You knew you were playing it right when your audience was happy. They smiled and praised you and told each other how wonderful you were. Maybe part of you wished they’d see past the act, even once, and tell you Bridget Jones–style that they liked you just for who you were, but that never happened. No one wanted to go see independent movies with you. They laughed at the books you were reading and thought you were snobby because of the way you talked. So you put on the show, waiting for your real life to begin someday. And the applause made things inside of you warm that you hadn’t even known needed to be warmed up. The real you might be so much colder. So you kept doing it.
I’d acted my entire life and so far it’d only gotten me here, to the first day of senior year at Pine Valley High School. My last year in this building EVER. The last year of mandatory pep fests, the last year of rubbery macaroni and cheese smells in the hallways, the last year of showing my work on math formulas with sine, cosine, and the other one.
I’d always been good at school, not because I was so interested in most of it, but because I could remember anything I read or heard. And that was pretty much what school was, just reading things and then saying them back. Teachers loved that. What I really hated, though, was doing group projects. The teachers always paired up the smart kids with the stupid or lazy kids, which was completely unfair. Sometimes we got to pick our own groups, but even then I always ended up with someone who didn’t understand what we were doing. In American history last spring, Portia and Heather and I did a project on the civil rights movement and Heather kept confusing MLK with Malcolm X. Seriously. And at the end of class one day, Portia said, “I totally understand why you mix them up. I mean, they’re both black.”
And Heather just said, “Yeah,” like Portia was serious.
Portia looked at me like she couldn’t believe it—she’s very sensitive to race issues because she’s Hmong. But she’s sensitive to everything else, too, and that’s because she’s Portia.
Later Portia passed me a note that said, “Don’t u hate it when ur dumb friends r dumber than u think they r?” I almost died laughing and had to hide the note before Mr. Jacobs saw it.
Portia’s family moved here from Chicago when we were in ninth grade. Before then I’d been sure there was something wrong with me. Everyone else seemed to belong here without even trying; they didn’t have to pretend to like things like 4-H or American Idol. Then Portia came, bursting with stories about the Magnificent Mile and the lights on the marquee of the Goodman Theatre, and I realized there were places where it didn’t matter if your cow won a blue ribbon at the state fair. We’d been best friends ever since.
I pulled up to school in Greg’s old truck and waved at Portia, who was just walking in. She waited for me.
“OMG, I love it,” Portia said, eyeing my outfit as I walked up. “Turn around.”
“You like?” I did a catwalk turn. My first-day-of-school outfit was the best New York impression I could find in the Apache mall in Rochester—a black pencil skirt and a gray twinset with my black church heels that had the pointy toes. My hair was long and straight, light brown because mom wouldn’t let me dye it, and I usually wore it like today, swooped over my forehead and tied into a low, sleek ponytail.
“You’re so East Coast, darling.”
“And you are totally California chic.” I grinned at her sundress and chunky sunglasses. “I guess it makes sense that we’re meeting in the middle.”
Portia laughed, slung her arm through mine, and pulled me inside.
“You just missed Becca Larson. She’s got tan lines all over her boobs and half the football team was checking her out. I tried calling Maggie like three times to compare schedules, but she didn’t answer or text back, so I don’t know what her deal is.”
Portia kept chatting as we roamed the hallways and I put in a word here or there, but really, Portia didn’t need a lot of replies. So I pretended I was at the ten-year class reunion. Look at how small everything is! There’s my old locker. Oh yes, I’ve been living in New York for the last decade. Manhattan, darling. I couldn’t possibly live north of 96th Street. Not that I knew where 96th Street was, but I would. In less than a year I would be there and my new outfit officially kicked off the countdown.
We got to our lockers and found Maggie flirting with Corey Hansbrook, who still had acne all over his neck. Gross.
“So.” Maggie turned to us after Corey left for class. “Have you seen the new English teacher?”
“No! Dish.” With the promise of new gossip, Portia completely forgot about being snubbed. At least for now.
“I saw him when Dad and I were pulling into the parking lot and asked who it was.” Maggie’s dad was the vice principal, but that never seemed to interfere with her sexcapades. My dad would’ve freaked out if he saw me hitting on everything with a penis.
“He’s got gorgeous dark hair and cute squareish glasses and he looks like he’s in college.”
“Ass?” Portia demanded.
“Couldn’t tell. He was walking toward us. Kind of skinny, but hot, like library hot. Sweaty in the stacks, you know what I mean?”
I laughed along with Portia as the two-minute bell rang and didn’t give the new teacher another thought until we walked into our fourth period AP English class. Then something changed.
I’d felt out of place in my New York outfit all morning, which was the whole point, really—I was taking my first, deliberate steps away from trying to fit in—but when I walked into English and saw the new teacher, somehow I felt exactly right. He was lounging in his desk chair wearing chinos, facing the window, and completely oblivious to the stream of students talking and laughing as they picked out where to sit. I didn’t pay much attention to them either, only enough to slide into the front row and crack a notebook. Portia and a few other people settled in the desks around me and Maggie leaned over to whisper, “See, he’s totally hot.” I flashed her my Mona Lisa smile and started doodling random patterns on the notebook cover.