“What?”

  “During those stupid games, if you don’t know what to say? Just lie. Remember how I said I went snorkeling in Mexico this summer?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Total bullshit. I haven’t been to Mexico since I was two. First rule of high school, lying’s easier.”

  This is something Juliet would say, and it makes me like this girl immediately.

  “I’m Rachael Pena,” she says. “My parents always insist that I introduce myself using my first and last name. That’s why I did that.”

  “Oh. Hi. I’m Rainey. Cobb.”

  And presto, a friend.

  Starting that day, I begin having lunch with Rachel and her twin sister, Clara. The cafeteria food is as greasy and delicious as I dreamed it would be, including French fries with every meal. Chicken patties and fries. Pizza and fries. Salisbury steak and fries. Beef burritos and fries. Health tip: it’s probably not wise to eat fries with every meal. And when my pants start feeling tight, I start mixing in regular visits to the salad bar.

  Rachel and Clara are both pretty and athletic, with long, straight black hair, tiny waists, and muscular arms and legs full of shadows and slopes. They finish each other’s sentences and often seem to share a single brain between them. They also consume an alarming amount of ketchup. Each day, they get a separate plate just for the ketchup for their fries that they douse with salt before dipping. For some reason, they’re not the sort of kids I thought I would be friends with, but they don’t know anybody here either and we bond over being the new kids. Me new to school, them new to this school. The twins moved to Vermont from Brooklyn over the summer because their mom got a job teaching economics at the University of Vermont. They say they’ve never seen so many trees or so much tie-dye in their lives.

  “We heard everybody here is high all the time,” Rachel says.

  “All the time,” Clara says.

  “Is that true?”

  “Yeah, is it true?”

  “I don’t know,” I say.

  Since I imagined myself a mostly friendless pariah, I feel lucky to have friends already, but after a few days, I notice that all Rachel and Clara talk about is soccer, a game I’ve never played in my life, which, it turns out, sounds pretty ridiculous when you say it out loud to girls who live and die for the sport.

  “Like, ever?” Clara asks.

  “Not even for fun?” Rachel asks.

  “My family isn’t really into sports,” I say.

  “What is your family into, then?”

  “Yeah, what are they into?”

  “I don’t know. Music, I guess. And books.”

  That’s when it hits me. They don’t know who Luce and Tracy Cobb are, do they? That means they don’t know who I am. Don’t get me wrong, my parents aren’t Bill and Hillary Clinton, and even I know my parents’ fame is waning compared to what it used to be. But still. I think it’s the first time in my entire life where someone meets me without knowing who my mom and dad are and doesn’t look at me like I’m their well-trained side kick.

  Confession #6: Public school is way different than I thought it would be.

  First off, it’s full of utterly bizarre routines that might make sense if we were six, but given that half the school can drive and some of the kids are old enough to fight in wars, seem asinine and more than a little embarrassing.

  Daily attendance? Why wouldn’t you be here when you were supposed to be?

  The pledge of allegiance? Don’t you know the country is run by corporations and fascists?

  Bathroom pass? You need to prove you’re going to the bathroom? Where else are you going to go?

  Homework detention? Why wouldn’t you do your homework?

  Are public school kids irresponsible by nature so no one trusts them, and they need draconian policies to keep everyone from going crazy and burning the place down?

  Some routines feel designed just to make me happy. The daily journal prompt in English, for one, writing ideas in my brand-new notebook. Getting things out of my locker, for another. Call me crazy, but I love stopping by my locker and trading books and supplies for one another throughout the day. Sometimes I stop to open the padlock for fun. And for some reason, I love that from the first moment on the first day, when she says, “Bonjour, class,” my French teacher speaks to us only in French. Literally not a word of English. While it seems to freak everyone else out, I love the feel of exotic new words as I discover and memorize them. We’re encouraged to choose a special French name for class, and I quickly choose Colette, after the writer. I write Colette at the top of my papers, answer to Colette when I’m called on in class. Even the simplest French words sound so much more interesting than their English equivalents, as if they must mean more than just one thing. Au revoir. L’amour. A bientot. Bonjour. Fromage.

