desperate puppy dog eyes,” as he liked to call them.
“Ahhh, come on now. Not the eyes.” He squeezed that place on either side of my knee that made me laugh. “It’s going to be okay, Birdie.”
Birdie was Anthony’s nickname for me since I was four and he won me a whistle that sounded like a chirping bird from the Point Pleasant Beach boardwalk. I loved it when he called me Birdie. It made me feel safe.
Anthony squeezed my knee again and jokingly punched my shoulder. “Besides, you know I’ll pummel anyone that even looks at you the wrong way. Now go make friends with some really hot girls who you can introduce me to.” He popped his bicep a few times in front of my face.
“Ewww, gross,” I said and pushed his arm away.
“Chipmunk and I will be here at two forty-five on the dot to pick you up, and I promise I’ll park further down the driveway.”
A girl with perfect summer blonde highlights in a green dress ran past the front of our car. The sun bounced off a diamond tennis bracelet she was wearing on her right wrist. I winced a little.
“Just try,” Anthony said. “The stuff that people have is just stuff. It doesn’t make them any better or worse. It just makes them have more stuff, you know?”
I nodded, but it didn’t make me feel any better. “I still don’t want to go.”
“I know,” Anthony said.
“But I have to, right?”
“Yes.”
I pulled the lock open. “You promise you won’t tell Mom about the beer?”
“I promise,” he said.
I opened the door, but didn’t get out. “Can I ask you something?”
He nodded.
“Does this look red?” I pointed to my mouth. “I plucked the hairs above my upper lip this morning, and I think I made it worse.”
He genuinely looked. “No, looks good to me.”
I took a deep breath and got out of the car, but before I shut the door, I leaned back down. “Anthony?”
“Yes, Roberta?”
“I want you to know, I would have worked extra shifts at The Cone Zone to send you to a high school like this. I want you to know, I would have.”
His eyes flickered down for a moment before he looked back up. “Thanks, Birdie. That means a lot.”
With my head tucked down, I quickly walked across the lawn, past the fountain, toward the front steps. The air smelled sweet of flowers and expensive perfume. I couldn’t help but feel nauseous.
Both my dad and my mom just barely finished high school. Although my mother swears she has a beautician’s license, I’ve never seen it and she’s never worked as a beautician, so the whole thing is rather suspect. My dad likes to say we’re “salt of the earth” kind of people. I hate it when he says this because it makes me feel like we sprouted straight from dirt.
I walked toward the double glass doors. Kids were swarming all around; heavy chatter filled the air. I made sure not to look at anyone and decided to occupy myself by looking at people’s shoes as they scurried by.
I think it’s true that you can learn a lot about someone by the type of shoes they wear. I personally was sporting a highly nondescript pair of brown (fake) leather lace-ups, also compliments of Kmart. I spotted a pair of trendy snakeskin ankle boots, or at least they looked like snakeskin. They were brown and white with just a hint of green running between the scales. I wondered what the snake was like who died to make those shoes and if, in the snake community, it was considered an honor to be transformed into a lavish pair of footwear.
Another pair of feet quickly ran past, and I noticed the black leather penny loafers attached to them. I loathed penny loafers. My mother bought me a pair of loafers last year. She shoved a quarter in them, instead of a penny, because she thought that would make them look more expensive. I used one as a pen holder, filled the other with rocks and used it as a doorstop, and took the two quarters to buy a candy bar.
A very sophisticated pair of navy blue, high-heeled pumps strutted by. Perhaps looking at people’s shoes wasn’t the best idea. It was making me very anxious. My palms and armpits started to sweat. My family genetics yielded a plethora of physical undesirables, two of them being an unreasonable amount of facial hair and sweat glands that behave like an unpredictable sprinkler system.
I wiped my hands across my pants to dry them off. I glanced down at my light brown cords, now covered with two moist handprints. Humiliating. Everything about me was humiliating.
“The bell rang. You don’t want to get a detention on the first day, do you?”
I turned to see a petite, thin woman with thin brown hair tightly pulled back into a bun. Her pale blue eyes were covered with a pair of square, silver, wire-framed glasses. Her skin was so white I could see the veins in her face. She had on a light grey suit with a cream silk shirt and black flats. And she smelled like mothballs.
I had been so absorbed staring at footwear that I hadn’t even heard the bell ring.
“Last name?” She held onto a small wooden clipboard.
“Romano.”
