In an effort to not bring the family morale down any further, I try to keep my feelings to myself. But honestly? Having to change schools in the middle of your junior year was beyond crappy.
Whenever I think of what was lost, I remind myself that I now have Hunter, so it worked out in that respect, at least.
“How was the lake?” Mom asks, and the whole sex thing comes rushing back.
“Oh, it was fine,” I say, pulling my shoulder-length hair into a ponytail, trying to appear casual.
“Anything life-changing happen?”
I know she’s joking but it’s like she knows.
“Ha. Not today.”
“But it will tomorrow,” my dad says. “Just wait till you start cooking in your class!”
“Marco, don’t pressure the poor thing,” my mom says with a laugh. “She may have inherited my cooking skills for all you know.”
“I seriously doubt home ec will change my life,” I say as I head inside. “If I really need to learn to cook, I can always learn from the master.”
My father beams.
But seriously. Moving to a new high school in the middle of your junior year changes your life. Getting into your first-choice college changes your life. Actually having sex with your boyfriend changes your life.
Home economics class?
Not so much.
CHAPTER 2
I’m having the dream again. I’m back in seventh grade and standing on the sidelines of a gym class basketball game. My classmates are some variety of laughing, pointing, and staring at me because I’m wearing my old scoliosis brace over my clothes instead of under them. Danny Flatt comes up to me, sneering, and says, “No guy is ever going to want to have sex with you, Robot Girl.” This makes everyone in the room start laughing and pointing and staring harder, and then they all start chanting “Robot Girl!”
For some reason, the only thing I can say before I run out of the room is “Spaghetti.”
The sad thing is, aside from wearing the brace over my clothes, that probably could’ve been a typical day in middle school for me, even my lack of a formidable comeback. So it’s a relief to wake up twenty minutes before my alarm is set to go off, even though I realize I am crying and my nose is running. The last time I had the dream was right before I started at Ringvale Heights High and I’m guessing it was spurred on this time by the fact that Hunter didn’t return my call or texts last night.
I’d tried to go to bed as though I wasn’t bothered by the lack of communication, even though Hunter and I either spoke or texted every night before going to sleep. But I pretty much tossed and turned till about four in the morning.
Maybe Hunter had stayed too late at Brynn’s and was too tired to talk or send a text saying we’d talk in the morning. I ponder this and other various scenarios as I plod down the hall to the bathroom. I make sure to be quiet, since Dad got home from the Italian restaurant he works at a little after midnight and Mom doesn’t have to go to work at the new age store in town until 11:00 a.m.
I endure an intermittently hot and cold shower. I have no idea when the water heater was last replaced—my guess is it was sometime around the Kennedy administration—but at least I feel awake, though with a gnawing feeling in my stomach. I’ve clearly got a case of first-day-of-school nerves. I had them my first day at RHHS back in January, so it makes sense.
What’s sad is that I didn’t really ever have a problem with school at all until seventh grade, the hellhole of doom that inspired my dream this morning. Jodie and I were both at Chester Arthur Middle School, and since we hung out with the geeks, we both got picked on a bit, though not more than any other geek.
That’s until the scoliosis testing happened.
Yes, thanks to the school nurse being concerned about the curvature of my spine, and my doctor agreeing with her, my parents were told I’d have to wear a brace if I didn’t want to be all hunched over and crooked by the time I was forty. The brace was a mix of plastic and elastic and was way uncomfortable, but luckily, under my clothes it totally was not obvious. Except, one day in social studies, Danny, who thought himself quite the class clown, but was really just a dick hiding behind “humor,” went to go snap my bra strap and instead hit the brace.
“Oh my god, what is that?” he laughed.
When I didn’t answer, he yelled, “What, are you a robot?” He found this super hilarious and from that day on would yell “Robot Girl!” and other various insults whenever he saw me.
His friends got in on it and, for the next two years, they all made fun of me whenever I was in earshot. I didn’t want to tell any of the teachers because that would probably just make the situation worse.
My friends told me to not give them the satisfaction and just ignore it, but it was incessant, and I had no idea how to stop it. Danny and his friends started throwing food at me in the cafeteria and making fun of the fact that I was interested in meteorology (“Hey, Robot Girl! Is there a ketchup-packet downpour in your forecast?”) and picking on me on class trips (“Don’t forget to bring Robot Girl’s oilcan!”). It got so awful, I broke down and told my parents about it … which was a bad move because they told the school, who called Danny and the gang’s parents.
They were quieter about their bullying after that, but in a way that was worse,
