Next is Wendy. She’s blushing, obviously mortified to be speaking in front of the entire class about herself.
“I’m Wendy Avery,” she says with a shrug. “My family manages a ranch outside Wilson. I don’t know what else is that unique about me. I want to be a veterinarian, not a big surprise because I love horses. And I’ve made my own clothes since I was six years old.”
“Thank you, Wendy,” said Mr. Phibbs. She rocks back with a small sigh of relief.
From the desk next to hers, Kay stifles a yawn. It’s a small, ladylike gesture, but it makes me dislike her even more.
Silence.
Oh crap, I realize, they’re waiting for me.
All the things I’ve been considering fly out of my brain. Instead I think of all the things I can’t tell them, like
I clear my throat. “So I’m Clara Gardner, and I moved here from California.”
The other students snicker as a guy across the circle raises his hand.
“That’s one of Mr. Lovett’s unique facts,” said Mr. Phibbs, “only you weren’t here when he said it. You’ll find that there are quite a few students here who have migrated from the Golden State.”
“Okay, well, let me try again.” Specificity is obviously the key here. “I moved here from California about a week ago, because I heard such great things about the fudge.”
The class laughs, even Kay, who seems pleased. I suddenly feel like a stand-up comedian who’s just told the opening bit. But anything’s better than being known as the redheaded dorkina who passed out in the middle of the hall after third period. So jokes it will be.
“Birds are weirdly attracted to me,” I continue. “They kind of stalk me wherever I go.”
This is true. My current theory about this is because they smell my feathers, although it’s impossible to know for sure.
“Are you raising your hand, Angela?” asks Mr. Phibbs.
Startled, I glance to my right, where a raven-haired girl in a violet-colored tunic dress over black leggings is quickly lowering her hand.
“No, just stretching,” she says casually, looking at me with grave amber eyes. “I like the bird thing, though. That’s funny.”
But nobody’s laughing this time. They’re staring at me. I swallow.
“Okay, one more, right?” I say a little desperately. “My mom is a computer programmer, and my dad is a physics professor at NYU, which probably means that I should be good at math.” I make a pained face. The idea that I can’t do math is bogus of course. I’m good at math. It’s a language after all, which is why Mom understands the way computers talk to one another without having to work at it. And probably why she was attracted to Dad to begin with, who’s like a human calculator even without a drop of angel blood running through his veins. Jeffrey and I both find it ridiculously easy.
This doesn’t get a laugh, either, just a pity chuckle from Wendy. I’m apparently not cut out to be a stand-up comedian.
“Thank you, Clara,” says Mr. Phibbs.
The last student to name her three things is the black-haired girl who looked at me so attentively when I mentioned the weird thing with the birds. Her name, she says, is Angela Zerbino. She tucks her side-swept bangs behind her ear and lists her three unique things quickly.
“My mother owns the Pink Garter. I’ve never met my father. And I’m a poet.”
Another awkward silence. She looks around the circle like she’s daring someone to challenge her. Nobody meets her eyes.
“Good,” says Mr. Phibbs, clearing his throat. He peruses his notes. “Now we know each other better. But how do people really get to know each other? Is it with facts, the specifics about ourselves that distinguish us from the other six and a half billion people on this planet? Is it our brains that make us different, the way each person is like a computer programmed with a different mix of software, memories, habits, and genetic makeup? Is it what we do, the actions we take? What would your three things have been, I wonder, if I’d told you to name the most defining actions you have taken in your life?”
I see a flash of the fire in my mind’s eye.
“This spring we’ll be spending a lot of time discussing what it is to be unique,”
continues Mr. Phibbs. He stands and hobbles over to the small table at the back of the room, where he picks up a stack of books and begins to pass them out.
“Our first book of the semester,” he says.
“It’s alive!” yells the guy with the pink lady on his snowboard, holding up his book as if he expects it to be struck by lightning. Kay Patterson rolls her eyes
“Ah, you’re channeling Dr. Frankenstein already.” Mr. Phibbs turns to the whiteboard and writes the name Mary Shelley in black marker, along with the year 1817. “This book was written by a woman not much older than you are now, who was reflecting on the battle between science and the natural world.”
He launches into a lecture about Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the impact his ideas had on art and literature at the time that Mary Shelley was writing. I try not to stare at Kay Patterson. I wonder what kind of girl she is, to snag a guy like Christian. And then, since I don’t know anything about him other than what the back of his head looks like, and that he likes to rescue girls who pass out in the hall, I wonder what kind of guy Christian is.
