I’ve been living in this foster home for about six months, but I’m still not immune to the cringeability of what greets me each morning. He-Cat, as usual, is plopped over the floor heater vent soaking up the warmth, his big belly splayed out like an oozing dark puddle. Even on a fairly warm morning, Mrs. Leach—cheapskate that she is about everything else—keeps the heat blasting just for him.
I open a cabinet to get a cereal bowl, and a half-dozen plastic containers tumble out. I straighten them up fast and pour cereal into one. As always, those Leachy eyes are on me, measuring every corn flake to make sure that I don’t eat more than my allotted share. She’s sitting at the kitchen table, her right foot unsocked and propped on a ripped vinyl chair. Her veiny bunion is enough to put me off my breakfast.
Still, I keep a good-girl smile glued in place. I know that putting on this phony act would be living hell to most of the teenage world, but it’s survival tactic number one for me. Imagine that anytime you talk back to your father or roll your eyes at your mother, they threaten to kick you out of their house—and mean it. I am so polite that my jeans would have to catch on fire before I’d complain to a foster parent. Well, the jeans on fire only happened once, which is a whole other story.
Unfortunately, though, as I carry my cereal to the table I accidentally kick the kitty litter box, which sits practically in the middle of the floor like a decorative centerpiece.
Mistake number one: my foot sends a hard, twisted Tootsie Roll of cat crap onto the cracked linoleum and a galaxy of toxoplasma spores into the air. We studied parasites in bio last year, and now I can’t
not
imagine the invisible creatures that live in cat crap flying up my nostrils and landing in my cereal bowl, where they will proceed to invade my cells and live out their whole life cycle—going into parasite puberty, having promiscuous parasite sex, producing a slew of parasite babies, and then dying messy parasite deaths, all in my major organs.
Mistake number two: I say, “Damn it!”
“You’ll clean that up right now,” Mrs. Leach orders. “And watch that language.”
My face prunes, only not the face she can see but the hidden twin beneath, the face I’ve learned not to show to foster parents. I say, “Of course, Mrs. Leach.”
Satisfied with my groveling, she nods. I sweep. I do everything but whistle while I work. I pretend that I don’t notice how the Leech—the perfect name for her—is shifting in her chair and moaning about the arthritis in her feet. If she tells me to rub her tootsies again, I’ll say hell no! That’s my limit. That’s my breaking point. I won’t do it!
“Rub granny’s poor tootsies, would you?”
A collapse inside of me. I have exactly two choices: rub those tootsies or risk getting on her bad side. And if I piss her off, she might decide that she doesn’t want me living here any more. And that means putting all my stuff into a suitcase again, and living in some awful shelter before they find another foster parent—maybe someone even worse. It could mean a new school and not seeing Raymond every day. It might mean being sent to a group home and sharing a bedroom and dealing with the craziness of ten other foster kids with lives just as sucky as mine. I don’t want any part of that scene anymore.
So I get down on one knee and wrap my hands around a foot that has the texture of a cold, dead fish. I massage. I imagine twisting so hard that her foot comes off like a screw top of a jar. She groans—not with pain, though, with pleasure.
“It’s so nice to have a young person in the house.” The Leech smiles a smile that pulls her lips back over her gums, displaying a rainbow of food particles stuck between the teeth. “Just like having a granddaughter.”
A granddaughter to order around like a servant.
“I have to go now,” I say. “I’ll be late for school.”
Irritated, she shoos me away.
I slam the front door behind me. At least I can do that. That feels good! But only for a second, because now I have a whole day of zombie imitations ahead of me, and even though it’s only 7:30 a.m., I’m exhausted.
It’s not the easiest thing to be one of the world’s best foster kids—the cooperative one, the one who doesn’t talk back, doesn’t run away, doesn’t steal, doesn’t get pregnant, doesn’t drink or do drugs, doesn’t even get mad, doesn’t cause anyone any trouble.
4
Hunter
High kids
are all majoring in meanness, and they get big, fat As because it comes so naturally to them. First period, I take the long walk of shame into physics class, where Kai “Pox” Small, Hunter High’s very own shaved-head, six-foot-two-inch brick wall big-time surfer, continues the same brutal imitation of me that so amused and delighted the entire busload of kids only minutes before.
