"I won't lie to you, Nellie" Lucy says with a grimace, "you've looked better." I slam my locker shut, giving Lucy a pointed look before throwing my bag over my shoulder. She shrugs slightly, motioning to the mess of hair that sits atop my head.
"I know what I look like," I grumble, pushing my way into the hallway and leading us towards the bathroom. It had been a long morning with Mama. She had taken a spill a few days before and was ordered bedrest. This meant that if Aunt Lou was away at work for the morning, I needed to not only take care of my mother, but also get ready for school on time. Most days it wasn't difficult, with mama only needing breakfast and a book to read, but today her treatments were making her ill and I had to carry her to and from the bathroom – completely forcing me to give up on my hair and half of my makeup.
"And did you only put mascara on one eye?" Lucy asks, leaning in a little closer to get a better look.
"Would you get out of my face?" I ask, trying to keep a smile, but my voice sounds tight, and Lucy gives me a pointed look before pushing the bathroom door open for me.
Typical. The first-floor bathroom is full of girls either hogging the mirror to gossip or hogging the stalls to have a quick smoke before the bell rang. Some of the girls smile towards me sheepishly, others smirk and whisper to each other quietly. I use this as a point to shove in between them – uncaring about their dirty looks and filthy mouths. One of them shoulder checks me as I try to fix my smudged mascara, but Lucy is quick with a subtle, but solid stomp on her foot.
"Oh, sorry Marissa," Lucy says without a smile or even a second glance in her direction. Marissa rolls her eyes but moves along with her whispers and giggles from her friends following her out the door.
"You would think people would've gotten over the Angela thing already," I sigh and Lucy shrugs, pulling out a hairbrush from her purse and handing it to me. I feel the corners of my mouth twitch but say nothing as I run the brush through my hair, "It's October – and Angela's having a baby."
"You know Angela," Lucy says, "she won't rest until Ponyboy's the stepfather."
"Gross, Luce." I grimace, imagining a world where Ponyboy knocked Angela up instead of that Brumley Boy.
"The good news is, she can't fight'ya if she's carrying a basketball under her t-shirts," Lucy says with another shrug of her shoulders. She watches me brush my hair a few more times before nodding in approval and taking back her hairbrush.
"She could still probably kick my ass," I sigh, before we both laugh, picturing a very pregnant Angela Shepard wailing on me in the parking lot.
The warning bell rings shrilly, and Lucy dramatically clutches at her heart, and I can't help but laugh again. "Nell, I am never going to graduate if I must sit through one of Ms. Smith's history lessons again," she says as we make our way towards the stairwell, readying to part ways.
"It's October," I say again, gesturing towards the paper pumpkins and ghosts that are advertising the Halloween dance coming up, "You got like 8 more months of lectures."
"Why would you say something so mean to me? You're supposed to be my best friend," she jokes with a dramatic wipe away of her fake tears.
"I'll see you at lunch," I say with a shake of my head. "If I'm late to English again, Ms. Harris is going to give me a detention."
Lucy waves and I hustle up the stairs, dodging some of the football players who like to throw notebooks off the top of the staircase and stepping into the English classroom with only seconds to spare. Ms. Harris is a young teacher, bright and kind. She nods her head to me in approval when she sees I am sitting at my desk and turns back to the chalk board to write down the beginning of our lesson. While I liked her as a teacher, I had issues with her preference of using a seating chart. Somehow, I had drawn the short stick that day, and she plopped me right next to Mark Jennings – for the entire first semester. I have done well in ignoring him for the most part, still weary of Pony's feelings after what happened at the end of summer, but Mark either liked to make me uncomfortable or is completely oblivious to Pony's cold shoulder and thinks we're all still friends.
"Penny," he says with a slight nod in greeting, "nice to see you on time for once."
"Mark," I say stiffly, pulling out my notebooks and copy of Dante's Inferno, "you haven't dropped out yet?"
"Ouch," he says, feigning injury, "what would dear, sweet Curtis say about this mean streak?"
"Bite me," I whisper through gritted teeth, trying to focus my attention on Ms. Harris and her breakdown of the nine levels of hell. Limbo, Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Anger, Heresy, Violence, Fraud, Treachery – I'd see more than have the people in this room down there one day.
"Name the time and place," Mark whispers but I don't react by making a point to raise my hand to answer a question and ignore him completely.
Mark seems to catch the hint and the rest of the class period rolls over smoothly. When the bell rings, I take my time to pack up, being careful not to lift my eyes until Ms. Harris suddenly calls me to the front. Mark, who had been waiting for me, takes this as a cue to slip out of the classroom and sigh, suddenly very thankful for Ms. Harris.
"Penny," she says with a smile, "I just wanted to check in."
"Check-in?" I ask, unsure what she means.
"I know that things have been hard at home," she says with a guilty look, "I want to make sure you're okay."
"I'm fine," but the words are automatic. I know what people want to hear and it's not that I stayed up half the night, listening for the sound of the tiny bell my mother rings when she needs help. Sometimes I am so scared I'll miss it that I can only get three or four hours of sleep per night. No one wants to hear that, and I didn't need more people feeling sorry for me. It's bad enough, almost everyone knows my mother is dying, they don't need to know how much I'm suffering too.
