"Big Bird on Long Island"

School starts tomorrow and the fact looms over my head like a giant bee ready to sting. It is a painful reminder of the life I had in Houston. There is no life here. I am only existing, desperate to do little more than blend in and get through each mandatory class until high school graduation. Last year, with the exception of a few name callings of Big Bird and Bigfoot, I was a mediocre success at slipping through the social pigeonholing of junior high. I was like the extras a film director hires to create the illusion of a crowded setting: I existed but no one cared. And I am more than happy to complete a second round of anonymity.


Every school seems to have its own unspoken-but-clear-cut-pockets of Members Only Clubs. There are the nerds, popular people, drama freaks, sports gods and so on and other than a little bullying here and there, almost everyone has a place in their respective club. Kindergarten is where personalities first emerge. It’s where the glue-eaters are going to be distinguished from the pretty girls with the perfect ponytails. Each year the clubs get more and more distinct so that by high school it’s next to impossible that a third grade bed wetter is ever going to be welcome on a high school football team.


I have no friends here. I used to be friends with the pretty and popular crowd. It was before my hair became cotton-candy and when my large nostrils still looked cute. As my body quickly morphed into double D breasts and shoulders broad enough for football, I was still loved by my pretty friends and allowed to stay in their tightly knit social circle. But that was only because I got in at the start of academia. If I’d first shown up now, as a lowly freshman in high school, they’d start running in the other direction.


Changing schools mid-junior high is like putting a person under a microscope. No matter what the angle, it isn’t flattering. At best there is mild curiosity and at worst, intense dislike for the new kid and no club seems to be open. And the friends I thought were mine for life no longer know what to do with me either. Moving states left me club-less in both places; I decided that it was better to give in to ‘loner’ status than to fight it and end up in a club I never wanted entrance to anyway.


The only person who still calls me friend is Deidra Spires. She is the one remnant from my past social life who has kindly chosen not to forget about me. Mom never liked her. She says Deidra’s one heap of trouble. But there’s not a mean thought in that strawberry-blond head of hers. Mom just hates anything to do with Texans, and dad dying provided the perfect excuse for her to forget about everything from the Lone Star State. If it were up to mom, I’d never see Deidra Spires again. That’s why she punished me the way she did last week.


“You owe me one-hundred-and-fifty dollars,” mom said as soon as I emerged from my bedroom.


“Fine,” I said calmly and closed the bedroom door behind me. Hidden in my desk drawer, under a ‘Wealthy Teens’ Tiger-Beat issue, was my wallet which held one-hundred-and-eighty dollars. It had taken me a year of Chanukah and birthday gifts, and dollar a week allowances to amass the small fortune. “Here.” I handed my mother the money as if it were scraps of paper, as if there were no pain in parting with it.


“Thank you,” she said, her round mouth opening and closing, waiting for someone to put the right words in.


“Sure,” I smiled and walked past her to the bathroom. In that woman’s hand was half my plane ticket to Deidra but there was no way I was going to give her the satisfaction of knowing she got me good.


“It’s half you know. I thought that was fair. After all, you were responsible for taking your pocketbook and I, as your mother, should have known to make sure you had it with you, don’t you think?” I turned around. She was biting her nails and holding the money as if it were on fire.


Of all the children’s plays my mother had starred in, she’d never gotten the part of mother. Maybe if she had, the woman could at least pretend to have a clue about raising Jack and me. “Whatever.”


“You’re upset with me aren’t you? Look, I know that you’ve been saving up to see that girl, but maybe she can come and see you?” Her head was tilted to the side, like I was a high pitched sound she couldn’t figure out.


“Her name is Deidra and I’d be embarrassed for her to stay in this dump with us!” I slammed the door to the bathroom and locked it.


Crap, I was awful.


“Now you listen to me Amelia Bedilia, I am your mother,” she said.


I waited for pearls of wisdom to fly from her mouth. I waited for her to punish me the way I deserved to be. Only there was nothing but silence for a few heavy moments before she sighed and said, “I am doing my best here, okay? I am doing my best,” she repeated, more to herself than to me. There were cracks in her voice and I waited on the other side of the bathroom door, hungry for her to break down and let me see her pain. But she only sighed and padded to her bedroom to do one of her loony meditations. I stayed in the bathroom until a visceral urge to cry subsided.