Shutout (5 page)

I don't remember my mom dying or anything, but I do kind of remember the time after she died and before Dad met Mom, just weird little snapshot memories of Dad crying hysterically and me getting freaked out because I was a little kid and crying hysterically was
my
job.

The one way in which Dad is right about the whole thing affecting me is that I never ever think, “Well, it can't get much worse.” It can always get worse. It can get so much worse that somebody ends up dead.

So, knowing that, I wasn't too surprised when, on the first day of school, it got worse.

Dad wanted to take me to school, but fortunately Mom told him what I would have told him, which was that school was only a couple of blocks away, I could certainly walk there like Conrad did, and I had been going to the high school for soccer practice every day for the last two weeks.

Dad, unable to embarrass me in public, tried his best to
embarrass me in private. He gave me this big hug and held it too long, like I was going away for the year or something.

“Dad,” I said, “you know, I am going to be back this afternoon after soccer practice.”

“I know,” he said. “Just give me a second here.”

“Okay.”

“This is a hard time for everybody,” he whispered, “but remember—”

“I know, I know, tough as an old boot. I got it,” I finished, and he laughed.

“Damn right. Now get the hell out of here.”

Dad is so weird. Still, I guess in the end it's better to have this kind of dad than one of those guys who's always at work and figures he can't be in the same room as his daughter as soon as she starts wearing bras. Like Lena's dad, for example.

I got to school, and there were like a million kids there, and everybody was doing the hugging and squealing and oh-my-God-your-hair-looks-amazing-ing. Well, the girls were doing that. The guys were doing the arm-punching, shoulder-bumping, and “sup”-ing. Where was Lena?

I whipped out my phone to text her. There was no way I'd be able to hear her with all the squealing and “sup”-ing going on around me. “Where R U?” I sent.

“Btwn the Lions,” she sent back, and I smiled. That was our favorite show when we met in the third grade. I headed for the steps that were guarded by the big stone lions, looking for Lena but having a hard time picking her out in the flood of humanity that was washing over the steps.

“Nice toothpicks!” I heard a guy say. I had almost convinced
myself that this was not some jerk talking about my legs when I heard the same voice go “Oof! What the hell?” and then I heard Conrad's voice go “Say something else about my sister, asshole.”

So I was actually being mocked for my freakish body on the first day of school. Fantastic. The fact that Conrad had stood up for me was nice, but it would have actually been nicer if he didn't have to. Oh well.

Finally I spotted Lena, an island of sanity in this horrible sea of people. Two really tall and really cute guys were talking to her, and she was doing this giggly flirty laugh that sounded nothing like her. I got up to them and she was like, “Oh, hey. Guys, this is my best friend, Amanda!”

I raised my hand in greeting and said, as brightly as I could manage, “Hey!”

“'Sup,” they mumbled, and faded into the crowd.

Lena was beaming. “Wow!” she said. “The guys here are so nice!” Yeah, unless you've got toothpick legs. “Are you ready?”

“As ready as I'll ever be.”

“Okay. Let's do it.” And we walked into school together. We both had the letter with our homeroom assignments in our hands. I was in 319, she was in 348.

Strangely, these turned out to be right across the hall from each other, which was good because we could stand in the hall together being terrified until the bell rang. Well, I was terrified, anyway. I exchanged quiet greetings with the other JV girls I saw, and once in a while a junior or senior girl would walk by and greet Lena with a big hug or a hearty “Have a great day!”

This happened because the third floor, where our homerooms were, was also the home of the seniors' lockers and some of the juniors' lockers. I guess because somebody thought that having your locker and homeroom on the same floor might make your life too easy or something.

