To my shock, Mr. Rhodes doesn’t have a response right away. He straightens out his bow tie, coughs into his fist, and, checking his clipboard, asks, “Autumn Hawthorne, is it? I had your brother last year.”
I resist making a face. Of course her name is Autumn. How wilderness-y can you get? She probably has sisters named Summer, Spring, and Winter.
Autumn nods, and Mr. Rhodes starts up again, like an engine revving. “Ms. Hawthorne you are not allowed to speak out of turn in Fir Lake High School but that being said I appreciate your attention as I was clearly testing the students to see how closely you were all listening.”
It couldn’t be more obvious that Mr. Rhodes is lying through his big, horsey teeth; his wide face even is a little pink. Flannel — Autumn — has clearly knocked him down a few pegs. But I’m both thankful and confused; was she trying to help me? Or was she just showing off? Autumn’s eyes meet mine, and she offers me a tentative smile, but I look away.
“Have a seat, missy, so I can finish calling roll,” Mr. Rhodes rasps out, pointing me toward the only empty desk in the room — right in the front row, next to Heidi. I collapse into the stiff plastic chair, putting my tote bag between my feet. I’ve already noticed that everyone else has regular L.L. Bean backpacks.
Sitting on the other side of me is a sort-of-cute boy with short dark hair and sleepy brown eyes. He’s wearing a polo shirt with the collar turned up so I nickname him Preppy. I feel like Preppy might be watching me, but I refuse to make eye contact, with him or anyone. If I pretend like I’m riding the subway, that won’t be a problem.
As Mr. Rhodes continues with the attendance, I learn that Heidi’s real name is Rebecca Lathrop, Hiking Boots is Meadow McArthur, and Preppy is Sullivan Turner. I want to keep track of the names, but I’m distracted by how quiet the classroom is. Back in my junior high, homeroom was practically a free period — spitballs whizzed across the room as girls swapped iPods, and boys tried to rap like The Game while our frazzled teacher made announcements. Here, everyone is sitting still, and all I can hear — besides Mr. Rhodes’s scratchy smoker’s voice — are birds twittering outside.
“Katya Wilder?” Mr. Rhodes calls, and I give a start. He pronounces it wrong — “Katie-yah,” not “Kaht-ya” — which bothers me even though I don’t go by that name. Trying to keep my voice steady, I say I prefer Katie, and a soft murmur goes up behind me, like a puff of smoke. I must be giving these kids a field day: Not only am I new, but I’ve got a weird, foreign-sounding name that I’m picky about.
“Mm-hmm,” Mr. Rhodes says. He studies me for a minute, then bends over and makes a notation on his clipboard. Wonderful. What can he be writing next to my name? Attempt to Emotionally and/or Physically Destroy Before School Year Is Over?
I’m last on the list — fitting — so Mr. Rhodes puts the clipboard on his desk and rubs his hands together. “Okeydoke, kids,” he says, plastering a wide smile on his face, and I realize that he’s whipping out a Jekyll that’s even scarier than his Hyde. “First off, welcome to your freshman year at Fir Lake High School, which might I remind you has been standing on this ground since before you were even a glass of beer between your parents.”
A few nervous coughs fill the air. I wonder if dying would feel pleasant right now.
“Most of you” — Mr. Rhodes lets his little piggy eyes stray to me — “have been together since you were picking your noses in a nursery so we don’t need to bother with any of those getting-to-know-you games that some of the lighter-in-their-loafers teachers like to play.”
I feel a laugh building in my throat, but I hold it in. Again, I can tell that Preppy Sullivan is looking at me — probably because my lips are twitching — but I wish he would stop.
“So, turning to serious business,” Mr. Rhodes goes on, lifting a bright orange sheet of paper from his desk. “The important events of this semester.” He skims the sheet and mutters, “Yearbook and the Garden Club are holding their first meetings this afternoon, yes, yes, yes, no loitering in the hallways, yes, yes, we’ve heard it all before. And then there’s …” He glances up, and pauses dramatically, and says, “The matter of Homecoming.”
The classroom erupts.
It’s insane. A second ago, a blanket of peace hung over the room. Now, kids are standing and cheering, Preppy Sullivan is pumping his fist, Heidi Rebecca is clapping and bouncing up and down in her chair, and from the back of the room a loud, long choreographed whoop rises up: “Go-o-o Tigers!”