Word of my spastic meltdown also obviously made it into the inner sanctum of the faculty lounge, where things must be unbearably boring if I’m a big event. I notice our teacher, Mr. H, studying me, like I’m bubbling or changing colors, a science problem that he’s determined to puzzle out.
Question: Why did the human doormat suddenly turn into an exploding doormat?
Mr. H shuts down Pox by sliding a finger across his throat, and for that I want to kiss him. Not
kiss him
kiss him, because he’s married and old and shaped like the first letter of his name, short and boxy. But I do feel grateful when he deflects attention from me by putting himself into the line of fire. He launches into his science teacher comedy routine.
“Why did the chicken cross the road?” he asks. “Because chickens at rest tend to stay at rest. Chickens in motion tend to cross roads.”
Right after that class, with Raymond as my combination cheerleader and bodyguard, I take another walk of shame down the interminably long corridor of lockers toward the classroom of dark, intense Mrs. H for English. Yes, she’s been married to Mr. H forever, and I guess it works for them even though I don’t get their attraction to each other. He’s so jokey, and she starts each of her classes with a poem about death or suffering or the struggle to find meaning in the meaningless nature of human existence.
When I slide into my seat, one of the Double Ds slips in a dig. “What exploded your tampon?” She asks this loud enough for everyone to hear. And to visualize. In every detail.
As degrading as the morning has been so far, I know it’s probably a breeze compared to what’s next. A return to the scene of my crime. Normally I look forward to Western Civ. It makes sense that someone like me who’s not too thrilled about the present enjoys looking backward. I can’t get enough of learning about all the ancient superstitions and what people ate, wore, and cared about. I keep thinking that in the past things must have been better than they are now, despite the lack of indoor plumbing and frozen pizza. Maybe people stuck by their friends and families and they protected and sacrificed for the kids. Maybe there was more tolerance of people who were a little different, and life was more fair. I want to believe that there used to be a time like that, because if such a time existed once, it could exist again.
Ms. Pallas keeps pointing out our similarities with the ancient world, rather than our differences. As she said in class the other day: “People eat and work, they fall in love and go to war. There’s the same day-to-day struggle for existence and night-to-night struggle with fear and uncertainty. Always has been, always will be.”
At the present moment I have my own personal struggle, which is getting through this class and then the rest of the day, and then I can go home and take a nap. I try what Raymond suggests and envision myself wearing a noise-blocking air controller headset to block out any more snotty comments from the surf crew. I imagine the headset huge and hand-knitted in pink yarn, more like earmuffs. I take my seat. Ms. Pallas shoots me a warning look and I do something squishy with my features that I hope translates into the nonverbal-communication form of—No problemo. I have everything under control. You can definitely count on me.
I think that satisfies Ms. Pallas. I sure hope so. She’s very strict. Even the way she wears her hair—an old-fashioned wheat-colored braid that crisscrosses her head like a rope—is tight and intimidating. She has this way of demanding everyone’s complete attention. Even the usual class goof-offs keep it under control. I don’t want to get on her bad side any more than I already have. She writes something in a notebook, and when she pivots around to face the class, the blue scarf draped around her collar makes her deep-set eyes pop with color.
“Continuing with oral presentations,” she says. “Is there a volunteer?”
To my left, there’s already a hand waving in the air. I watch a short girl with dreadlocks named Stephanie take large, confident steps to the front of the room. I settle in. This should be good. Despite how lots of people make fun of a white girl with dreads, I respect Stephanie. She puts a lot of passion into her work. I’m a big fan of her editorials in the school paper, and she even has her own blog,
Green from Tenth
Grade to Death—One Student’s Commitment to Save Mother Earth.
From her hemp shoulder bag she removes a binder with her presentation, and begins reading in a voice that sounds like she’s presenting a proclamation to the United Nations. “Topic: Is contemporary society more—quote—civilized—unquote—and less violent than the ancient cultures that we have been studying? To those who argue that modern mankind has evolved in any meaningful way, I offer indisputable evidence to the contrary: Number one…”
Behind me, Pox Small clears his throat. Danger ahead. I immediately go into emotional duck-and-cover response because I figure he has just come up with another so-called hilarious comment aimed at me. But when he whispers, “If it’s yellow, it’s mellow,” I’m relieved. This is mean of me, but I’m happy that the bull’s-eye has shifted to Stephanie. He’s latched onto her reference to
number one.
