That is exactly the way I felt with the high school kids. I’d like to think I am just as cool and just as grown-up as they are. But, well, I got a good look at them. Some of the guys have to shave. And some of them must be six feet tall. I mean real adult men. And the senior girls? Real adult women. Who have huge chests and wear lots of makeup. And, I don’t know, I just felt like they were way more than four or five years older than me.
Let me put it this way. Since some of the seniors are eighteen already, we are talking about kids who can drive and vote. Among other things. I looked at this one enormous guy who could practically have been my father. Then I looked at Jill in her crayon sweatshirt. My heart began to pound—and I didn’t even know what the assembly was going to be about.
Believe me, we found out soon enough.
This was the announcement: Because the middle school has become overcrowded this year (due to the current surge in eighth-grade enrollment, just like Tray had said), the eighth-graders are going to move to the high school building. The middle school building at Vista will now be for grades five, six, and seven. The high school building will be for grades eight, nine, ten, eleven, and twelve.
Maggie, Sunny, Jill, and I are in high school.
Saturday afternoon 9/27
We’re in high school.
I just cannot believe it.
Over the weekend, things will be moved around in the high school building to make room for us eighth-graders. And on Monday morning, we will report to the high school.
The high school.
Unthinkable.
“We won’t be the Rulers anymore,” I said sadly to my friends as we walked out of the assembly.
I might add here that us eighth-graders did not look like the only ones in shock. The high school kids looked pretty shocked, too. And no wonder. A big bunch of babies were about to join their ranks. I’m sure that’s what they thought as they looked around and saw things like crayon sweatshirts. (And Peg, this other friend of Jill’s, was actually carrying a troll doll. It was sticking out of her puppy backpack.)
“Forget being the Rulers. We’re going to be going to school with kids like that guy,” whispered Maggie. She was pointing to this humongous guy with a crew cut who was wearing fatigues and dangling a ring of car keys. He was walking along with his arm slipped through the arm of a girl in a dress so tight you could almost see her pores through it. You could certainly see her D-cup breasts.
Jill began to giggle. “He looks like—” she started to say.
“Shut up. He’ll hear you.” Sunny cut her off.
Jill clamped her mouth shut. She looked wounded and embarrassed. I felt sorry for her. But not sorry enough to say anything.
The four of us kept quiet until we were outside and on our way back to the middle school building.
“What do we know about high school?” Jill finally asked.
“Well, we were going to be over there next year anyway,” replied Sunny, “so what’s the big deal?”
“I don’t know,” mumbled Jill.
We were quiet again. Then Sunny said, “Well, I’m excited. This is going to be cool. It’s the big time, you guys. We’ll get a whole extra year of parties, dates with older guys, all the good stuff. I feel like we’ve been in middle school forever.”
“I like middle school,” said Jill.
She sounded as if she might cry. But the only thing anyone said then was, “I don’t really care what we do.” (That was Maggie.) “I mean, what’s the big deal? We’ll still be at Vista. Does it matter what building we’re in? Anyway, I will just be so glad not to be squished and squeezed and bumped all the time.”
At the exact moment that Maggie said that, a sixth-grade boy crashed into her from behind. He had lost control when a surge of kids leaving the middle school building knocked him off his feet. He could not understand why this caused Maggie and Sunny and me to start laughing hysterically.
Sunday night 9/28
Well, as my dad would say, “When it rains, it pours.” Maybe I should have been expecting more shocking news, but I just wasn’t. That bombshell about school seemed like enough to deal with. However, something else was in store. Dad dropped his own bombshell at dinner tonight.
Everything had started off so peacefully. Mrs. Bruen had returned to work early this afternoon. I like when she comes in on Sunday. I think she knew I was upset about the high school news, so while I was starting my homework and worrying about tomorrow, she brought a cup of herbal tea to my room. It was peppermint.
“Very soothing,” said Mrs. Bruen.
Occasionally I wish Dad had married Mrs. Bruen instead of Carol, even though I know that’s entirely out of the question. I mean, Mrs. Bruen is, like, sixty, about twenty years older than Dad. Oh, well. At least she’s our housekeeper. That means she’s here five or six days a week. Plus, she’s an excellent cook, which makes up for Carol.
Anyway, the peppermint tea was soothing. By the time I sat down to dinner with Dad and Jeff and Carol, my homework half done, I felt a lot calmer. And so we were just eating away at our salad and pasta when Dad cleared his throat. The throat clearing was followed by a glance around the table, but even before the glance I sensed bad news.
Sure enough.
“Well,” said Dad.
“What,” said Jeff. Just like that. It wasn’t even a question. Jeff knew as well as I did that we weren’t going to like whatever Dad had to say. Parents can be so transparent.
“I’m going on a business trip,” said Dad.
Oh. That didn’t seem so bad.
“For ten days,” Dad added.
“Ten days?” I cried.
“Starting when?” asked Carol.
“Where are you going?” asked Jeff. “Someplace good? Can I go with you?” He paused. “You’re not going to, say, Florida, are you?”