My blood is roaring in my ears. I’m considering crawling under my desk and staying there, like it’s a bomb shelter. What is Homecoming? It sounds like some bizarre Martian ritual (“When our spaceship returns, we will have a homecoming.”). Or does it have something to do with homeroom? Everything feels like a scattered puzzle in my head, and there’s no fitting the pieces together. There’s also a part of me that hears the word home and thinks immediately of Manhattan — the stoop of our building, the crowds on Broadway, Lincoln Center….
Before I can burst into tears at my desk, Mr. Rhodes speaks again. “Yes, yes, we’re all wishing our team lots of luck this year. Homecoming will be held on October sixteenth, so mark your calendars.”
Next to me, Preppy Sullivan reaches for his book bag, and I catch a whiff of something cool and sweet-smelling that makes me wonder if he’s wearing cologne. As I watch in disbelief, he whips out a spiral-bound datebook and scribbles something inside. He’s literally writing down the date?
Thankfully, homeroom only lasts for fifteen minutes, so at eight o’clock sharp the bell rings, and Mr. Rhodes hurriedly passes out our locker assignments and schedules. Preppy Sullivan doesn’t even ask — he just leans over my shoulder to look at the white card in my hand and says, “Cool, I’ve got first-period Social Studies in Room 306, too.” I don’t reply, but Heidi Rebecca leans toward him, and says, “Bio for me. Hey, Sullivan — your arms got so big from working at The Scoop this summer! You still there through the fall?” She flutters her lashes at him so hard I’m surprised they don’t fall out.
“Nah,” Sullivan replies, glancing down at his right arm with a smile. “I’ve got tennis.”
As Sullivan and Rebecca flirt, I jump out of my seat, racing past Mr. Rhodes. Before I’m even out the door, I begin texting Michaela my schedule — Social Studies, English, Gym, lunch, Horticulture (what?), Biology, and French. I add, Meet me by the stairs in 5 seconds, and then step out into the suddenly packed hallway.
“How psyched are you for Homecoming?” someone shrieks in my ear, and I watch as two blonde girls — both in long prairie skirts and Birkenstocks — run toward each other, arms outstretched. All around me kids are embracing and slapping one another on the back. Mr. Rhodes was right; everyone here did grow up together. They’ve probably all been best friends since birth. As I plow ahead, making my way toward the staircase, a line of girls standing at their lockers watch me, whispering to each other. It’s a little like walking through the waiting room at Anna Pavlova, only I know nobody is discussing my dancing.
Michaela, I think, like a prayer.
But when I reach the staircase, my sister is nowhere to be found. I wait and wait, my palms growing clammy, even as the hallways start to clear, because I know Michaela will show. She has to. I asked her to.
“Katie, right?”
The voice is bold, just like it was a few minutes ago, in homeroom. My guts in knots, I turn around to see Autumn Hawthorne.
“Oh, hello,” I say, backing up a few paces. She’s a big girl — not fat, but broad and tall, with high cheekbones. I bet she could snap me over her knee.
“Hey,” Autumn replies, smiling again. She’s almost pretty when she smiles. “I heard Sullivan saying you were in first-period Social Studies. Me too. Want to head over together?”
Before I can stop it, Trini’s voice — or what Trini would say if she were here — pops into my head as I give Autumn a quick up-and-down. Cute overalls. Do you think she was bailing hay this morning? I can’t for the life
of me imagine why someone like Autumn — a country girl if there ever was one — would want to be nice to me, the new girl dressed in black. Doesn’t she already have a million built-in friends here?
Unless she’s trying to lure me into some sort of a trap. I know how girls can work. I’ve read The Clique.
“Thanks, but I’m waiting for my sister,” I tell Autumn pointedly. And I don’t need you.
Autumn shrugs, then tucks her unfairly beautiful hair behind one ear, and starts up the staircase. I’m relieved to see her go, but I’m worried that, with each second that passes, I’m going to be later and later to my first class. I try to peer all the way up to the fourth floor. Why isn’t Michaela coming?
