Freshman Year (3 page)

The memory feels like a jolt of something unfamiliar in my body, and all I want to do is get out of there. “Okay, thanks,” I say way too loudly and yank my tray toward me. The giant lemonade teeters but doesn't spill.

“Wait a minute, Amara.”

I freeze again.
Oh my God, she can tell.
What she can tell I'm not so sure of, but maybe she knows me better than I know myself, which seems very possible.

“Do you go to Gila High?” She leans on her elbow and squints at me. “You look really familiar.”

I mumble something about being a freshman.

“Oh, then you went to McCormick Elementary, right?”

I nod and wonder why no one else in the whole entire mall wants a corn dog or fresh-squeezed lemonade. It's like we're suddenly alone. Very, very alone.

“Yeah, I remember you now. What was that crazy Halloween costume you wore one year?” She taps the counter with her hard fingertips.

I beg the greater beings of our universe to help her forget, but I know from experience that the universe works in magical and sometimes hateful ways.

“Oh yeah, you were a guitar-playing rock.” Then she laughs at me for the third time. I like her laugh, though, even if it's at my expense. “Very creative.”

I could save the entire moment by simply saying, “Thank you,” but instead I say, “Well, I was actually a piece of metamorphic rock. Gneiss, to be exact, which is formed by the intense heat and pressure surrounding it. It was supposed to symbolize the pressure rock stars are under, kind of. Um, I mean, well, it was my dad's idea. I wanted to be a unicorn.” My dad would have been so pleased that I remembered the rock facts, but I totally regret the words as they leave my mouth.

“Good to know, Amara.” Then the Hot Dog on a Stick Chick nods at the woman who has apparently been standing behind me, waiting for her turn to order. “I guess I'll see you at Gila next week.”

“Yeah, I'll probably be there. I mean, of course I will. I have to go to school. It is the law. Besides, where else would I go?” Oh, how I wish I could go back to being a smiling, but voiceless, idiot. “So, see you soon. Or whenever,” I say, then grab my tray and hurry away like an Olympic speed walker.

And this is how my crush on the Hot Dog on a Stick Chick begins.

“And don't cheat, Abbey,” Kate says, as she washes down a spoonful of raw brownie batter with a gulp of Mountain Dew.

“I'm not, so shut up already.” I lean in closer to the screen to read the next question.

It's around two in the morning and it's our last sleepover at my house before our big first day of high school. My mom said good night four hours ago, making us swear we wouldn't stay up past midnight. We did promise to go to bed, but after my mom takes her prescribed sleeping pills she's pretty much in a coma. I guess I'm not the only one who still has dead-dad-caused sleep issues.

So here we are, strung out on brownie batter and Mountain Dew, enjoying our last night together before high school. Sarah and Marisol are sharing the earphones of Sarah's iPod while simultaneously beautifying themselves, and Kate's forcing me to take a stupid online personality quiz titled “Which Condiment Are You?” I'll admit I'm thinking about lying on some answers, but I don't because I know they will double check them. Being the founding sisters of the Doolen Junior High Geek Pack, we take tests very seriously.

“What does any of this have to do with my personality?” I ask after answering a question about how long I leave conditioner in my hair before rinsing.

“Just freaking do it,” Kate says, throwing my U of A Wildcats pillow at my head.

Cherry or Vanilla Coke? I hate both but pick Cherry because it seems to have a sexual connotation, which I hope will increase my score. Gap, Wrangler, Levi's, or Lucky jeans? I pick Lucky for the same reason as above.

Marisol leans over my shoulder, smacks her gum in my ear, and reads the next question out loud. “‘Who would you most enjoy grinding on the dance floor with? Katy Perry, Madonna, Miley Cyrus, or Lady Gaga?' Yeah, that was a tough one.”

That's when I close my laptop and push myself away from my desk. I make pretty good distance in my wheeled chair on the wood floor. “Hey, I know. Let's do something else. Who wants to torture me with makeup?”

“Nice try, Abbey.” Kate kicks my chair, and I'm back where I started. “Open up your flipping computer and answer it.”

