Popular: Vintage Wisdom for a Modern Geek (13 page)

All too quickly it’s over.

The entire audience stands up. The applause is deafening.

 . . . . . . .

“All right, everyone who’s skating, line up over there so that I can get you your passes,” says Ms. Charles. Mom and I decided earlier that I was not going ice-skating with the other choir girls after the concert. I have incredibly bad knees, and that combined with my lack of coordination is a recipe for disaster. Mom even made me wrap my bad knee this entire trip just to be safe.

I sit down at a table outside the rink, parking myself near the window and pull out a book. After about twenty minutes, I look up and notice a growing cluster of concerned people. They peer down at the ice near where I am reading. I can see that it’s Isabella, a seventh grader in our choir, sitting there.

I watch as the workers from the rink roll a wheelchair to her location. Isabella tries to stand but collapses. She fights back tears as they roll her into the room labeled
MEDICAL ASSISTANCE
.

I try to read my book, but her pain is all I can think about. It’s all-consuming and I watch the door until it opens. Isabella limps out holding an ice pack to her leg. She carefully seats herself a few tables over.

I’d never so much as said hello to Isabella. But, I just get up without even thinking about it and sit down next to her.

“Hey. Are you okay?” I ask gesturing at her knee.

“Yeah,” she says, smiling halfheartedly. “I feel like such a loser. I was just starting to get good and then my knee went all crazy. It like popped out and then went back. It was really weird. Gosh, it hurts.”

We talk for a little while about everything from injuries to musicals, to the fact that she wants to write novels. I give her my Ace bandage and show her how to wrap her knee.

After skating for another hour, our choir leaves to go back to the hotel. I help Isabella on the bus and off again. As we stand outside the door she says, “Thank you, Maya.” Her eyes are full of tears. “Thank you for everything.”

What is this newfound friendship? What does it mean for popularity? The crazy thing is, I never would have been confident enough to say hello before I began this experiment. Maybe real popularity comes from when you take time to listen to someone else. When you actually care about them.

Saturday, February 11

Isabella and I talk the entire bus ride home. We discuss clothing and style (apparently her favorite article of clothing is a skirt), food, and she even asks me for boy advice! Me,
Hobbit Girl
! Granted, most of what I say is “Wow,” “Mmh,” and “He doesn’t deserve you if he acts like that.”

The five-hour trip home is much nicer because the seventh graders now welcome me into their group. After they saw me being nice to Isabella, they started talking to me. All of them.

I hate to say it so soon, but maybe things can change. Maybe there’s hope for me yet.

When Mom picks me up I tell her how it went. As supportive as she is, she didn’t dare believe I could overcome the stigma of being last picked.

Neither did I.

Tuesday, February 14

Today is Valentine’s Day. I hand out chocolates and cards to all my teachers. It’s amazing how many truly phenomenal educators grace this border town. I also pass out candy to my peers, including Leon, who thanks me genuinely. In my generous mood, I even give one to Carlos Sanchez.

“Gee thanks, Maya.” He smirks, swiping another valentine off my desk and “accidentally” rips it apart. “I appreciate it.”

I don’t think I’ll get anything in return, (the last two years I’ve only received three valentines) but maybe my luck is changing.

 . . . . . . .

SIX! SIX WHOLE VALENTINES! SIX!

It’s all so wonderfully popular that I can hardly breathe. It started with the sixth grader who I’m nice to in the library. She gave me a package of M&M’s. Cards from two choir girls whom I smile at. Candy and a drawing from the girl I sat next to in art class last year when no one else would. Then some chocolate from a seventh grader I hung out with on the trip.

And when I thought that things couldn’t get any better, Isabella approaches me with a butterfly card and a stuffed dog. I’ve never gotten a plush valentine before.

I realize something as I thank all of these people for their gifts.

I have been kind to each of them in the past.

Saturday, February 18

Girdles really suck, in spite of the fact that they give me a flatter stomach. If it’s too low, it’s a muffin-top extravaganza. If it’s too high, you have a wedgie that has to be surgically removed.

I’ve also recognized another problem that proves Betty Cornell’s girdle theory wrong. I have diagnosed myself with it:

QUADRUPLE CHEEK SYNDROME

CAUSE:
Badly placed elastic

SYMPTOMS:
Bulges of butt where the girdle cuts off the circulation, resulting in what appears to be multiple bums.

CURE:
Take off the curve control!