Stephanie recently posted
IF IT’S YELLOW, IT’S MELLOW
hand-made signs in all the student bathrooms, her one-person campaign to cut back on flushing and trim the school’s water consumption by half.
If that were me in front of the class, I’d be praying for an earthquake to hit, but not Stephanie. She folds her arms across her chest and stares down Pox without blinking. I admire how she stands up for herself and what she believes in. I also admire her blouse, which is gauzy and embroidered white on white; I saw it on sale at Global Mama, the fair-trade import store downtown.
“Number one,” she repeats with extra-hard emphasis. “At this very moment, innocent animals are suffering barbaric torture under the guise of improving civilization. In corporate labs across this so-called enlightened land, you’ll find poor, helpless monkeys being injected with chemicals so toxic that these innocent creatures—who possess nerve endings the same as yours and mine—develop humungous cancerous tumors.”
Stephanie’s voice quivers at the word
tumors
. She reopens her binder, and with a dramatic flourish she whips out a picture of a big-eyed, helpless monkey tied down on a gurney.
Pox now starts making sarcastic little monkey
eeking
sounds. He’s got the rectangular jaw and underbite for it. I can’t believe he’s pulling this stunt in Ms. Pallas’s class, and neither can she. She gives him the look she’s known for, a flash of her cold blue eyes that usually makes anyone shut up. But Pox is on too much of a roll. He keeps eeking, and the laughter builds up around him. Stephanie keeps going on with her rant. The worse he gets, the louder and more outraged she gets. I swear that they are fueling each other.
“What is the justification for abusing this animal?” She pounds a fist on a nearby desk. “I’ll tell you! Money!” A stamp of her foot. “So that greedy corporations can sell their overpriced products to consumers who have been brainwashed from birth to believe that they can’t possibly live without softer hair, redder lips, and armpits that don’t smell like armpits were designed to smell!”
As much as I admire Stephanie, she is asking for it with that last line. She practically handed Pox a script to start sniffing his own pits, and most of his obnoxious surf crew joins right in.
Knock it off, Pox
. I think.
Someone should tie you down and experiment on you
.
“Knock it off, Pox! Someone should experiment on you.”
I start at hearing my own thoughts expressed aloud. The voice is coming from the back of the room, and I’m not a ventriloquist. “Let her finish, asshole.”
All heads now turn to Alix Wolfe, serious surfer and the toughest girl with the worst temper at Hunter High. I get a gag reflex just thinking about getting in her way. It’s not like she’s Stephanie’s best friend or anything like that. I doubt that she has any particular love for monkeys or the environment or Stephanie. It’s that Alix can’t stand Pox and the feeling is mutual. Everyone knows that. Nobody knows exactly what started the feud, but I think that maybe it’s because Pox can’t stand that a girl is as aggressive and competitive, in and out of the water, as he is. Other girls who surf, even the really good ones, also flirt shamelessly. Around guys, they pretend to be weaker and less skilled than they are. Not Alix. She shows off at every opportunity. She torments Pox and vice versa. Raymond says it’s been this way forever, both of them always ready to get into it with each other.
Their hostility charges the room. Pox, pumped up, swings around in his seat. “Who you calling an asshole, asshole?”
“Shut up, Pox,” Alix comes back.
“No, you shut up!”
“Wrong! You!”
Ms. Pallas tries to intervene. She really tries. Her eyes flash with a threat. In a tone low and intimidating, she orders Alix and Pox to stop it now. But things are moving too fast.
That’s when the air in the classroom does something strange. Strange as in the same strange as yesterday. I hear a rush, like all the air is being sucked out of the room, and into the void comes static, and in the static I hear that music again. Faint notes repeating themselves, vibrating not in my ear but in some place deeper. I try to hum along. I let the notes pull me in their direction.