The Reinvention of Bessica Lefter (11 page)

“All right, Cola, remember what you were told last year after the pushpin/water balloon fiasco. Any subsequent disruption—even the tiniest infraction—would result in a visit to the principal’s office. You know the way,” Mrs. Hackett said.

I couldn’t believe it. I gasped and covered my mouth with my hand. I hadn’t even made it inside the building yet and I’d encountered a psycho-bully. I glanced at the other two boys. Then it hit me.
These must be the other two psycho-bullies!
My knees felt very shaky, and the other two psycho-bullies shot me very hateful looks. It made me feel terrible. In fact, I felt terrible about my whole morning.

By the time Cola the psycho-bully got hauled away, there
weren’t many people outside anymore. And I became very worried that I was going to be tardy for nutrition. So I hurried as fast as I could into the building. That was when I saw all the club posters. They hadn’t been there at orientation. The papers were taped to the walls. Green posters. Orange posters. Blue posters. Yellow posters. Pink posters.

There were so many clubs. There was one for chorus. And cheerleading. And a book club. I pulled off the posters I found interesting as fast as I could, because they contained all the information about where and when the clubs met. And that was useful information that was hard to remember. Even though it seemed like a long shot, I even took a poster about a math club.

“Hey!” said a girl. “Those are nonremovable.”

She was so tall that I knew right away that she was a seventh or possibly eighth grader. But what she was saying didn’t make much sense, because I’d found the posters very removable. They were only held up with tape.

She stood there with her straight-across bangs and long brown hair, waiting for me to say something. But I didn’t. “They are posted with the School Approved stamp,” the girl explained. “You’re not allowed to take down official signs.”

I looked at the pile of posters. “Official signs?” They didn’t look all that official. They looked like I could make them at home on my computer.

“You need to put them back up,” the girl said.

“But I don’t have any tape,” I told her. “And I’ll be late for class.”

She held her hand out like she wanted me to give her the posters. She seemed so bossy and unkind about it. I wondered if maybe she was a psycho-bully too.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

But I didn’t answer her, because in this situation I preferred to remain anonymous.

“My name is Cameron Bon Qui Qui. I’m a hall monitor. When I ask questions you have to answer them. I have that kind of authority.”

And so I handed her the posters, even though I needed that information. Then I turned around and started hustling toward my locker.

“Hey,” Cameron Bon Qui Qui said. “I need to know your name. Plus, you can’t run in the hallways. Slow down or I’ll report you.”

I slowed down a little, but not because I wanted to slow down. There were so many bodies in the hallway that it was tough to get around them all. Also, a lot of them seemed lost. I kept moving, winding around their bulging backpacks. I heard Cameron Bon Qui Qui’s footsteps behind me. I wanted her to leave me alone and let me find my locker.

“Stop!” Cameron Bon Qui Qui said. “When a hall
monitor says ‘stop’ you have to stop. It’s in our middle-school constitution!”

I was surprised to hear that my middle school had one of those, or that I would be expected to honor it without even knowing what it said. So then I started running again, and I didn’t even try to open my stupid locker. In fact, I didn’t even remember where my stupid locker was. I hurried up the stairs and ducked into room 204, which was where I was supposed to be for my first class, nutrition. I found a seat in the corner and I put my head down on my desk.

I heard Cameron Bon Qui Qui’s shoes squeak past room 204.

“I’m looking for a violator,” she said. “She has short brown hair.”

Then a bell rang.

“Just go to class,” a voice in the hallway said. It sounded like a grown-up, but I couldn’t see her. “Lots of people are violators on the first day.” It was a woman wearing a red fluffy sweater and red cowboy boots. She looked like a cowgirl. She had a shiny belt buckle, but it wasn’t nearly as big as Willy’s. Then she walked into the room and shut the door.

I lifted up my head and looked around. So this was nutrition. I thought maybe we’d study apples or good posture. But I really had no idea. I glanced around the room.
All the nice kids seemed to be sitting at the front. And here I was, sitting next to kids who looked like they vandalized the vending machines on a regular basis. As soon as I had a chance to move seats, I was going to take it.

“I am Mrs. Mounds,” the teacher said. She wrote her name on the dry-erase board in big pink letters. “Look around. Where you are seated today will be your permanent seat.”

I looked around and then I almost puked. I couldn’t believe what I saw. One of the psycho-bullies from the T incident was in my class and he was sitting right next to me. He scowled at me and I looked back up to the front of the room. If I were sitting in the middle of the class, I’d be closer to more people and have a better chance of making friends. This was lame. I smiled at a tough-looking girl who was wearing a football jersey over her shirt. She didn’t smile back. She looked at me like she’d already decided that she didn’t want to like me. And I had no idea why that was.

“As many of you may know, this is your homeroom,” Mrs. Mounds said.

I had never had a homeroom before.

“This class is ten minutes longer than your other classes,” Mrs. Mounds said.

I pulled out my schedule and checked this out. She was right.

“It’s a time for official school announcements, which is how each day will start.”

Then a voice boomed into our room from a speaker on the wall.

“Good morning! I’m Principal Tidge! Welcome to North Teton Middle School! In case some of you missed orientation, I’m going to go through some useful information.”

Then Principal Tidge repeated a lot of information that I already knew. She even repeated the banned-weapons list, which was a downer to hear first thing in the morning. I was pretty happy when she got to the end.