My butt has giant purple stripes across it, but at least none of my four backsides jiggle.

Sunday, February 19

I’m shaking as I walk into church today. I still haven’t seen Ethan since the ghastly Hobbit Incident several weeks ago, so I’m terribly nervous.

I’m wearing clean clothes and my girdle, but I must admit that my confidence level is low. I checked my e-mail and found that my grandma had sent me a link about how to get rid of acne, so I spent thirty minutes washing my face. After that, I applied quite a bit of that body spray stuff. Maybe he’ll notice.

 . . . . . . .

He didn’t notice.

He did fall asleep during church, though, and when someone kicked him to sit up, he had a huge imprint of the seat in front of him on his forehead.

He’s so dreamy.

I get up quickly to go to the bathroom as I feel the first heave of words trying to spew from my mouth.

It’s a miracle that I get to safety before I can blurt out, “Your forehead looks just like my butt after I take off my girdle!”

Tuesday, February 21

All good grooming means attention to details. . . . It means looking after yourself and your clothes. It means hanging up your things when you take them off—a skirt that has lain rumpled on the closet floor all night is not going to look like a million dollars the next morning.

I have completely reorganized my clothing and cleaned my entire room. I’ve showered every day this month, endured the girdle, worn perfume, learned how to apply lipstick better, made sure my hair didn’t get frizzy and out of place, and cleaned out my nails with an actual nail cleaner from a store. My T-shirts are now arranged by color as well as by material. Betty Cornell would be proud.

But today I feel like the only one who keeps up her good grooming in this household.

Dad and Brodie walk downstairs shirtless. At least Brodie is wearing pants.

Brodie drags Natalia into where Mom and I are making dinner. Mom’s not wearing a bra.

“Mom, Natalia smells. When’s the last time you changed her underwear,” he asks.

“When’s the last time you changed
your
underwear?” she retorts.

He pauses and lets go of Nat’s wrist. “Touché.”

Wednesday, February 29

On the bus ride home from school, Kenzie sniffs my sweater, which is clean and significantly coated in perfume. “You smell . . . funny.” I sigh. It’s the last day of the month, and showering daily and ironing my clothes hasn’t catapulted me to the top of my school’s popularity scale. When I get home at the end of the day, I have a horrible red rash all around my waist from my girdle. Of course, Brodie mocks me for it and Natalia thinks it’s funny to step on the red sores over and over again.

But this month hasn’t been all bad. In fact, I have felt more popular than ever before. But it had more to do with kindness than keeping a wiggly backside in check. I find a box of fortune cookies hidden in back of the linen closet and crack one open.

GOOD LUCK WILL BE SHOWERED UPON YOU!

Gosh, I hope so.

MONEY (HOW TO EARN EXTRA) & ON THE JOB

The plaintive lament about money or rather the lack of it cannot fairly be said to apply strictly to teen-agers. . . . However, teen-agers are in rather a special position in regard to money—they need more of it than children do and yet they are not free to earn it as an adult would.

Even though we are well-to-do compared to a lot of other people in Brownsville, I’ve never considered myself wealthy. I grew up listening to Mom and Dad’s stories of sleeping on floors, pocketing food at film festivals, surviving off Ramen noodles, and saving up change to buy supplies for their next documentary. Although our lives have gotten a lot better since those days, my parents still worry about money. Mom bargain shops. Dad is always on the lookout for antiques to sell. He was a graduate student for years, believing that all that education would pay off financially once he got his Ph.D. I suppose he thought he would be making a lot more than he does now, which is less than my middle school teachers. I guess this is why we don’t get an allowance.

Mothers and fathers do the best they can to provide for their offspring’s needs, but when it comes to an extra formal or money for a froufrou blouse, things that aren’t desperately needed but desperately desired, then the best answer is to try and earn your own.
Baby-sitting can be a steady job or a hit-or-miss affair, depending on the way you want to go about it. If you want to work at it regularly there is nothing to prevent you from making up a list of clients and keeping in constant touch with them.

 . . . . . . .

It shouldn’t be too hard to get someone to trust awkward me with their children, right? I’ll make flyers to broadcast my babysitting services, and while I wait for responses, I can do odd jobs around the house.

My moneymaking goal this month: fifty bucks. Maybe then I’ll be able to pay for some top-of-the-line girdle ointment.

Thursday, March 1

Dad walks through the front door. The look on his face is half fear, half excitement. He sits down at the kitchen table.

