CHAPTER 2
SIXTH GRADE
Mom's right hand grips the gearshift, her knuckles pulsing above Grandma's cameo ring. She leans forward to peer through the windshield at the clouds rolling across the lightening sky. "Looks like it might rain."
"Parka and umbrella are in the trunk," Dad says from the backseat, his patience teetering with our dawdling.
I stare out the windshield at the empty lot, beyond rows or extra-long parking spaces for the buses en route with my new classmates, to the beige brick two-story complex that is Carson Hill Middle and High School. "It's just huge," I repeat for the billionth time since she took me on a tour of the carpeted hallways linking room after empty-desked room of a whole new life.
Turning from the hulking structure, she really looks at me for the first time since the alarm clocks set us running in circles, and I feel the fear break in my eyes. Her face momma birds. "You're going to love it here Jude, I promise."
I shrug, not knowing whether to believe her or not. How could I possibly love being ripped away from the friends I had known the whole 11 years of my life? So far, it seemed rather unfair.
"Yes. You're all going to love. It's heaven, it's nirvana, it's the single greatest public school in the world. I regret not taking the job here already. Now, Victoria, Principal Victoria." Dad pull himself forward with out headrests and squeezes her shoulder gently. "You'll do great. Now, It's an hour drive to Fayville. My interview's at eight. You have to get out of the car. See there, your first charges are arriving."
I follow Dad's line of sight and see the yellow bus pulling into the parking lot. "Tomorrow I'm taking the bus and getting up at a normal hour, right?" I ask again, hating that I couldn't have done this First Day thing on my own, knowing that if I was on a bust right now, I'd have seen their faces, maybe already be talking to someone.
Mom nods in answer and flips the visor down to glance at herself in the mirror once more. After checking her teeth, she flips it back up, "Ready?"
"Ready," I confirm, heart galloping.
My parents exchange a kiss and I emerge from the car into the humidity of summer's end. Grasping the strap of my backpack tightly, I silently pray things will work out.
"Indian hop! Indian hop!" The gym teacher hollers into the chlorinated air. He jumps from one slimy floor tile to the next at the edge of the pool, pointing at random students, continuing his tirade. I stare up at him, still immobile from the shock of being plunged in icy water when an unseasonably early freak snow is covering most of the pool building's windows.
"You," He bends down, his read face leaning in.
"Jude," I offer eagerly, hoping he's about to acknowledge I'm turning blue and should get out and into a warm towel immediately.
"Jude! Let's see you MOVE!" He extends his hairy arm over the shallow end like a 700 Club guy, blessing the other sixth graders who are chopping through the water with varying success, depending on where they are in their growth spurts. I smile weakly. "Come ON! No one's leaving this gym class until every single one of you has crossed this pool at least eight times, and I'm not giving late passes! Now HOP!"
"I'd like to strip him naked, stick him in a block of ice, and see him hop."
I turn to the wry voice coming from my left, where a girl in a very pretty pink swimsuit is gingerly holding her blonde French braids above the water.
"This can't be legal," I agree.
"This can't be liquid," she matches me, "Sadie Heller."
"Jude Harrison." Exactly the same height, we have pruned fingers over the splashing swell.
"You just moved her right?" She asks, trying to knot the long braids on top of her head.
"Yup." The drumbeat of longing for the familiarity of Montreal. "In July actually."
"I DON'T SEE YOU HOPPING!"
"Well, Welcome to Toronto." With a grimace, Sadie carefully lets her goose bumped elbows drop beneath the surface. "We also have a…" Suddenly we're blinded as two boys slap the water hard in our direction, drenching us both.
"Nice nipples," they chuckle. Immature boys…
"You're so lame!" Sadie shouts, slamming them back.
"Sadie!" The gym teacher barks. "Less talking, more hopping!"
Eyes narrowed to slits, Sadie surrenders her golden platis to the sloshing current and raises her fist in the air.
I throw mine up in solidarity. "Okay, on two!"
"Gimme." Moving a stack of magazines, Sadie takes the snack tray and set it down on the coffee table in front of us in the Heller living room. Sliding onto the beige carpet, she grabs the remote and presses the worn power button. I lower myself beside her to Indian style, unsure whether or not to sprawl. "So you've never watched Days of Our Lives?" She asks again .
"My best friend, Kat, in Montreal, has MTV. So we pretty much only watch that---" I stop speaking when her phone rings atop the nearby stereo.
Sadie reaches over me to answer it, "Hello?" After only a moment, she harshly slams the receiver back onto its stand and pulls a cushion into her lap, squeezes it, and stares off at the TV, not seeming to see the screen.
"So," I begin, unsure what just happened, nodding as if we're min-conversation. "Um…so Kat, in Montreal, her aunt watches soaps all day…"I trail off as Sadie twists to me. "What?" I ask, my new-girl antennae snapping to attention.
"You talk about Montreal like you're still there."
"I do?" My eyes lower to the carpet unsure of how to take that.
"It must be hard to be stuck here in the middle of nowhere," she says testily.
"Montreal's not so great," I rush, aiming to sound like I believe it. "I love to skate, and they just closed the rink down. And my new room here is, like, twice the size of my old one--you should come over," I finish, lifting my coke to take a long nervous gulp.
Suddenly the phone rings again. "Want me to get that?" I offer. But she just hugs the pillow to her chest. The ringing stops. "Sadie? Is something wrong?"
She looks at me for a long minute, her finger absently twirling a loose fringe thread. "Karma Matheson and I were best friends until she stopped talking to me at the end of last year."
"Why?" I put my coke down on the coffee table. "Why'd she just stop talking to you?"