Finally, when the hallway is totally emptied out, I realize I have to give up on my sister for now. As I’m taking the stairs up two at a time, my cell phone buzzes. I glance down, and see a text from Michaela:
So sorry! Didn’t have time. I’ll see u @ lunch tho!
I’m so elated that my sister and I have our lunch period together that I forget I’m on a staircase, miss a step, and pitch forward, dropping my bag and banging my knee.
Such a ballerina!
“Are you okay?”
I look up to see Sullivan standing at the top of the stairs, holding his hand out toward me. I turn my head and look down at the staircase, as if I can somehow tumble backward, out the door, and back into yesterday.
“Come on, we gotta go to class,” Sullivan says, and then he takes my hand and pulls me up, surprisingly strong. I feel like my heart is beating in my throat as we face each other.
“Are you okay?” he asks again.
No, I’m not. I can’t find my sister (not until lunch!), everybody hates me (homeroom teacher included), and I just made a legendary fool out of myself (who falls up the stairs?). And, by the way? I don’t know how to speak to boys. I never had a single friend who was a guy, and I’m not sure I can start now. So I don’t answer, but instead step around Sullivan and head toward Room 306. I can only hope that the social studies teacher will be a little more understanding about lateness than Mr. Rhodes was.
If not, I may as well file this whole experience under Worst Day Ever.
“Today hasn’t been too bad, right?” Michaela asks as we put our bag lunches down. We’re sitting at a two-person table in the orange-and-blue cafeteria, which is decorated with Go Tigers! pennants, and swarming with students.
I can’t help it. I start laughing. Beats crying, I suppose.
My knee hurts from where I banged it on the stairs in front of Sullivan. I have a headache from English class, where snooty, bespectacled Ms. Delacorte recited poetry for forty-five minutes. And I’m still sweaty from gym, where the young, handsome, and sadistic Coach Shreve made each of us hold onto a metal rod and do fifteen chin-ups.
Here’s a secret: When someone is a good dancer, it does not also mean she will be good at gym class.
“What’s so funny?” Michaela asks as she unwraps the chicken-and-avocado sandwich Mom made. My sister looks disturbed, and I realize my laugh sounds slightly hysterical.
“Nothing. Everything.” I get myself under control, and take a big bite of my own sandwich. While I’m chewing, I see Michaela still watching me with worry in her eyes. I want to reach across the table and hug her. She doesn’t even know how glad I am to see her now.
Michaela and I have never attended the same school at the same time (except for dance school, of course). Michaela went to our local public elementary school, but our parents thought I was too “daydream-y” and needed “special attention” so they sent me to a stuffy private school uptown. When I turned twelve, I managed to convince them to send me to Michaela’s public junior high. But by that time my sister was already in high school, and I had to deal with all the junior high teachers beaming at me and saying, “Oh, you’re Michaela Wilder’s sister? Well, we have high hopes for you, then!”
At least that was one annoying thing that didn’t happen today.
“Tell me about your morning,” I instruct my sister, reaching into my brown bag for the miniature bottle of Pom that Mom packed. If I talk about my day, I might start laughing again.
While I’m drinking, I see Autumn Hawthorne walk by our table with her lunch tray. Like all the other kids, she stood in line for the cafeteria cuisine; nobody besides me and Michaela seems to have brown-bagged lunch from home. As Autumn passes a group of guys, one of them — who has messy reddish hair and glasses — punches Autumn in the arm and she socks him back. I watch in wonder as Autumn takes a seat at a table with a handful of other girls. Who was that guy? Does Flannel have a boyfriend?
“Well, homeroom was pretty great,” Michaela says, and I can hear what sounds like genuine happiness in her voice. I stop mid-drink and look over at her; I notice that she’s reapplied her lip gloss. “Ms. Leonard is so cool,” Michaela goes on enthusiastically, taking a sip of her own Pom. “She’s really young and smart and she wears these funky glasses and just graduated from Fenimore Cooper College with her masters in —”
“She didn’t rail you out for being late?” I ask, marveling at my sister’s luck.