“They offered me a job. A university in Georgia offered me a job.”

Mom, Brodie, and I gape at him, too stunned to speak. Our family has moved twice in my memory, always following the jobs Dad gets, but past experience doesn’t make it any easier to deal with this new bit of information.

“I’m not going to make the decision tonight,” Dad answers. “There are too many factors. We don’t even know if we can sell this house. But they’d pay me twenty-five percent more than I’m making now.” He runs his fingers through his long hair, clearly flustered.

Without a word, I go to the linen closet and bring out the box of fortune cookies. “You need to ask the cookies, Dad. They know all.” He laughs and picks one out. I sit down on his lap and watch as he opens the red-tinted cellophane.

“Okay, so this
dessert
will determine whether or not we move,” he proclaims.

I put my hand on his wrist. “Trust the cookie.” He cracks open the light brown shell and pulls out the scrap of paper. His eyes widen. I grab it from him and read:

YOU
WILL
TAKE
A
CHANCE
AND
BE
GLAD
YOU
DID
!

“I told you!” I gloat. I dance around the room, thrilled to have been right.

“It’s not official!” Dad groans, exasperated.

We’re moving! We’re moving! Ha-ha!

All of a sudden, reality sets in, and it feels like my heart has been ripped out of my chest. I can’t say good-bye to this place, to these people—Mr. Lawrence, Isabella, Dante, Leon, Ms. Corbeil and the Fishbowl. Even Carlos Sanchez’s inane questions, his irritating laugh, and his gay pigeons. I’m going to miss him too.

And then it hits me . . .

Kenzie! Holy cow, how will I leave Kenzie?!

Sunday, March 4

At church today Liliana and I teach a lesson to the five-year-olds’ class as part of a service project. If this were a wrestling match (which it kind of is), the headline would read:
TEN DEMON CHILDREN VS. TWO UNPREPARED GIRLS.

If I’d seen the odds, I would’ve bet against me too.

Their ringleader, Sandy, never stops running around. While Liliana is trying to share a message about Jesus, I have Sandy on my lap, attempting to keep her from biting or screaming. She makes up a song about pooping. A regular Kenzie in training.

I made flyers to broadcast my babysitting service, but only got to hand out three today. It’s probably better that way. After today’s experience, I will definitely be careful about where I advertise.

Monday, March 5

Dad obeys the fortune cookie and officially accepts the job today.

I go back and forth between wanting to vomit and wanting to soar up through the ceiling. Fear and excitement. Sorrow and curiosity.

During lunch, Kenzie and I talk. I try to avoid bringing up the subject of major life changes and instead ask her if she’s excited for Spring Break. I haven’t told her yet. Every time I try to, I end up at a loss for words. It’s impossible.

“How could I be?” she groans. “My mom is sending me away to camp for the whole week,” she mumbles.

“Well, camp can be fun, I guess,” I’m trying to be positive. “What are you going to be doing?”

“I have to ride on a tour bus with a bunch of other Korean kids,” Kenzie groans, laying her head down on the table. She whimpers, “Our moms organized the whole thing.”

“Ouch. So, are you touring Texas?” I offer her half of my banana, which she accepts gratefully.

“Pennsylvania,”
she sobs through bites of fruit. From the way she says it, Pennsylvania might as well be synonymous with Purgatory.

“I am so sorry.”

“And then we have to see the play
Jonah and the Whale
.” Her voice cracks.

I bite my lip to keep from laughing. “That sounds awful!”

“Please tell my mom that. I even cried when she told me, but she had no mercy.”

I feel so bad for Kenzie.

Still, it’s very funny.

Even though I laugh, deep down the secret eats me alive. We’re moving. She’s my best friend, and I don’t even know how to tell her. I can’t.

What if she cries? What if she doesn’t? How can I handle it either way?

Tuesday, March 6

They appear today. The boxes. We’re not moving until July, and they’re already here, shoving their way into my life.

And yet, there’s a sense of excitement in the air, a charged energy. It reminds me that there’s a new adventure on the horizon.

Then again, the whole business kind of scares the girdle marks (yes, I still occasionally wear my girdle) off my four butts.

I’m so confused I seek out the wisdom of a fortune cookie.

YOU WILL BE SUCCESSFUL IN YOUR FINANCIAL ENDEAVORS.

I’m beginning to think that these things are magical. I check my e-mail, but no one has contacted me about my babysitting services yet. Next Sunday I’m going to have to cast a wider net. Oh, boy.