Dad looked overwhelmed, but he was smiling. “It’s just another business trip, Dawn,” he said. “I’ve been traveling a lot lately.”
“I know. But only for a day or two. Not ten days.”
“When do you leave?” asked Carol.
“Tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” I said in dismay.
“Well, tomorrow evening. After work. Why?”
“Tomorrow is the first day we’ll be in the high school building,” I replied. “I was hoping you’d be around for awhile. I mean, that’ll be such a big change. I just wanted, I don’t know, moral support.”
“I’ll be here,” said Carol.
“I know.” How could I tell her that was not the same thing?
“Where are you going, Dad?” Jeff asked again.
“Toledo. In Ohio,” Dad added when the city didn’t seem to register with Jeff.
“Toledo. In Ohio,” Dad added when the city didn’t seem to register with Jeff.
“Oh.” Total boredom. Jeff returned to his pasta.
“Hey, come on, you guys. We’ll have fun,” Carol said to Jeff and me. “We’ll go out to dinner one night. And to the beach on Saturday.”
“Can we go to the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie?” asked Jeff, sensing an opportunity. “And then go bowling?”
“Sure, why not?” said Carol.
Admittedly, these things sounded kind of fun. Even the movie. But I’m mad. How can Dad go off and abandon me at this time in my life? It’s not fair.
Later Sunday night 9/28
Carol and I had another fight tonight. Actually, it wasn’t a fight. That’s too strong a word. And it wasn’t a disagreement because we didn’t disagree about anything. I don’t know what you’d call it, but this is what happened: I’d just gotten off the phone with Sunny. She’d been talking to me about her mother, who’s back in the hospital. And she was upset. Now, I needed to ask someone about something Sunny said about her mom’s treatment, and I needed to talk to a woman. So I went to Carol and I asked her what “sterile” means. First Carol blushed, then she started to giggle. I said, “Carol, this is serious.” Carol couldn’t stop giggling. I don’
t know why, now that I’ve looked up sterile in the dictionary and found out what it means. Carol is so immature. I’d like to confide in her, but sometimes I just can’t.
Later
I was just thinking. All my friends seem to be changing. Ever since Sunny’s mom got cancer, Sunny has seemed a little … wild or something. She takes risks. She’s daring. And she’s not so interested in the stuff we used to do together. She’s especially not interested in baby-sitting.
And all Maggie cares about these days are her animals and trying to be perfect. She has to be the perfect everything. Perfect student, perfect daughter, perfect sister, perfect friend. Everything in her life is scheduled and controlled. Doesn’t she know she’ll never please her parents? She’s a misfit in her own family. But she doesn’t talk about it much.
Then there’s Jill. Actually, Jill isn’t changing, at least not in comparison to the rest of us. She still seems more like a seventh-grader (a young seventh-grader) than an eighth-grader. I am tired of oohing and ahhing over her teddy bear collection.
We seem like such a different group of friends than we used to be. I’m not sure I like this.
Monday 9/29
I am writing this during study hall on my first day as a high school student. I feel like I’m the new kid in a whole new school, not just at Vista, where I’ve been going to school practically all my life. I mean, this is JUST SO WEIRD.
Plus, and this is even weirder, I’m scared.
Yes. Really scared.
The high school building feels so big. And it is a little bigger than the middle school building, but not that much bigger. Maybe it’s because it isn’t overcrowded. There’s more space, and that makes everything feel bigger.
So right now I’m in a study hall. In this building, they have an actual room just for study hall. It’s like a giant classroom with some reference books in case you need them.
Get this. I do not know one single other person in the room. I think I recognize a few other eighth-graders. And one of them might be named Amelia or Amalia or something. She’s new this year. Then there are all these older kids. That huge guy with the crew cut and the fatigues is here. He’s sitting at a table with a different girl, though. I can’t even look at him.
The one person I do look at sometimes is this guy who held the door open for me when I came into the room. He’s definitely one of the older kids, and he is definitely very nice. He doesn’t look particularly cool, but everyone seems to know him. Kids (girls mostly, it looks like) want to sit at his table. Right now he’s sitting with another guy and two girls, and they’re studying, but not in a nerdy way.
Oh. My. God.
The study hall monitor (a teacher, I can’t remember his name) just left the room for a minute, and the big, scary guy and the girl started making out. They didn’t even move to the back of the room. They are just sitting in their chairs (well, they moved them closer together, obviously) and they are ALL OVER EACH OTHER. The guy has lipstick on his cheek. I have never seen anything like this at close range.
I’m staring, and I can’t help myself.
There is an incredible amount of slobber.
Oh, well, now here comes
Monday afternoon 9/29
When that study hall monitor came back, all hell broke loose. No, that’s an exaggeration. But what happened was hostile. Very, very quietly hostile. The monitor came back (I still can’t remember his name), and he was furious, and he said, “Dex, how many times have I spoken to you about this?” (Is the big, scary guy’s name Dexter? Now that’s funny.) Dex’s face turned red, but it was an angry red, not an embarrassed red. And I could tell the teacher was afraid of him … afraid of him.