“Amazingly, no!” Michaela raises her voice over the din of kids around us. Though I’m caught off guard by her jubilant mood, I’m loving how it’s just the two of us in our little capsule, free to catch up. “She said she understood, since it was the first day and all, and she said she liked my necklace….” Michaela grins, fingering her hammered-gold pendant. “So then she told us all about Homecoming, which I have to say I always thought was a kind of dumb ritual, but when Ms. Leonard explained it, she made it sound pretty fun. And then she handed out sheets about different after-school activities like yearbook and —”
“You know what Homecoming is?” My voice comes out in a stunned whisper. “I mean — you’ve heard of it before?”
Michaela raises one brow at me, then pats at the corner of her mouth with her napkin. “Katie, what’s the matter with you? Haven’t you seen any movies? Or TV shows? Come on. You have the same pop culture education as I do!”
I’m not sure what “pop culture education” means but Michaela’s I’m-so-much-smarter-than-you-are tone makes me grit my teeth. “Michaela, hello — we’re from the city. Whatever Homecoming is, we don’t have it there.”
Michaela puts down her sandwich and shakes her head.
“What?” I challenge her, leaning across the table. At the table behind us, a boy snorts loudly, and says “Of course I can climb Mount Elephant. Haven’t you tried?”
“Sometimes I wonder …” Michaela bites her lip, meeting my gaze. “How it’s possible for you to be this spacey. I mean, on the one hand, you see everything. On the other hand, you — don’t. You see what you want to see.”
I feel my mouth fall open and an angry heat creeps across my face. I can’t remember the last time Michaela spoke to me this way. Maybe because she never has. And I have no idea how to respond. All I know is that these are supposed to be our crucial forty-five minutes of togetherness, and Michaela is choosing to spend them yelling at me … for absolutely nothing.
I’m about to tell my sister just that when three tall, very pretty girls crop up behind Michaela, giggling as they balance their lunch trays. One of them has flaxen hair that comes to her chin and shows off both her big hoop earrings and heavily lined gray eyes. She’s wearing a green halter dress that comes to her ankles — surprisingly trendy for Fir Lake. The other two girls are identical twins; they both have long, wavy dark hair and full lips, and they’re both wearing tight T-shirts (one pink, one yellow), and short tennis skirts with sneakers. The three girls give off an air of breezy confidence; if they were in a comic strip, they’d all be sharing a thought bubble that reads: “Yeah, we know we’re hot.”
They’re terrifying.
The blonde one sets her tray down on the floor and motions to the twins to keep quiet. Then she slowly advances toward the back of Michaela’s head. My sister, still staring me down, is oblivio
us to the fact that something horrendous is about to happen to her. My heart clutches, and my hands fly to my mouth. “Michaela — look out —” I cry but I’m too late. The blonde girl is already putting her hands over Michaela’s eyes.
“What the —” Michaela gasps, then peels off the blonde girl’s hands and spins around.
I hold my breath and almost cover my own eyes, not wanting to witness the humiliation my sister is about to be put under.
Instead, Michaela shrieks with joy, and says, “You guys!” and the three girls start laughing. But not in a mocking way at all.
I don’t understand.
“The fabulous Michaela W!” the blonde girl cries as if she’s known my sister all her life. Except for the fact that she pronounces her name “Mikayla” — nails on the chalkboard to my ears.
“We were looking for you!” the twin in pink exclaims. “Where’d you run off to?”
“I had to meet my sister,” Michaela replies, and maybe it’s my imagination, but I think I hear a note of impatience on the word sister. Then again, I could be paranoid, because Michaela gestures toward me with a smile, giving no sign that we were just in a semi-argument. “Everyone, this is Katie. She’s a freshman. Katie, these are Heather, Lucy, and Faith,” Michaela says, motioning to the blonde, the pink twin, and the yellow twin. “They’re in my homeroom.”
“Hey-ey, Katie,” Faith singsongs, giving me a small wave. “That’s a … neat top.” Her lip curls slightly. I wonder if she knows what the Empire State Building is.
“You two look exactly alike!” Lucy says, then Faith pokes her in the side and the two of them start cracking up. Wow. Twin jokes. Har har.
It’s Heather, the blonde girl, who’s obviously the ringleader, because she regards me seriously and says, “You know you have an amazing sister, right, Katie?”
“You mean the Michaela you only met today?” I reply, pronouncing my sister’s name correctly and hearing the iciness in my voice. I know I’m being rude, but Good God. Why are they already drooling all over Michaela? Did she dance for them or something?