Finally the bell rang and we said goodbye and went into our homerooms. After the tedious business of calling everybody's name, my homeroom teacher, Mr. Knarr, an art teacher with a goofy smile, said, “Okay, I have a bunch of really boring stuff I'm supposed to read to you guys, but I'd just as soon skip that if it's all the same to you. You got the handbook mailed to your house, so I don't think we need to go over every single rule, right? And you've used combination locks before, right, so I don't need to go over that, though I probably should tell you that the school can cut your lock off and search your locker without cause at any time, so if you have any . . . interesting hobbies, you might not want to leave the evidence lying around in your locker.”

The members of the Future Burnouts of America club laughed, and at that moment, somebody's cell phone went off. Okay, I had been mocked publicly and separated from my best friend and kicked off the good soccer team, but at least my phone didn't start playing a song from
High School Musical 3
in the middle of homeroom. So I guess it really could be worse.

The girl whose phone it was—this heavy, pale girl with frizzy, mousy hair—turned purple with embarrassment and started digging in her purse.

“Bless you!” Mr. Knarr said, and people smiled. “Those
fall allergies are killer. I too sound like Zac Efron when I sneeze.” Everybody laughed, and the purple girl faded to red and looked like she wanted to disappear under her desk instead of die on the spot, so I guess he handled it pretty well.

“On an unrelated note, you may have read in the handbook the sensible and completely enforceable rule that cellular phones are not allowed in school and are subject to confiscation. The school cannot search your person without cause, though, so as long as your phones are invisible and set not to ring, the one or two of you who brought phones to school”—everybody laughed—“should be able to avoid getting in trouble.

“Now, for the moment you've all been waiting for. Your schedules.” He handed everybody's out, then said, “After the name of the class is a one or two. One is for honors classes, two is for regular classes. Take a few minutes to ponder your schedules, and then we'll talk again.”

I pondered mine. I couldn't help noticing the “2” after my math class. So that meant I was in “regular” math. Since, according to Conrad, something like 60 percent of the school is in honors classes, because that's just how special our beloved Charlesborough is, that meant I had basically been cut from the A team
again
.

“Those of you who are certain there's been a terrible mistake in your placement, put your complaint in writing, and I'll be sure to file it appropriately.” Mr. Knarr held up the wastepaper basket when he said this. Did everybody on the staff here have, like,
1001 Corny Jokes for Teachers
or something? “No, I'm kidding. Go down and fight the crowds at
guidance if you have questions. You'll probably have to make an appointment.”

I fumed until the bell rang and we had time to go set up our lockers and go to guidance. I met Lena in the hall and looked at her schedule. We had the same classes, except, of course, for math, where she had level one and I had level two.

“Well, at least we've got everything else together,” Lena said. “See?” She handed me her schedule.

“Yeah, that's—wait a minute. You're in English 9-1-B!”

“Um, yeah?”

“So I'm in English 9-1-A! We're not in the same English class!” In fact, we were in different sections for everything, no doubt because me being in bonehead math had messed up my schedule so I wouldn't be with Lena
at all
.

I figured I could set up my locker later, so I said goodbye to Lena and practically ran to guidance. One good thing was that I was able to talk to my guidance counselor right away. He was a tall, white-haired guy who was the boys' JV soccer coach, and somehow he knew I was Conrad's sister even though we have different last names.

“I'm really sorry, Amanda,” he said. “I know this is hard. But the eighth grade teachers make the recommendations for leveling ninth graders, and the teachers will murder me if I mess with that stuff. If they've made a terrible mistake, your math teacher will see that, and you can move up.”

It turned out that Mr. Blair, my eighth grade Algebra teacher, was evil as well as boring. Of course I hadn't done well in his class! He was the most boring person on the face of the earth, and he spoke in a monotone all the time. How can
you possibly pay attention to somebody droning on and on at 7:40 in the morning?

I really wanted to cry, but I pushed my tears back inside and made them stay there and was determined to walk through this horrible day in this horrible school with my head held high.

I heard Dad's voice in my head again. “Tough as an old boot,” he whispered.

Yeah, Dad, but if I'm the old boot, why am I the one who keeps getting kicked?