“Yeah, who's it gonna be?” Sarah says, blowing some loose strands of blond hair out of her face. She's hunched over, painting her toenails, her turquoise thong peeking out of the back of her yoga pants. No one says anything, so I guess that's the style. Then Sarah says, “I picked Madonna because I don't really like dancing and she'd probably get tired faster being that she's a hundred years old.” She finishes her toenails and moves on to do her fingernails. She changes the color of her nails so much I am convinced she's lost some brain cells from the toxic polishes and remover. In fact, she nearly got kicked out of the Geek Pack when she got a B in Science, but Kate let her stay because Sarah has a giant trampoline at her house and a sister who works at Old Navy who gives Sarah and all her friends the employee discount.

“I don't know why they all have to be
gringas
.” Marisol usually complains in Spanglish, which Kate hates because she can only half understand her.

Sarah and I get it, though, because we took Advanced Spanish in junior high seeing as we live in Arizona and all. Kate, on the other hand, took German because she wanted to be different. Sometimes, on very rare and beautiful occasions, Marisol uses her wonderful native language to tell Kate off. I enjoy those moments.

“Besides, brown girls are where it's at,” Marisol says, as she straightens another lock of her thick black hair.
“Prefiero bailar con Shakira que con alguna de esas vacas
.
”

“What the hell are you saying, Mari? Are you talking about me?” Kate asks then smacks me again. “Just pick one, Abbey.”

“Yeah, Marisol, Shakira is a good dancer, but I guess I'll pick Lady Gaga.” I click on her name. “There. I'm done.”

“That was my second choice,” Sarah says. “She's got a nice ass.”

But Kate gags and says, “Nah. She's too freaky. She'd probably try to make out on the dance floor.”

I remind myself this is straight-girl talk; my friends are so very, very not gay and that's why they can talk like this. But for me, the one who is crushing hard on the Hot Dog on a Stick Chick, this is a tricky situation.

The website slowly contemplates my condiment.

“Read it to us,” Kate demands.

“I will. Hold on. There's nothing to read yet.” Then a giant pickle appears on the screen, which I'm predicting is not a good sign.

“Well?” Marisol and Sarah say in unison.

“Okay, it says, ‘Congrats! You are relish: though you are rarely wanted, you are good to have in the back of the fridge and sometimes you can be sweet.'”

They all bust up laughing.

In between gasps, Kate manages to say, “Abbey's smothered all over wieners!” and they all cackle again.

I stare at the screen in disbelief. Relish? Why not salsa like Kate—fresh and spicy, and good with every meal? Or at least mustard like Sarah—packs a punch and offers many flavors to please everyone. But, no. I get stupid pickled relish. I spin a lock of hair between my fingers for comfort while my friends laugh at me. Unlike the Hot Dog on a Stick Chick's laughter, theirs makes me feel like crap.

“Hey, Weiner Sauce, take notes,” Kate says after finally catching her breath. “It's time to make our new list of rules for high school.”

Glad to change the subject, I pull a piece of paper from my printer tray and take on my duties as the official Geek Pack secretary.

The Geek Pack is our not-so-secret club. It was founded in seventh grade, which was precisely when we discovered that if the four of us stuck together, we could continue to earn the highest grades in class while helping each other fend off cheaters and other classmates who found our genius irritating. In junior high, we displayed our A+ grades proudly on our bedroom walls and celebrated every honor roll and student-of-the-month certificate. In fact, mine are still taped to my closet doors around the edges of my Beatles posters.

“First of all,” Kate says, pointing her brownie spoon at each of us, “from this point forward, the Geek Pack is null and void.”

Sarah stops blowing on her nails and nods her head in agreement because that's what she always does. Kate could say, “From this point forward, Sarah will cluck whenever we eat pizza,” and every time we sat down for a slice at Mama's Pizza, Sarah would start clucking away. Marisol hesitates, runs the straightener down her hair to think on it, and then agrees that it's time to end our little haven of intellectual security. I'm usually the most argumentative one, but I feel too tired and shocked, so I write,
Rule #1: The Geek Pack is dead
. And just like that, when I feel like I'll need it most, it's gone.

“Rule number two,” Kate says, as she eats another spoonful of batter, “we can enroll in honors classes, but we should
not
sit in the front row or raise our hands to answer questions.”

“Why not?” Sarah asks.