  Who wouldn’t rather eat fromage than cheese? Or rather ride in a voiture than a car?

  Walden was right, though. Most of the classes feel pretty easy compared to what I’m used to. Sort of watered down, thinned out, as if the teachers would go deeper into the topics and subject matter, but they know the students can only handle so much and they don’t want to overwhelm them.

  Still, the teachers are earnest and kind. Kind of saints, actually. And they’re almost aggressively invested in our success. When people in class are being disrespectful or someone doesn’t understand something, many of them seem to take it personally. It makes me feel bad for them. I never thought about what it would be like to be a teacher before, but it seems like the hardest job in the world to me.

  And though my memory is a huge help when I’m memorizing French vocabulary or important events from the American Revolution, it occasionally gets me in trouble too.

  Here’s what I mean. One day, we’re reading aloud from Macbeth in Honors English, which is the only class that feels really challenging. My teacher, Ms. Ofalko, whose biting sarcasm and obvious brilliance scared me at first but is starting to grow on me, actually challenges our thinking. Makes us defend our positions. Inspires us to read closely. Constantly sends us back to the text to find proof to back up our ideas. Anyway, she picked people to stand in front of the class and read from Macbeth Act II, which we read for homework.

  “We’ll start with Scene 1. Short, but with one of the most important and brilliant speeches Shakespeare, or anybody to ever pick up a pen I might add, ever wrote,” Ms. Ofalko says.

  Because Ms. Ofalko says she likes to subvert gender norms, which I think is code for she likes to make us uncomfortable, I’m assigned the role of Macbeth and find myself in front of the class sandwiched between two linebacker-sized males who I might as well call Fleance and Banquo because I don’t know their real names.

  I’m two-thirds through an utterly monotone and uninspired performance of the “Is this a dagger I see before me?” speech when Ms. Ofalko shouts “STOP!” so suddenly that I expect to find one of my classmates on the floor having a seizure.

  “Stop. Right. There,” Ms. Ofalko says, only now I can clearly see she’s looking right. At. Me.

  What did I do? Was I reading the wrong part? More importantly, can I run out the door without anyone noticing? My heart pounds as Ms. Ofalko slowly walks up the aisle toward the front of the room, stalking me like prey.

  “How did you do that?” she asks, stopping right in front of me.

  “Do…what?”

  “You said most of the speech without looking at your text. You were looking off to the side or up at the ceiling almost the whole time. I was watching you.”

  Was I? I honestly don’t know.

  “Did you have to memorize this speech at your old school?”

  “She was homeschooled, Ms. Ofalko,” a boy says.

  “Then at home?”

  I shake my head no.

  “Have you performed this speech before?”

  I shake my head no again.

  “But certainly, you’ve read Macbeth before?”

  What’s the right answer? Yes? No? I have no idea. Somebody help.

  “No.”

  “How many times did you read this scene last night?”

  “Um, twice? I think.”

  Ms. Ofalko puts one of the arms of her glasses into her mouth and studies me like a curious specimen she can’t quite identify. She has curly brown hair and bright hazel eyes that are full of wonder and big questions.

  “You’re telling me that you read this for the first time last night, only read it twice, and casually committed it to memory?”

  I want to vanish into smoke. Since that’s not an option, I shrug.

  Tucking her book under her arm, Ms. Ofalko grips my shoulders forcefully, then grins widely and gushes, “That is one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen!” She turns to the class and says, “Ladies and gentlemen, we have been gifted a genius from the homeschool gods!!”

  One boy says, “That was insane, I totally saw her not looking at her book too, and I was like…what?”

  “Continue!” Ms. Ofalko shouts.

