Scrappy Little Nobody(18)
This would not stand. It had taken hours to get there, and, more important, it was embarrassing. I paced away from the venue, wondering what to do, and scanned the small crowd of sweaty youths who had come outside for air. I spotted a friend of Mike’s. This wasn’t hard; he knew everyone.
“Hey, Travis! Go find Mike! Tell him they won’t let me in!”
Ten minutes later my brother was outside and dragging me by the arm across the main floor. He planted me in front of the party’s organizer.
“Trish, this is my sister. She’s fifteen. We good?”
Trish took another look at me. “The age limit is sixteen.”
I’d never seen my brother’s powers of persuasion falter before.
“No it isn’t, dude. There’s a ton of kids in here who are fifteen. I’ll bet you some are younger.”
“Yeah, but Mike, look at her. She looks like a baby. If she ODs at my party, imagine how her picture’s gonna look in the paper. No one would ever rent a space to me again. Any fifteen-year-old that is in there at least had the decency to look like a degenerate.”
It was weird, but I kind of got her logic.
“Well, you don’t have to worry about that. She doesn’t do drugs. I told her she can’t try X until she’s sixteen. Let her in.”
In your face, lady, I thought. I’d just been described as a goody two-shoes who left her drug-related decisions to her older brother, but I walked into the place looking like the smuggest little twelve-year-old there ever was.
Outside of underage substance use, my only dalliance in teen rule-breaking was some light shoplifting. Jesus, it’s so trashy. It makes me cringe when I think of it.
I visited a friend in New York the summer I turned fourteen and she taught me. Oh, the city kids corrupting us weak-willed country folk! She also tried teaching me to flirt with guys, but soon found that was asking too much. Basically the trick to shoplifting was you went into a store, saw what you wanted, and took it without paying. Cute trick, right? Truthfully, the only thing she “showed” me was that it could be done. I think I would have gone my whole life without it occurring to me that normal people could just steal things. Pray I never witness a murder.
The small mercy was that this phase was short-lived. I got a friend in my hometown to shoplift with me (you know, pay it forward and all that) and for a while no Claire’s or T.J. Maxx was safe. But, like a dying star, the desire burned brightly and disappeared quickly. A few years later I told my mother that I’d gone through a short thievery phase, and she was more surprised than angry. I suppose the statute of limitations for parental disapproval had passed.
That weekend, as we wheeled our groceries out of the Hannaford, she realized we’d forgotten cereal. We went back in and I grabbed it while she started looking for the shortest checkout line.
“Hey, Ma,” I whispered, “you want me to just take it?”
I cocked my head down and opened my winter coat. She looked scandalized but kind of impressed, like I had a superpower, or we were on a date and I was the town bad boy. I put the cereal in the cart, but I swear, if I’d been serious she would have let me do it. Weak-willed country folk.
I remained a square, though. I had gone through the motions of a bare-minimum teenage rebellion, but it was all very Olivia Newton-John learning to blow smoke rings. It was just a prelude to breaking the biggest rule of all.
I started applying to colleges at the beginning of senior year. But I had this itch. I’d just come back from making Camp, and I already had more high school credits than I needed, which made going to class feel like I was in a holding pattern. I happen to love learning, but clawing through layers of disruptive students, overstretched teachers, and pointless extracurriculars to do it was discouraging. Deep down I knew I didn’t want to go to college.
The idea of another four years of being chaperoned and dealing with immature classmates and putting off my real life made my chest tighten. But how could I not go?! Everyone in my family went to college; even my finally-got-his-act-together brother was in college. The value of education was ingrained in me from birth. In fact, I had thought college was mandatory until I was, like, thirteen and saw a commercial for the army. “I tried college; it wasn’t for me,” said the soldier. “Wasn’t for you”? What are you talking about? That’s like saying that paying your taxes “wasn’t for you”! It turns out that was not correct, yet once I’d learned college was optional, I knew the suburban gossip would be that the Kendrick girl wasn’t going because she was knocked up or criminally insane.
The itch was not going away, and even though I sent out my applications, I jumped at the first opportunity to put college on hold and start paying my dues. Fuck convention. Sandra Dee was going to the Big Apple.
a little night music
I graduated high school early so that I could move to Manhattan and do A Little Night Music at New York City Opera, which is the braggiest sentence I will ever get to say. During this time, puberty finally hit me full force, which led to a number of horrifying incidents, including nearly passing out onstage because of the chest binder I had to wear to hide my new boobs.
Renting an apartment on my own and going to work at Lincoln Center made me feel very grown-up. I was constantly congratulating myself for the smallest things. Yeah, I’m just riding the subway to work in New York City like it’s no big deal. Which of course meant that to me, at every moment, it was a HUGE deal. I wish I could say this masquerading-as-an-adult-and-getting-away-with-it feeling was exclusive to being seventeen, but so many things in my life are still like that. Yeah, I’m checking my email on a laptop I own like it’s no big deal.