Oh, I have so much more to say. I mean, this was the first day of high school (when you think about it) and I didn’t even start at the beginning. I jumped into the middle of the morning and then I got all caught up in the study hall incident. I want to go back to the beginning of the day and not get so bogged down by details.
When I got up this morning I was so nervous I almost barfed. Really. I had horrible butterflies in my stomach. The first thing I thought about was all those big kids we’d seen last week. Then I spent about half an hour choosing an outfit, and in the end I wore … jeans and a T-shirt. How original.
I met Sunny and Maggie as usual. Sunny looked nervous but excited, and even a little proud. Maggie was biting her nails. The first thing she said to us was, “Do you guys know what hazing is?”
“Hazing?” Sunny repeated.
“I guess,” I replied. “Why?”
“Do you think the upperclassmen are going to do anything to us?” Maggie asked, thumbnail in her mouth.
“Well—” I started to say.
“Because you know they get to haze the freshmen on the first day of school. But the first day of school is over, and we aren’t freshmen. Technically.”
“We’re subfreshmen,” said Sunny. “Sort of like bacteria.”
“I wonder what they’re going to do to us,” I said.
As it turned out, not much.
You know what? I’m on a roll, but my hand is about to fall off from so much writing. Plus, I have a lot of homework. I have to stop now. I’ll pick up later.
Tuesday night 9/30
When I said “later,” I meant later that day, not 28 hours later. But here it is, Tuesday night. I haven’t even finished my homework. Still, I really need my journal. I have so much to say.
Okay, there were a few little hazing incidents, but not many. The teachers had put out the word that it was not the first day of school, that classes were in full swing, and that basically this was supposed to be just another day. So we were kind of off the hook.
One eighth-grader got lipsticked. The funny thing is that on the first day of school, the upperclassmen get to mark the letter F on the foreheads of the freshmen with red lipstick, but since we aren’t exactly freshmen, this guy put an 8 on the kid’s forehead.
Another kid’s wallet was taken during gym class. (That may or may not have been hazing.) Two girls, at separate times, were given directions to the boys’ locker room when they asked where the library was. Stuff like that. So all in all, we made it through our first day of high school without much of anything happening. Mostly, I just kept noticing the older kids, now that I could see them up close, I mean. I felt like I was a naturalist in the wild and for years I’d been studying the gorillas from afar. But now, suddenly, I was living among them.
“There are some very cute guys,” Maggie said at the end of that first day. Her fingernails were bitten down to little nubs, but otherwise she looked pretty good. “I mean, some very cute older guys. Do any of you know who Justin Randall is?” Her eyes took on this faraway look.
“No,” said Jill.
“Is he a junior?” I asked.
“Yes, he is,” said Sunny. “And Maggie, he’s already taken. Every girl in school has a crush on him. Pick someone easier.”
Maggie just shrugged. Then grinned. Sunny and I grinned back. Maggie’s smile was contagious.
Except to Jill, who must have developed an immunity.
“What’s wrong?” I asked her.
It was Jill’s turn to shrug. But, unlike Maggie, she looked miserable.
“Well, anyway, we all made it,” I said cheerfully.
Day One was over.
Later Tuesday night 9/30
Day One was over at school, but not at home.
Dad returned from the office at about four and packed two suitcases. Carol came home at 4:30, which meant she had left her office early. The next hour was hectic. Mrs. Bruen was still there, trying to finish making dinner before she left for the evening. I was trying to tell Dad about school, Jeff was trying to tell him about a problem with his soccer coach, Carol was trying to ask him questions about the next ten days, and Dad was trying to tell all of us about the next ten days but kept being interrupted by his boss, who phoned him four times.
Carol seemed really nervous about somet
hing. She wanted to drive Dad to the airport by herself, but Jeff and I insisted on coming along, so Dad said we could. Carol did not look happy. Still, after Dad’s plane had taken off, she turned to Jeff and me, smiling, and said we were going to have a great ten days together. I tried to feel convinced.
Wednesday afternoon 10/1
What happened today was so embarrassing I can barely bring myself to write about it. Just thinking about it now makes me flush. Honest. I can feel my cheeks getting hot. And the thing is, it really didn’t have to blow up into such an incident. Mandy Richards is a pain in the butt.
Okay, all us eighth-graders have new lockers, right? We’re in the new building, so of course we do. And the new building (new to us, I mean) is confusing. I haven’t quite figured it out yet. Anyway, my new locker number is 106B. It’s number 106 in the B wing. It’s a pretty good locker. I haven’t had any trouble opening it. But yesterday after lunch I just could not get it open. I kept turning the dial and nothing would happen. Finally I found the piece of paper from the main office with my combination on it. I checked it. I was using the right combination. So I tried it again. Nothing.
I tried it for like the eighth time.
Nothing.
And then I whammed it with my fist. Sometimes that would unstick my old locker. It didn’t unstick this one. So I whammed it two more times and then I kicked it.
“Excuse me,” said this really snitty voice from behind me.
I turned around. A girl was standing there. She looked like a junior or maybe a senior.