"Can I go?" I ask, shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot, "I don't want to be late for math."
"In a moment," she says with a nod before sitting at her desk and shuffling through some papers, "I'll write you a pass, I promise."
She pulls out her heavy black book of grades and sets it in front of me. Her finger settling over my name, "Penny, I know that it's been hard with your mom, but I'm concerned. You didn't turn in your essay on Jane Eyre, and it brought your grade down from a B- to a C-."
I swallow and glance up towards her, wondering why she cared at all. "If I can get it to a C by December, it's still considered passing, right?"
"Yes, but Penny, you are so much smarter than this. The paper you wrote on Animal Farm freshman year is still my favorite example." Ms. Harris closes the book and waits for me to look at her, when our eyes meet, I suddenly feel ashamed, but how would I ever explain that I didn't give a shit about Jane Eyre or Dante's Inferno or whatever other piece of literature we studied this year. There is so much more for me to worry about.
"You wanted to go to Stanford your freshman year," Ms. Harris continues, "is that still your goal?"
"Ms. Harris," I say with a swallow, "you know kids from my side of town don't go to Stanford. Most of us will never leave Oklahoma."
"Well," she says, "I just don't believe that." For a moment I want to scream at her and demand to know where she gets off telling me what I can and cannot do. Stanford flew out the window the moment my mother found out she was dying. It would be lucky if I got into the University of Tulsa at this point.
"I've talked to your other teachers," she says when I refuse to meet her eyes again, "and we agree. We will give you until the end of the semester to turn in your missing assignments."
"No offense," I finally say with a bitter laugh, "if I didn't have time to finish them before, what makes you think I'll have them done by winter break?"
"Because I refuse to let you quit," she says so matter of fact that I decide I never really liked her, "and I already called your mother to let her know." I swallow and meet her eyes - no, I did not like her - I hate her.
"Who does she think she is?" I spit, throwing my backpack onto the ground with a loud thud.
Pony, Lucy, Henry, and Annette look at me warily before I sit down at the lunch table with them. While we did not share many classes, the five of us had been lucky enough to have the same lunch period. Pony presses a kiss to my temple and hands me a piece of his peanut butter and jelly sandwich, before asking, "Who?"
"Ms. Harris," I say, picking at the crust of the sandwich.
"You were late again?" Lucy asks with some shock, "Nellie, am I going to have to start walking you to class?"
"No," I say, hating that I sound so angry for something she did not do. I feel my face flush with some embarrassment before giving Lucy an apologetic look. "She called my mom, told her that I'm 'on the brink of failing my classes'."
"What do you mean?" Ponyboy asks and I try to ignore the look that he exchanges with Lucy and Annette. Pity and worry mixed into one.
"I have C- in English, a D+ in math, and you don't want to know the rest," I admit, still picking at the crust of the sandwich and refusing to look up and watch them exchange their looks again. Once it was known how sick my mother was, my friends and Ponyboy began to treat me differently – like I was a piece of fragile glass they didn't want breaking.
"How do you have a C- in English?" Ponyboy asks and I feel the flush of embarrassment rush my cheeks again.
I sheepishly peek at him from the corner of my eye, "I never finished the Jane Eyre essay."
"What do you mean?" He asks, "We worked on that one together."
"Well," I say with a slight grin to lessen the blow, "we worked on yours. I kind of doodled in my notebook the whole time."
"Nell," Ponyboy sighs, "what's Ms. Harris want you to do?"
"Yeah," Annette agrees, "what did she say to your mom?"
"Her and the other teachers agreed that due to the circumstances I can turn in my missing work by the end of the semester."
"For full credit?" Lucy asks and I nod, "We'll start this weekend, we'll all help you."
"There's no point," I snap, and Lucy crosses her arms over her chest, and I know that I crossed the line again. "It's not like I'm going with you to Ole Miss, Lucy or jetting off to NYU like Ponyboy wants to. Hell – I'm not even going to Oklahoma State with Henry's track scholarship at this point."
"What about Stanford?" Annette asks, and I try not to read too much into the hurt in her voice. Annette would not go to college – her family could never afford it and she had even worse grades than me. Most of us will never leave Oklahoma.
"I can't fucking go to Stanford," I spit, fully aware of the venom in my voice, but not being able to stop it, "what are all of you not getting?"
"But you could" Lucy says, her voice sharp and her face now twisted into a scowl, "you just don't want to try."
"Your mom and Two-Bit would want you to try," Annette agrees.
I open my mouth to argue, but snap it shut quickly, realizing why my friends have been treating me like a piece of fragile glass. They care so much, and I am too bitter and jealous of them to even meet them halfway. I stand up abruptly, leaving the now crumbled sandwich on the table, "I'll just see you later."
"Nell," Pony says, but he doesn't get up to follow me and I don't expect him to. We have been hot and cold since my mother's news and Mark and Bryon's last party. I glance over my shoulder one last time and find that he's watching me walk away, a look I cannot read on his face. Immediately I want to go back and apologize, but instead I keep moving forward and I push through the cafeteria doors hoping that they'll accept an apology from me later.