So for a while in sixth grade, I tried punching anyone who made fun of me. And the good thing was, if I punched someone and got caught, Mom would pick me up from the office, load everything into the van, and just move to a new town. It wasn’t worth the risk of staying somewhere I’d attracted that sort of attention.
But it got exhausting. So after a while, I tried just keeping my head down instead, and that worked better. Even at the school in seventh grade where one girl called me “Staff the Stick”—she was making fun of my name, not my body type—and she and her friends got everyone to call me “Sticky,” and then some of the boys started writing things on the board at the beginning of class that were supposed to be reasons I was sticky.
In retrospect, I really should have just punched someone at that naff school. Because the next school was way better.
Anyway, I’m a little old for punching, but I could get myself in trouble here, and then we’d move and maybe the next school would have Spanish and an English class without The Scarlet Letter.
It’s hard to get out of the habit of just keeping your head down, though. I’ll have to work to find a good opportunity.
History class offers no real scope for misbehavior; the teacher sets up slides full of notes for us to copy down, sticks his feet on his desk, leans back with a book, and—I’m pretty sure—takes a nap. I copy the notes and then take out my own book to read. Most of the students around me are on their phones, except for a few very diligent people in the front row who look like they’re doing homework for other classes.
My animal science class features gruesome animal diseases. We look at pictures of something called “lungworm.” It’s absolutely disgusting and also interesting enough that I’m distracted from my “get in trouble” plans. But then comes English.
Ms. Campbell, the teacher, is young, blond, and pretty but has the bored, world-weary air of a crabby, ancient teacher counting days till retirement. She tries halfheartedly to get the students to discuss the book. No one bites. She gets more and more irritable as she lectures. I don’t think she likes the book, either.
Rachel is drawing again. Today it’s a picture of a dragon, wings spread, neck arched. She’s sketching, experimenting with different ways to do the wings and the neck. She draws in the face as I watch, giving the dragon a look of sly interest, like it’s willing to have a conversation with you before it eats you.
Ms. Campbell is talking about themes from The Scarlet Letter. This go-round, I think I could give the lectures on guilt, vengeance, redemption, the letter A, any of it. I watch Rachel drawing instead, and unfortunately that might be what draws Ms. Campbell’s attention to Rachel’s notebook, because she strides over and snatches it off Rachel’s desk. She looks it over disdainfully. “This doesn’t look to me like any of the note-taking methods you all learned in ninth grade.” Rachel doesn’t answer. The teacher rips out the page with the picture, then tosses Rachel’s notebook back onto her desk. “Miss Adams, are you under the impression that there are dragons in The Scarlet Letter?”
“No,” Rachel mutters.
“When we discussed last week the idea that American literature treats the wilderness both as the source of purity and the home of the devil, did you decide that possibly this meant you’d find a dragon on your next trip to the arboretum?”
She’s doing that thing mean teachers do, where they try to be nasty to one kid to get the other kids to laugh at her victim, except she’s not very good at it. No one’s laughing. Rachel raises her head from her desk and shoots a look of absolute burning fury at Ms. Campbell. Ms. Campbell’s lips tighten and she moves her hands, and I realize that she’s about to tear the picture in half.
I jump up and grab the picture out of her hands. “Nope!” I yell, and I shove the picture inside my own notebook so she can’t grab it back. “Not yours!”
That makes everyone laugh. I fold my hands and wait for the teacher to send me to the principal’s office, wondering if I’ll have a way to get Rachel’s picture back to her before the principal suspends me and Mom whisks me off to the next place.
Instead, Ms. Campbell yells “Be quiet!” at my classmates and “Sit down!” at me and then goes on with the lecture like nothing’s happened.
After the bell, once we’re out in the hallway, I give Rachel her drawing back. “Thanks,” she says, and she tucks it carefully into a folder full of other drawings. Then she glances at a girl with heavy eyeliner who’s come up. “Sit with us at lunch?” she says.
Everyone shifts over as I come with my tray and Rachel introduces me. The girl with the eyeliner is Bryony. She looks biracial to me, although I’m not sure. Rachel and the rest are all white. I think Bryony might be the only nonwhite girl at this school.
“So why’d you move to New Coburg?” Bryony asks. “Seriously, this would not be my choice of where to move.”
“Rent is cheap here,” I say, which is what my mother tells me to say when people ask what brought me to some particular town. It’s both true and not very interesting.
I notice that everyone else at the table has cereal bars as part of their lunch: Suncraft Farms Quinoa & Açai cereal bars, which have a NEW IMPROVED TASTE according to the wrapper. Suncraft Farms is the brand made at the local factory. Probably everyone’s parents work there and bring home freebies.
They want to know where I’m from. I say Thief