  Aside from the Macbeth situation, the near-constant nose ring stares, annoying questions about being homeschooled, and occasionally getting lost on my way to places I’ve already been, a month passes without major incident. I gradually learn my way around. I learn the names of the kids in my classes so I can say hi back when they say hi in the hallway, which they never do. I have lunch every day with the Pena twins and listen to them talk about their soccer matches and how unfair the referees are.

  “This league is so freaking rigged!”

  “So freaking rigged!”

  I do my homework at night and tell my parents my day was good when they ask.

  I describe my first weeks of school in long, overly detailed letters to Juliet. She writes back somewhat shorter letters and says that I should consider myself lucky. That she can’t seem to avoid drama no matter how hard she tries. She tells a story about how a boy in her math class was copying off her paper during a quiz but when she told him to stop, they both got in trouble. And then she got mad and called the teacher an asshole, which led to predictable consequences.

  Sometimes nothing in this world feels fair, she writes.

  Walden asks if I’ve written any more songs that we can record, but I haven’t. School sucks up pretty much all my energy. Most nights I’m so tired that I start nodding off after dinner and go to bed early.

  “Be honest,” Walden says. “It sucks, right?”

  “It doesn’t suck.”

  “But it’s not that great?”

  “It’s good. I like it. It’s only September, Walden. I’m still settling in.”

  His curiosity is obvious, and though he would never admit it, it makes me wonder if he’s actually a little jealous. If part of him wishes he could come too. Walden is technically a senior this year, and an image flashes in my mind of him walking across a stage and accepting a diploma.

  He and Mom have been rehearsing with some new musicians and are planning a tour of the Northeast in late October into early November. They have a new band name and everything (Richmond, for the Vermont town where my parents grew up), but we don’t talk much about it.

  Dad and I go fishing on the weekends. Most of the time we catch one or two perch, and every time I touch one, they feel a little less disgusting in my hands.

  “How’s school really going?” he asks me, as if I’m holding back.

  But I’m not.

  “It’s good, Dad,” I tell him. “I swear.”

  All my worst fears involved being at the center of bullying schemes designed to ruin what little self-esteem I have. But I’ve probably watched too many John Hughes movies because the truth is that people mostly ignore me.

  I do feel lonely sometimes, as if I’m caught between two worlds, and I don’t really fit into either.

  With Mom’s prodding, Dad has started going to therapy, but he doesn’t talk about the sessions. The most he’ll say is that they’re “interesting.” He’s still working on his Christmas album, and I sing on some of the tracks, adding vocals to “White Christmas” and “The Christmas Song.” We laugh and I know Mom is going to love it.

  I dread gym class and keep my arms folded over my chest during torturous games of basketball and volleyball and dodge ball, aggressive boys laughing like crazed lunatics as they pelt me as hard as they can, screaming, “You’re out!!”

  The sight of a six-foot tall boy with dodge ball glory in his eyes is truly a frightening thing to behold.

  I am many things, but athletic is not one of them. And you know what? I don’t really care. Sports are stupid. There, I said it. I hate gym so badly that I even ask my guidance counselor, Mrs. Putty, if I can get my gym credit in some kind of independent study. “Can I write a paper or do a project or something?” But Mrs. Putty informs me that all students need two full PE credits to graduate. “My advice, sweetie, is just get through it and try to have some fun. It won’t last forever.”

  Track Seven

  We’re Looking for a Keyboard Player

  Along with my English teacher, Ms. Ofalko, my homeroom teacher, Mr. Larson, is my favorite teacher at Green Valley. Mr. Larson sometimes plays CDs of meditation music or Gregorian chant to help us de-stress, and he has about a million plants in his room. He’s constantly babying his jades and ferns and peace lilies with a beautiful pair of leather handled clippers or watering them from an elephant watering can where the water comes out the elephant’s trunk.

  In homeroom, we do these one-on-one check-ins every week to see how we’re doing. Mr. Larson, who drinks green tea all day and wears an endless string of khaki pants and patterned button-down shirts, asks me question after question and listens to me talk about my life, as if he really wants to know. He’s like a professional listener, bent forward with his elbows on his knees and his chin balanced on his nested fists. During the check-ins, we sit way over in the corner, far from the group, and turn away to create some semblance of privacy.