“I want you to have a great day! And remember to be kind to the sixth graders! See you in the hallways!”

From across the hallway I could hear people laughing. Then I heard a boy yell, “I’m gonna smash a sixth grader just like this!” Then I heard a terrible thumping sound, and the laughter got really loud. But nobody in our room laughed. Because we were all sixth graders.

I watched Mrs. Mounds write her email address on the board, next to a list of rules. She had a lot of rules. We couldn’t be late. Or eat or drink. Or use any electronic equipment. We couldn’t talk. And we had to sit in the same desk each time. And we got a zero on all late work. And if we cheated on anything we’d fail. Also, she had a rule that we couldn’t pass gas, which I guess made sense.
I’d just never seen it as a written rule before. Some kids laughed when she read that one.

“She means we can’t fart,” the psycho-bully said to another kid.

“She must have big-time farting problems,” the kid said. Then he made a very quiet farting noise and he and the psycho-bully snickered.

“Listen up,” Mrs. Mounds said. “No talking while I’m talking.”

After everybody was quiet again, Mrs. Mounds handed us information cards to fill out and I unzipped my backpack to get a pen. When Mrs. Mounds heard my zipper, she looked at me.

“Backpacks have to be stored in your locker,” she said. “In the hallways they’re bumping hazards. In the classroom they’re tripping hazards.”

“I know,” I said. I looked down at my backpack. It was halfway in the aisle and I felt bad about that. I thought maybe she was going to force me to leave class and put my hazardous backpack in my locker. But she didn’t.

“Make sure you put it in your locker before the next class,” she said.

“Okay.” I thought about explaining my morning to her, but I didn’t want everybody in nutrition listening. So I tried to pull my backpack out of the aisle, and I shoved it so far underneath my desk that I put my feet on top of it
and I felt very cramped. I carefully reached inside my unzipped compartment for a pen. Then the psycho-bully bumped me on the arm and asked if I had another pen. I turned to face him and we locked eyes. And in his pupils I could see little images of my own face. And I looked scared.

“Here,” I said. I handed him a blue pen.

“I’m not giving this back,” he said. “I’m keeping it. And I want you to bring me a pen tomorrow too.”

And then I watched the little images of myself nod, which suggested I was okay with this arrangement.

“My name is Redge,” he said. “You sent my brother Cola to the principal today. And he didn’t even deserve it. Sometimes Cola does deserve it, but today he didn’t. Now me and Cola and Beacher are going to punish you.”

I blinked.

“You’re a rat,” Redge said.

“I am not,” I said, because even though I was scared and uncomfortable with where things were headed with Redge, I thought I should defend myself.

Redge smirked at me.

“No talking while I’m talking,” Mrs. Mounds said. Then she walked to the top of my row. “What’s your name in the back?”

I looked behind me, but it was just the wall.

“With the backpack,” she added.

Oh no. “Bessica,” I said.

She looked down at her roll book. “Bessica Lefter?” she asked.

I nodded.

Then she turned around and walked to the wipe board and wrote down my name.
My name
. And she didn’t even use pink marker. She used brown. Then she wrote Redge Marzo’s name on the board.

“If you get a check next to your name, you lose ten points,” Mrs. Mounds said.

“From what?” I asked.

“Your first assignment,” she said.

And I felt my eyes get warm and my throat get lumpy. Because I didn’t like what I was hearing. I’d started my first class in middle school in the hole, down a pen, stuck in the corner next to a psycho-bully.

I reached down and touched my pink bracelet over and over. I tried to be optimistic.
Middle school can only improve
, I told myself.
You’ll meet nice people in your next class. You’ll bump into a ton of cool people by lunch. You’ll probably end up in a fascinating lunch group. You’ll probably even like PE
.

But I was wrong about that.

iddle school did not get any better. That first day was pretty terrible. Mrs. Mounds spent a bunch of time discussing what was in food, gram by gram.

“A grapefruit has sixteen grams of sugar and four grams of dietary fiber.

“An order of medium French fries from McDonald’s has nineteen grams of fat.”

I wrote down as much of this as I could in my notebook. And when the bell rang, I hurried to my locker to dump off my backpack. But my combination was very hard to remember. I tried once. Twice. Three times.
Yank. Yank. Yank
. My locker really enjoyed being locked. I looked at
the clock on the wall. A flood of people zoomed past me. Then I decided to forget about my locker and take my hazardous backpack and head straight to English. I wanted a seat near the front.

Mr. Val welcomed us by playing some sort of ancient music that had a flute in it. He greeted us at the door and made little bows when we walked past him. He said he was trying to establish a mood. And I liked that idea, even though I didn’t like the ancient flute music. Happily, he didn’t say anything about my backpack. And so I picked out a seat near the front and stuffed it underneath me. Sort of.

Mr. Val was the tallest teacher I’d had in my life. He looked younger than my parents. I didn’t know what to expect from a tall, young, flute-loving teacher, but I soon learned. He was all about work. As he took roll, he made us come to the front of the class and get our assigned textbooks.

“You’ll need to put a cover on them by Friday. We don’t want to end a book’s life prematurely,” he said as the first boy, Toby Alda, collected his book. I got my book somewhere in the middle of everybody and sat down and flipped through it. There were assignments at the end of every unit. Bleh.