She flipped through some pages and pursed her lips. “Sophomore…Romano. Go into the auditorium and find a seat in the third or fourth rows. Morning meeting is about to start and if you are late, you will get a detention. I am in charge of all disciplinary action at the academy, and I abhor tardiness.” She lifted her finger, which was so thin it looked like a twig, and pointed to the left. “Chop, chop, a Meadowbrook girl is always on time.”
I took a few steps to my left. I really could’ve just made a run for it. You know, hide out in Christine’s basement for a couple of years until this whole thing blew over. I looked back and Twiggy Finger was still pointing the way. Nothing short of me vanishing into thin air would get me out of this situation now. I guess I had just become a Meadowbrook girl.
Morning Meeting
8:05 a.m.
Two large potted trees—not plants, but actual big huge trees—were on either side of the auditorium door. It blew me away that rich people had trees indoors. I had seen an episode of MTV Cribs where this famous rock singer had a house in Italy, and since it was located on top of a mountain, there weren’t any trees around. The rock singer said something like, “Well, when you have more money than God, you can just buy nature.” So he had trees imported and grew them inside his house. It was very bizarre and I remember feeling that there was something entirely wrong about the whole thing. That somehow nature just shouldn’t be for sale.
An older Asian boy wearing a pastel pink Polo shirt pushed past me. Now clearly, I don’t claim to be any kind of fashion expert, but a pastel pink shirt with a stupid emblem of a stupid polo player on a stupid horse is just stupid. My mother always said that horses were for the royal family and everyone else had dogs. I used this plea for my birthday once, but I got a banged-up hamster instead of the yellow lab puppy I was begging for.
The pink Polo shirt boy let the auditorium door shut in my face. I rolled my eyes. Looks like I was invisible again. I put my hand on the wooden door and pushed, but it was surprisingly heavy, so I used both my hands.
As I inched the door open, a wave of hushed voices hit me in the face. I stepped inside and felt…terrified. I saw the Polo shirt idiot obnoxiously push his way through the back row to an open seat that was being saved for him by two other Polo-shirt-wearing idiots. They all high-fived each other and made grunting noises.
The aisle in front of me was covered i
n red carpet. I darted my eyes over the entire auditorium to take it all in. There were polished dark wooden seats upholstered in deep burgundy red velvet, graceful figures of angels holding outstretched scrolls etched into the cream ceiling, and a black glossy stage that looked like it belonged on Broadway.
The auditorium reminded me of the very posh Paper Mill Playhouse in Milburn, New Jersey. I know about the Paper Mill Playhouse because when my dad receives a “hefty” Christmas bonus, he takes me there to see The Nutcracker. He calls it our special day, just for the two of us. My favorite part is when Clara meets the Sugar Plum Fairy for the first time and then they do a whole bunch of fancy dances. My dad’s favorite part is when Clara takes off her slipper and bonks the Mouse King in the head, knocking him out cold. He always leans over to me during this part and says, “Now that’s what you do if you’re ever in trouble.” And I always nod, armed with the knowledge of how to protect myself.
A young female teacher sitting on an aisle seat touched my arm, reminding me where I was.
“Go sit down, please,” she said.
I nodded and realized I was pretty much the only person not sitting. I quickly headed down the aisle, which began to feel intolerably long. There was a wooden podium set up on the corner of the stage and a majestic-looking red velvet curtain hung down behind it. In a gigantic orange circle on the front of the podium were three black symbols inside a triangle. The symbols were a candle, a harp, and an opened book. Beneath the triangle in purple lettering, it read: Into the light brings learning and might. Meadowbrook Academy Established 1904.
I could still hear muffled chatter going on, but apart from that, everyone was behaving. I couldn’t believe it. At West Orange during homeroom, we’d be throwing stuff, yelling at each other, and no doubt someone would be making inappropriate fart sounds with their armpit or their butt, but all of these kids were just being…good. It was odd. And highly uncomfortable.
I had almost reached the rows assigned for sophomores when a burst of cool air from a vent in the ceiling hit my face. It made me feel better for about one second until I heard some girl say, “Nice shirt,” and start to giggle. My cheeks grew warm and I was sure I had turned bright red. I became hyperaware of my man’s Kmart shirt scratching against my thighs. If I had more of my senses about me, I probably would have turned around and called that girl a bitch, but I was just so desperate to sit down. Besides, she was right; I did look stupid.