always said they would and never did.
She had her first date during sophomore year when a boy from her Spanish class invited her to the junior prom, which was a big deal. Connie said he was a great guy, and he was until he got drunk in the bathroom with some other boys and got kicked out of the prom, and she had to call her father for a ride home.
She got her first car the summer before junior year, and had taken driver’s ed the year before, and had her learner’s permit so she was all set. From then on, she drove herself to school. It was an old Honda her father had bought for her, and she was excited about it.
It wasn’t something she talked about to anyone, but by junior year her body had gotten bigger than it was before. She had gained ten pounds over the summer. She had a summer job at an ice cream store, and ate ice cream on all her breaks. Her mother was upset about it and said it was the wrong job for her. It was too much temptation for Victoria, as proved by the weight she gained.
“You look more like your great-grandmother every day” was all her father said, but it made the point. She brought home ice cream cakes shaped like clowns for Gracie every day. She loved them and no matter how many she ate, she never gained a pound. She was nine by then, and Victoria was sixteen.
But the main benefit of her summer job was that she earned enough money for a trip to New York with the travel club during Christmas break, and it changed her life. She had never been to such an exciting city and liked it much better than L.A. They stayed at a Marriott hotel near Times Square, and they walked for miles. They went to the theater, opera, and ballet, rode the subway, went to the top of the Empire State Building, visited the Metropolitan Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, and the United Nations, and Victoria had never had so much fun in her life. They even had a snowstorm while she was there, and when she got back to L.A., she was dazed. New York was the best place she’d ever been, and she wanted to live there one day. She said she might even go to college there if she could get into New York University or Barnard, which might be a stretch despite her grades. But she floated on the experience for months.
She met her first serious high school boyfriend right after New Year’s. Mike was in the travel club too, but had missed the trip. He was planning to go to London, Athens, and Rome with the club during the summer. Her parents wouldn’t let her go-they said she was too young, although she’d be turning seventeen. Mike was a senior, and his parents were divorced, so his father had signed the permission slip. Victoria thought he was very grown up and worldly and fell madly in love. For the first time in her life, he made her feel pretty. He said he loved her looks. He was going to Southern Methodist University in the fall, and they spent a lot of time together, although her parents didn’t approve. They thought he wasn’t smart enough for her. Victoria didn’t care. He liked her, and he made her happy. They spent a lot of time making out in his car, but she wouldn’t go all the way. She was too scared to take that leap. She said she wasn’t ready. And in April he dropped her for a girl who would. He took the new girl to senior prom, and Victoria sat home nursing a broken heart. He was the only boy who’d asked her out all year.
She never had many dates or a lot of friends. And she spent the summer on the South Beach Diet. She was diligent about it and lost seven pounds. But as soon as she got off the diet, she gained it back plus three more pounds. She wanted to lose the weight for senior year, and her PE teacher had told her she was fifteen pounds overweight. She lost five pounds at the beginning of senior year, by eating smaller portions and fewer calories, and promised herself she’d lose more before graduation. And she would have if she hadn’t gotten mono in November, had to stay home for three weeks, and ate ice cream because it made her throat feel better. The fates had conspired against her. She was the only girl in her class who gained eight pounds while she had mono. Her size was a battle she couldn’t seem to win. But she was determined to beat it this time, and swam every day during Christmas vacation and for a month after. And she jogged around the track every morning before school. Her mother was proud of her when she lost ten pounds.
She was determined to lose the other eight pounds, until her father looked at her one morning and asked her when she was going to start working out to lose some weight. He hadn’t even noticed the ten pounds she had lost. And after that she gave up swimming and jogging and went back to eating ice cream after school and potato chips at lunch, and bigger portions, which satisfied her. What difference did it make? No one noticed it, and no one asked her out. Her father offered to take her to his gym, and she said she had too much work at school, which was true.
She was working hard to keep up her grades, and had applied to seven schools: New York University, Barnard, Boston University, Northwestern, George Washington in Washington, D.C., the University of New Hampshire, and Trinity. Everything she had applied to was either in the Midwest or the East. She had applied to no schools in California, and her parents were upset about it. She wasn’t sure why, but she knew she had to leave. She had felt different for too long, and although she knew she would miss them, and especially Gracie, she wanted a new life. This was her chance, and she was going to grab it while she could. She was tired of competing and going to school with girls who looked like starlets and models and hoped to be that one day. Her father had wanted her to apply to USC and UCLA, and she refused. She knew it would just be more of the same. She wanted to go to school with real people, who weren’t obsessed with how they looked. She wanted to go to college with people who cared about what they thought, like her.
She didn’t get into either of her first-choice schools in New York, nor Boston University, which she would have liked, nor GW. Her choices in the end were Northwestern, New Hampshire, or Trinity. She liked Trinity a lot but wanted a bigger school, and there was good skiing in New Hampshire, but she chose Northwestern, which felt right to her. The greatest thing it had going for it was that it was far away, and it was a great school. Her parents said they were proud of her, although they were distressed that she was leaving California and couldn’t understand why she would. They had no concept of how out of place and unwelcome they had made her feel for so long. Gracie was like their only child, and she felt like the family stray dog. She didn’t even look like them, and she couldn’t take it anymore. Maybe she’d come back to Los Angeles after school, but for now she knew she had to get away.
She was one of the top three students in her class, and had been asked to give a speech after the valedictorian, which stunned the audience with the seriousness and value of what she said. She talked about how different she had felt all her life, how out of step, and how hard she had tried to conform. She said she had never been an athlete, nor wanted to be. She wasn’t “cool,” she wasn’t popular, she didn’t wear the same clothes as all the other girls during freshman year. She didn’t wear makeup till sophomore year, and still didn’t wear it every day. She had loved Latin class even though it made everyone think she was a geek. She went down the list of all the things that had made her different, without saying that she felt even more out of place in her own home.
And then she thanked the school for helping her to be who she was, and find her way. She said that now they were all going out into a world where they would
“Great speech,” he complimented her. “It’ll make all the weirdos in your class feel good,” he added sincerely as she looked at him with wide-open eyes. Sometimes she wondered if he was just stupid, or maybe mean. He never failed to miss the point. She could see that now.
“Yeah, like me, Dad,” she said quietly. “I’m one of them. The weirdos and the freaks. My point was that it’s okay to be different, and from now on we’d better be, if we’re going to make something of ourselves. It’s the one thing I learned in school. Different is okay.”
“Not too different, I hope,” he said, looking nervous. Jim Dawson had conformed all his life, and he cared a lot about what people thought of him. He had never had an original thought in his life. He was a company man through and through. And he didn’t agree with Victoria’s philosophy, although he admired the speech and how well she had delivered it. He could see in her ability when she did it that she had inherited something from him. He was known for his excellent speeches too. But Jim never liked to stand out or be different. That had never been okay with him. Victoria was well aware of it, which was why she had never in her entire life felt at ease with them, and she felt even less so now, because she was different from her parents in so many ways. And it was why she was starting the most important adventure of her life, and leaving home to do it. She was willing to push herself out of her