  I don’t mean to, but under the spell of Mr. Larson’s bottomless patience and meditation music, I find myself slowly opening up, sharing a little more every time we talk. I talk about my life. I talk about what a big deal it is for me to be coming to school. I talk about my guilt.

  “I feel so selfish,” I say, telling him about the band, and Mom’s job at T.J. Maxx.

  “I think you’re brave,” he says. “You should give yourself permission to be happy and feel proud.” I’ve never thought of it like that.

  When he admits that he’s known the whole time who my parents are, but that he didn’t think it was fair for me to have to carry that burden, I like him even more. During our fourth check-in, something interesting happens. I ask Mr. Larson how his weekend was, and that’s when he mentions Matthew for the first time. As if it’s no big deal, he says “This weekend, Matthew trained our new puppy, Roxy, to roll over and it was the cutest thing.”

  I wonder who Matthew is, and if it means what I think it means that they have a puppy together.

  “Our dog Django is so old he can’t do tricks anymore,” I say. “He just sleeps all day.”

  Mr. Larson keeps a massive bag of lollipops in the bottom left drawer of his desk, and as he’s handing me one, a root beer flavored Dum Dum, he lowers his voice to a whisper and says, “By the way, that sort of slipped out. I don’t really talk about Matthew to my students, if you catch my drift, and that’s the way I’d prefer to keep it. I blame you, you’re easy to talk to.”

  I know this is supposed to make me feel good, and it does. It feels nice to be worthy of someone’s trust. But I also can’t help but wonder how I’m different than his other students. If Mr. Larson senses something in me that he recognizes. Is that why he told me about Matthew?

  During our fifth check-in, a sunny Monday morning in late September, Mr. Larson, sipping his green tea, asks me if I’m thinking about trying out for the fall musical, Oklahoma!

  “Try outs are next week,” he says. “Rumor has it you’re quite a talented singer.”

  I shrug. “How’s Matthew?” I ask, eager to change the subject. “And Roxy?”

  “They’re fine,” he says, “but let’s keep this about you, Rainey.”

  “I’ve seen the posters in the hallway,” I say. “But I’ve been trying to keep sort of a low profile so far.”

  “And?”

  “Being in the musical is kind of the opposite of keeping a low profile.”

  “Well, I’m sure you know best,” he says, then adds, “but would it hurt to go check it out? You love music so much. You must be curious. And you’re the one who said you wished you’d made more friends by now, right? That you were feeling a little lonely?”

  "Yeah.”

  “Well, I have a hunch being involved in the musical might be a chance to make more friends and meet some kids with common interests.”

  Why did I ever tell him that? Adults remember everything.

  “I’ll think about it,” I say.

  • • •

  A week later, as I’m sitting there in the auditorium on audition day listening to girls sing “Surrey with a Fringe on Top” and boys sing “Oh What a Beautiful Mornin’,” most of them way off pitch and with only a wobbly grasp of melody, it occurs to me for the first time what being there really means. It means that if I get up there and sing in front of all these people, really sing, I mean, I will likely end up in a role. Maybe (ok, probably) a lead role. I came to high school to get away from the lead role.

  So, in a fit of panic when they call my name, I fake a sudden case of laryngitis and join stage crew.

  Musical rehearsals keep me at school later, which means less time at home. And since I’m on crew, there’s lots of sitting around, which means lots of hours to get my homework done. I also discovered a secret dejected piano in a back hallway where all the old set pieces and unused props are kept. There are these big metal shelves packed with masks and dragon parts and random doors to nowhere. Everything is blanketed in dust. Sometimes, while we’re on break, I play the piano with the mute pedal down and hum melodies and sing little scraps of song. I miss playing piano. And singing. More than I thought I would.

 

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