Back in middle school, lunch with Lena always helped me get through a stressful day. Like pretty much whatever was going on, she could get me to laugh about it. And that's the way lunch started today.

“Oh my God, this math class is going to kill me,” I said. “It's me and a bunch of burnouts and poor Nick Randall. I mean, the kid is nice, but he's dumb as a doorknob, and I'm in class with him!”

“Too bad you don't sell weed,” she answered.

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Well, burnouts with bad math skills—it seems like an awesome moneymaking opportunity. You could totally cheat them and they'd probably thank you for it!”

I was upset, but I couldn't help laughing, picturing me in the back of the room with baggies and a scale and everything, as if that would ever happen. I'd be more likely to start
shopping in petites. “I think I'll probably go for the job over at the ice cream shop, if it's all the same to you.”

“Yeah, I don't know how often my mom would let me visit you in jail.”

“It might solve my problem of never having anything to wear though.” Yes, my fashion problem is so bad I was actually pondering the positives of prison uniforms.

“Don't go to jail for fashion,” Lena said. “I'm sure we can get you some manly blue work shirts here on the outside if you decide that's a look you want.”

Okay, I was starting to feel better. Even talking about stupid stuff with Lena made me feel better. But then a couple of varsity girls stopped by where we were sitting.

“Hey, Lena,” they said, smiling.

“Oh, hey!” Lena chirped. “Mo, Lauren, this is Amanda. You remember her from practice?”

“Oh yeah,” one of them said. “Hey.”

“How's your first day?” the other one said to Lena, and Lena started talking about how totally awesome everything was, and pretty soon a couple more girls stopped by the table, and it wasn't long after that that a few guys stopped by. And not just any guys. Older guys. Soccer-playing guys. Guys including Duncan, the hottest guy in school. Really cute guys. Tall guys. Guys who had no business even looking at somebody five feet four inches tall because they could find a nice tall girl more appropriate for someone of their height sitting right next to her.

In a way I guess it was for the best that I turned invisible to everyone, because if Duncan had acknowledged my existence
at all, I would have sputtered and stammered and generally acted like an idiot.

I had kind of expected to be invisible to the varsity girls because of my lowly JV status, and I was used to being invisible to guys like Duncan or pretty much anyone else for that matter, but not to Lena. When I got up to throw away my trash, she was deep in conversation with Brandi or Courtney or somebody. Anyway, a beautiful girl with long blond hair and a cute boyfriend hanging all over her.

The afternoon was not marred by any bad math classes, so it was actually an improvement over the morning, even though I was still stung by being ignored by my best friend. The very worst part of the whole thing was trying to picture the situation reversed. Would I be a strong enough person to say, “Hey, popular girls and cute boys, please include my invisible friend in the conversation! I hate being the center of attention! I refuse to vault several steps up the social ladder in my new school!” Of course I wouldn't. In a way, then, I was only getting what I deserved. How could I expect Lena to be a better friend than I would be in this situation? It was like I was being punished for wanting the attention by having to watch her get it.

In English class, the teacher—a short guy who seemed to think that our being nervous about school was hilarious—announced that we'd be starting with poetry. He split us into groups to talk about this poem called “To an Athlete Dying Young.”

I was in a group with Sarah Kestrel, who I knew from fifth grade and liked okay; Tom Castor, who I knew from
alphabetical order in middle school; and some guy I didn't know named Angus. I swear to God. Like the beef.

“I think,” Tom said, “that the poem is saying it's kind of cool that he died young because he'll never see his record broken.”

“Yeah,” Sarah agreed. “It's a romantic idea.”

“I think it's a dumb idea,” I said. I thought it was dumb because it seemed to be saying that if you were a great athlete in your teens, it wouldn't matter when you got old. I mean, so what if Lena wouldn't be a great soccer player at forty-five? At least she was once! And was that how long I'd have to wait to step out of her shadow?

“It's a completely stupid poem,” Angus growled, and his face was getting red. “It's just about the single stupidest thing I've ever read.”