Kate glares at Sarah with great exasperation. “Because hand raising is for dorks.”

Marisol looks pensive and finally says, “What if we have to go to
el baño
?”

Kate looks at me.

“The bathroom,” I translate.

“Obviously, you can raise your hand for that, Mari.”

Then Sarah asks, “What if the teacher is asking something like, ‘Who wants to get out of class early?'”

“Next rule,” Kate continues. “Rule number three—no dating loser freshmen boys. No exceptions. Rule number four—no asking about extra credit assignments. Rule number five—no helping teachers grade papers. Rule number six—absolutely no displaying of report cards.” After this one she looks over at me and then looks at my closet door.

“Whatever. I'll take them down tomorrow.” I wonder if I'm the only one who already misses the old us.

When Kate finishes her rules, my whole page is full. Most of them are as stupid as Rule #14, which states that pink shall only be worn on Tuesdays. The only one I do like is Rule #20: We will eat lunch together every day. This makes the loss of Geek Pack feel a little less tragic. Like there might still be a chance for a reunion tour senior year.

By around three o'clock, the brownie batter has settled uncomfortably in our stomachs, the Mountain Dew wears off, and we decide we're all too sick and tired to stay up any longer. We pinky-swear in the new rules with our never-to-be-used-again song: “We link our pinks and swear to keep this promise 'til we sink.”

While Marisol and Sarah, still connected by Sarah's earphones, sleep on an air mattress on the floor, I lie next to Kate in my bed, holding tight to the edge of consciousness and to the side of my mattress. I have to stay awake because if I let myself fall asleep, I might slowly slip into the middle and our bodies might touch. I don't think of Kate in
that
way and never have, but if I accidentally snuggle up to her in my sleep and she finds out about my crush on the Hot Dog on a Stick Chick and she freaks out and we are never friends again…well, I'm pretty sure I'll die.

So I'm awake, watching the minutes tick by on my bedside Beatles clock that sings “Here Comes the Sun” when the alarm goes off. I want to pass my time thinking about the person I haven't once stopped thinking about since I saw her in the mall, but considering my current sleeping situation, that's not such a good idea. Instead, I think about the person I usually think about before I fall asleep: my dad.

I think about how I'd do anything to have him back, especially now that I'm starting high school. He used to tell me stories about how much fun he'd had at Gila High and how I was going to love it, too. I was even going to join the club he started way back in the day: Future Scientists of America Club. I try to stop myself, but now I'm remembering the accident and the way his car looked like a crushed Coke can, then the funeral, then coming home and knowing he'd never be here again. I wish I could remember him without remembering any of that.

I need to focus on something else, so I start thinking about how the official start of high school is just forty-five hours away and that I have a lot of work to do. Since my encounter with the Hot Dog on a Stick Chick, I know it's going to take a lot more than new clothes and makeup to leave my nerdy self behind. I quietly take out my notepad and, by the light of the glowing faces of Paul, John, Ringo, and George, I make some changes to my to-do list. I cross out
Change glow-in-the-dark stars
, add
Buy scented lotion
, and draw a heavy, urgent circle around
Practice Spanish daily
.

*

I make it through the night on two hours of restless sleep, and in the morning, after Marisol and Sarah are gone, Kate and I have some breakfast while we wait for her sister Jenn to pick her up.

In between bites, Kate lectures me on the expected behavior of high school girls. “I mean, Abbey, boys aren't going to like you if you don't like yourself. You have to, you know, put some effort into how you look, or you're going to end up going to your first formal with a group of other lame-ass girls who couldn't get dates, or worse, you won't get to go at all.”

I try to act interested, but I'm not convinced she can know so much about a place she has never been. Jenn, on the other hand, is a much more reliable source. That's why when she talks, we all listen.

Jenn's going to be a senior at Gila High, and even though she usually ignores us or calls us names like the Freak Pack and Dorks R Us, she sometimes tosses out little morsels of highly desirable high school info. Naturally, I keep a list of these secrets in my notebook. They're mostly about which teachers to avoid (Schwartz and Ponsi), how to sneak off campus (like I would ever do that), and how the fastest snack-bar line is always run by the oldest lunch lady, but I'll take whatever I can get.