Set pre-series, my own take on Tootie and Natalie's first meeting upon their arrival at Eastland. I know Facts of Life doesn't have the most readers on this site, but I hope this story will garner a review or two – please?

The first lesson she learned at Eastland School was that getting up and down stairs on roller-skates was hard. As confident as she'd always been on her skates, Tootie almost had a wipe-out lugging her heavy suitcase up the stairs. The dorm room that she had been assigned to share with the other girls in her house was still empty. You're the first one to arrive, girl, Tootie told herself proudly, and then she noticed that the floor was all carpet and sighed. Roller-skating on carpet was hard, too.

Okay, so maybe the world of Eastland wouldn't exactly live up to her dreams. So far, Tootie hadn't seen even one other black girl there. Her parents had cautioned her, on the drive up from Washington, that she might be the only black student at the school. But Tootie had just nodded and not paid them any attention. It would be just her luck that her parents would turn out to be right about that.

Of course, she couldn't go around letting them know that they were right. Tootie was smarter than that. If you gave parents even an inch, they would run away with it. She was lucky that her mom and dad had agreed to let her attend Eastland at all. She'd never been so far away from home before.

And it wasn't just that all the other girls she'd seen were white. That wouldn't have been so bad just by itself, but they were all taller than her, too. Tootie tried to guess which would be worse: being the shortest girl in school... or the only black girl in school. Nah, definitely the shortest girl, she decided. Even with her roller-skates on, the other Eastland girls were still taller than her, and they would probably always think of Tootie as a silly little kid, way below their maturity level. Having a nickname like Tootie wouldn't help, which was why she had almost for-sure decided to go by Dorothy here.

Tootie startled when she heard loud, heavy footsteps banging up the stairs behind her. Was another girl arriving? She quickly tried to turn around to face the doorway of her room –this was her chance to make a good first impression on her new roommate – but the front wheel of her roller-skate bumped into her suitcase, and Tootie lost her balance and tumbled forward. She caught herself by grabbing onto the nightstand next to the bottom bunk bed, but it tipped and the glass of water that she had brought upstairs with her from the house kitchen – it was still late summer, after all, and unpacking was hard work – knocked against the wall and shattered loudly.

"Mazel tov!" a voice exclaimed.

Tootie jerked around to see a girl her age standing in the doorway, smiling. She had wavy, shoulder-length brown hair, clipped back on both sides with blue barrettes. That was the first thing Tootie noticed about her: the two blue barrettes, the same color as as the two blue ribbons in Tootie's pigtails. She had a nice smile, too, bright and friendly and showing off teeth that would never have to have braces. Tootie's dentist had said during her last teeth-cleaning that she would probably need braces in a year or two. She was also f – no, not fat, Tootie thought quickly, because it was mean to call people fat, but this girl was... well, chubby.

For a moment, Tootie just stared at her, unsure of how to respond. She didn't understand the strange words this new girl had said. What if they were some sort of insult? But the girl seemed friendly enough, so Tootie gave in to her curiosity and asked, "Um, what did you say?"

"Mazel tov," came the girl's easy reply. "That's what you say when somebody breaks a glass." Tootie must've looked as clueless as she felt, because the girl went on, explaining, "Well, they do it at weddings, anyway. Actually, I guess they only do it at Jewish weddings. The bride steps on a glass and breaks it, and then everybody yells mazel tov. It means good luck... I think."

"Huh? You mean they break it on purpose?" Tootie asked. She still wasn't sure if she had the faintest idea what this girl was talking about. But she knew that she would be in truh-bull if her mama ever caught her breaking dishes on purpose.

"Sure. I remember when my Aunt Betty had her wedding, she had to stomp on the glass lots of times before she finally broke it. She said it made her foot sore. But see..." She paused and grinned in a conspiring way, like she was letting Tootie in some secret, "I figure when I get married, I won't have that problem. I'll just have to stand on the glass to make it shatter!"

For the first time since her arrival at Eastland School, a smile tugged at the corners of Tootie's lips – a shy, nervous smile, because this girl seemed to be making fun of her own chubbiness, and Tootie didn't know if she was allowed to laugh at that or not. After all, she didn't even know this girl's name yet.

"I'm Natalie, by the way."

Tootie hesitated and almost blurted out her real name. She almost introduced herself as Dorothy. She had thought long and hard about it before coming to Eastland. After all, her student paperwork and ID cards all read Dorothy Ramsey, and no one here knew her as Tootie. A new school was a chance to permanently get rid of that nickname, if she wanted to. But did she really want to? Looking at Natalie's round, friendly face, she decided that no, she didn't. She wanted Natalie to call her by the same nickname that her family used, even if the some girls here thought it was silly.

"I'm Tootie."

"Are you new here?"

"Uh-huh, my folks just drove me up here from DC today."

"Yeah, my mom and dad just dropped me off today, too." Natalie took a step into the room; like Tootie, she was carrying a large suitcase. As she set it down with a thump on the carpet, she noticed Tootie's feet. Now it was her turn to look clueless. "Hey, how come you're wearing roller-skates?"

Tootie had been asked that question a lot in her life – enough to come up with a wide variety of answers for all sorts of situations. She knew exactly which answer to give Natalie now. "We-ell," she said, tilting her head and lifting one foot off the ground, "my mama said I was born with 'em on, and I've just been rollin' through life ever since."

Natalie laughed a warm, loud laugh that seemed to fill the whole room, and Tootie was suddenly sure that life at Eastland wasn't going to be so hard, after all.

"Hey, look," Natalie said, pointing to the bunk beds against the wall, "no one's taken the bunk beds yet. You wanna bunk with me?"

"Sure!" Tootie agreed eagerly. "You can have the top bunk, if you want it."

Natalie looked over her shoulder at her and smiled. It was a cheeky sort of smile, a smile that asked, Did you seriously just say that? It was the sort of smile that you shared with a friend, and Tootie realized that at some point during the last five minutes, that's exactly what she and Natalie had become – friends.

"Aw, come on," Natalie said, laughing again, "do you really think the top bunk won't collapse if I sleep on it? And do you really wanna be sleeping under me when that happens?"

And this time, Tootie laughed too, because she knew now that she was allowed, that Natalie wouldn't mind. Natalie had said that those words meant good luck, and Tootie decided that yes, it was definitely been good luck that she broke that glass right when she did. You sure are lucky, girl, she told herself, smiling. Your first day at this school, and you've already made your first friend.

FIN