There is yet another approach to the art of having enough money, and that is cutting down on expenses—or in the plain parlance of platitudes, “A penny saved is a penny earned.”  . . . ride a bike instead of the bus, write letters instead of making long distance telephone calls, and stay at home and play records instead of feeling obliged to see every movie that comes to town.

Okay, Betty, I’ll do my part to keep from spending my money on jukeboxes and pinball machines.

Wednesday, March 7

The hallways of our entire school are covered in lockers, but we aren’t allowed to use them because of concerns over drugs and weapons. Instead, the art teachers display their students’ projects all over them. As Kenzie and I walk slowly down the hall together we pass the dead pandas and vampire punk bands the Goth Art Chicks have drawn. I see Hello Kitty being swallowed up by a black hole, and I think I know how she feels. I can’t hold back any longer.

“Kenzie, I have to tell you something. You’re my best friend. You need to know first.”

The smile disappears from her face. “What?”

“I’m not going to the same high school as you.”

“What do you mean?” Her voice is soft and sad.

“Oh, Kenzie, we’re moving this summer. My dad got an amazing job in Georgia. It’s a nice place and all, but I’m going to miss you so much.”

She looks away. I stare at the rows of empty lockers.

Finally, Kenzie looks up. “You’d better Facebook me.”

“All the time,” I reply.

We sigh and stand there for a while. The bell for first period rings, and we give each other a sad smile. I walk quickly to algebra, filled with pain and relief.

The principal’s voice bursts out over the intercom. “Students, I must inform you of a sad event. Mr. Lawrence, one of our seventh-grade English teachers, passed away this morning.”

I look up.
No. NO!

“Funeral information will be given at a later date. We will now have a moment of silence to honor the life of such an amazing teacher. . . .”

All first period, I’m in a daze.
It’s not real. Not real. He can’t be dead. He’s my mentor, my friend. NO!

After class Kenzie grabs my arm in the hallway. Our eyes meet and I see compassion like I’ve never witnessed before. “Maya, I’m so sorry,” she says, pulling me into a hug.

“He’s dead,” I sob into her arms, leaving wet spots on her jacket. “He’s dead.”

“I know,” she says.

We stand like that for a long time, and in that moment, I know that Kenzie will never abandon me. We’re two outsiders who don’t quite fit in anywhere, but together find a place to belong. No matter where we are or what happens, she’ll always be my friend.

We pull away, and I see the tears in her eyes too. Silently we leave for our classes: me to choir, her to band.

By this time the emotions are flowing freely down my cheeks, and I can’t stop them.

Dead. There it is again, that strange, impossible word. I can’t wrap my mind around it. I hug my arms around my shoulders and cry silently into my knees. I’m not the only one. Several other girls are sobbing into their boyfriends’ arms. How dare they cry! So many of them gave Mr. Lawrence a hard time when he was alive.

My feelings change though, as unfamiliar hands reach out and pat my back. The seventh graders all gather around and hug me, telling me how sad they are. People hand me tissues and run loving fingers through my hair.

I wonder if I should feel popular, but all I feel is numb. No popularity exists when tragedy strikes. All that’s left are human hearts and love and ache. We all love each other, deep down, and when we see another soul in pain we can’t help but hurt too.

I find my peace in the arms of total strangers who have never spoken to me before. In third period, I see Carlos Sanchez, red-faced, hiding his tears as he defensively states that girls crying makes him “feel weird.”

This is universal love, found in the most unlikely place.

This love is what keeps me going through the day, until I collapse into my mother’s and father’s arms and sob.

Thursday, March 8

At school today I feel as if everybody else has moved on. There are no more girls crying, so I save my sadness for when no one is around.

I go home and listen to the first CD I find in my closet, which happens to be ABBA. I lay down on my bed and cry. I don’t want anyone to see. This isn’t the dramatic sadness that I’m so used to. It’s too hard to admit that deep down I am broken, caught in a continual ache that doesn’t go away. I sob into a pillow, nodding my head along to “Money, Money, Money.” (Doesn’t that theme just keep recurring?)

I have to grieve on my own. Work through it in my own time.

Nobody has contacted me about babysitting. I guess that I’m not going to make any money this month.

My family has been going through boxes of papers and folders. Brodie finds twenty bucks left in his old birthday cards.

I look through tons of stuff and retrieve nothing.

Saturday, March 10

A fitted white blouse.

A black skirt.