"I don't know," she says quietly, taking an Oreo from its package and slowly twisting the top off, "Her parents got divorced last year. Are your parents still married?"
"Yes," I answer, realizing I'd never been asked that before, darkly wondering what I would do if, like Karma, the answer suddenly changed.
"Mine too. Anyway, it was really bad and when she found out she was going to at camp with Portia, she got totally obsessed with being popular and was, like trying to devise ways to break into that clique."
"But you're popular."
"Not like Portia Mills and those girls." She licks the creamy middle of her cookie. "The boys all like them. No big whup. The whole thing's stupid."
"I'm sorry. That must have really…"
She finally meets my eyes. "It did, It really did." She sinks her chin into the pillow. "So were you at the top at your old school?"
"What?" I ask, cheeks reddening.
"I don't know," she slopes her head to the side and lowers her lids at me. "Patsy Sewer said you looked like Alicia Silverstone."
"Oh my God, thanks. But my school was so small. People hate…sorry, hated, past tense, people and loved people every other day, but it was like one or two were popular, not a whole football team. Here's a lot more complicated."
Sadie nods in agreement and goes to grab another cookie, when the phone rings again. She freezes. I freeze. "It's her," Sadie's voice drops. "Them."
"What, they just call and hang up?" I drop mine, too, as I instantly feel like they're standing over us.
"I think Portia makes her do it as a test. They scream stuff."
"You're kidding."
She shakes her head, looking so scared that I can't take it anymore. I reach up and grab the receiver. "Hello?"
"Sadie's a bitch!" I hear giggles. Mean ones.
"I'm sorry," The wrongness of it raises me to my knees and summons Mom's most principal-like tone. "Sadie can't come to the phone right now. She's busy thinking about thow little of a crap she could give. Have a pleasant evening." I hang up.
Sadie stares at me, a huge smile spreading across her face, "Crap, I like it."
"Shit was overhitting it."
"I do agree." She twists apart another cookie.
"Thanks." I drop back to the base of the couch, sprawling beside her.
Sadie can't stop grinning, "Hey want to be my partner on that Social Studies project? I think we have to say who we're working with by Friday."
"Sure," I mellow my answer, despite the cartwheel I feel at finding out that I found someone who still wants to be friends with me on October 22, when the Renaissance binders are due.
"Whad'ya mean, you don't like anybody? Everybody likes somebody," the Portia Mills states as if I've just challenged the Swatch. "Everybody." She pulls her headband off, shakes out her dark curly hair, and slides it back on.
"It's true. That's how it works," Sadie confirms form where she slumps on the other side of me against the gymnasium bleachers; Sadie and I have a pact to get out of whatever sport is being inflicted upon us immediately. Not a huge feat when it comes to dodge ball.
"Didn't you like somebody at your old school?" Karma leans around Portia. Sadie rolls her eyes. "What? I can't talk to her?"
"Like I care." Sadie re-smoothes her new bangs, which were supposed to make her look more glamorous, but so far all they seem to do is annoy her.
"So?" Portia persists, exasperation etched across her features.
"Yeah, of course." I aim for a carefree shrug. "I just, you know, haven't met that many boys here yet, so…who do you like?"
"Kyle Conchlin," AshleyOne volunteers from where she's pulling at her stacked rubber bracelets, "and Karma likes Walley Mosley."
"His brother just moved to New York. To be a dancer," Portia whispers, holding her splayed manicure at the corner of her mouth.
"He's having a really hard time with it," Karma confirms. "I wrote him a note. He wrote back. We've been writing," she says as if they've been sharing a toothbrush.
AshleyOne continues, "So, AshleyTwo likes Jamie Andrews, Patsy Sewer likes Vincent Speiderman…" She goes down the whole line of girls chatting along the bleachers as balls thud loudly off the walls and occasionally off the stomachs and groins of the boys trying to hold out on the court.
I check the clock above the scoreboard and see if I'll be able to get out of here before coming up with a name, buy myself some time of Thanksgiving break to do proper research.
"So who?" Karma leans in and I can smell the tacos from lunch. "Come on, whisper."
I scan the contenders---survivors hurling rubber balls at each other with the focus of gladiators, and the downed and wounded nursing of their egos.
"Come on, kiss it! You know you want to kiss my butt!" The butt in question is shaken tauntingly.
"Yeah! Kiss his butt! Butt kisser!"
"You do have to like someone," Sadie urges. Really?, I think, continuing to survey my options.
"Someone," one of the Ashleys echoes.
"Johnathon Taylor Thomas?"
"IN SCHOOL!" They chorus.
"If he's been on the cover of J14, he doesn't count," Portia scolds, readjusting her hair once again.
"Okay, okay."
Portia runs her fingers through her hair and then pauses, as a new thought occurs to her. "You're not a lesi, are you? I hear there's a lot in Montreal."
My eyed widen in shock. What the hell?
"Well?"
My eyes land on a scrawny kid with floppy brown hair absentmindedly hugging a ball to his chest. He bobs his head and appears to be…whistling.
"That guy," I nod toward him, "the one with the Beatles logo on his gym shirt."
"Tommy Quincy?" Who?
"Yeah, okay, uh, Tommy Quincy. I like him."
Sadie pats my arm approvingly.
"No one's ever liked him before." Karma sneers. Portia and the other girls stare at him for a moment, as if they're seeing him for the first time.
"That's GAME!" The teachers throws his meaty hands toward the locker rooms. Tommy Quincy, apparently in his own whistling world, doesn't hear him.
"Well," I stand and dust grime off my shorts with the rest of the girls, "that's who I like."
