Eighteen (18)(3)

“And Shannon?”

“What?” I say, looking into Sunday’s dark eyes as he stares back.

“Happy birthday. Welcome to eighteen.”





Chapter Two




After going into the bathroom to smoke and calm down during the class break, I make my way over to the gym. There’s a bazillion other students waiting to get into the field and people are touching and jostling me as we wait. “What the f*ck is going on?” I mutter to myself.

A short girl, who I recognize from the arcade across the street from the high school, smiles at me and starts talking in Spanish.

I scowl at her. “I’m not f*cking Mexican.”

“Oh,” she says. “Sorry.” And then she realizes she should be offended by my tone, if not my words, and mutters something else in Spanish which I can only conclude is, Bitch.

Well, they’ve got me pegged. First day of the new semester and I’ve thrown a fit in the counseling office and insulted someone’s culture. I’m going to hell for that last one.

Someone finally unlocks the gate that leads to the athletics field and people start moving forward. The offended girl pushes past me and disappears.

Good going, Shannon. I didn’t mean it to come out so rude, but I’m still upset about my counseling session. So yeah, it was rude. But I’m not used to people speaking another language. I’m from Ohio. No one spoke Spanish in my high school there. We had three nationalities—German, Polish, and Italian. And no one spoke any of those languages either. California has been one long string of culture shocks.

Here at Anaheim they have two major ethnic groups—Filipino and Hispanic. White people are few and far between. On my first day of school last month they had announcements in Tagalog and I seriously thought I was still high from the night before, that’s how dumbfounded I was.

I’ve gotten used to it though. Plus, it helps keep me on the outside and I like being on the outside. There are gangs here like crazy, and girls regularly beat the shit out of each other in the bathrooms.

No one even looks twice at me. Not one of them has ever come up and started shit. Which is more than I can say for my experience in San Diego. Those girls were intense. And that was a rich snobby school. Jill, my sister, was dating a Navy guy at the time and we were living in military housing attached to a wealthy neighborhood. So we had all kinds there. I had to use my tough card more than once.

But here, I’m ignored. Completely, one hundred percent ignored.

I scan the field for the picnic tables, find them, and wander over. “Hey,” I say to the two girls sitting on the bench. The Hispanic one has those crutches that attach to the arms. Her legs are bent in a weird way. The African-American one is wearing the thickest coke-bottle glasses I’ve ever seen and she’s holding a white cane between her legs, so I can only conclude she’s legally blind. “I’m Shannon. Is this the modified class?”

They both smile at me, the blind girl squinting. “Yeah,” the one with the arm crutches says. “I’m Mary and this is Josie. Those guys over there are Lewis and Albert.”

Lewis and Albert don’t have recognizable disabilities, and they don’t even acknowledge me, so I ignore them back. “Is this it?” I ask, looking around.

“This is it,” Josie says. “Why are you in here? We haven’t had a new student in… what?”

“Two years,” Mary says.

“Oh,” I say, pointing to my leg. “Bad knee. I faked the excuse, actually. I just don’t want to sweat during school, if you know what I mean.”

They both laugh and I take a seat next to Mary. “So what do we do? Do we have a teacher?”

“Oh, Mr. Fowler is always late. Sometimes he never even shows up.”

“Really?” I get a little excited as I wonder how much that happens. I could skip and go hang out at the arcade.

“We just throw darts or do lawn bowling,” Josie says.

I’d laugh, but I don’t think she’s joking.

“Drake!” a blond guy wearing cargo shorts with a preppy polo shirt yells as he walks up to us. “You Drake?”

“The one and only,” I say back.

“OK.” He looks over at my new friends. “Hey, girls. Looking good this semester. You know what to do, so choose your weapon.” He nods to a box of lawn bowling equipment. “Drake, run three laps around the track.”

“I’m not running laps. I’ve got a bad knee.”

Fowler looks up from his roster and scratches his head with a pen. “You’re lying. We all know you’re lying, we just don’t feel like fighting about it. So you’re here. Congratulations on making it into modified PE. Now you’re going around that track three times at the start of every class or you’re gonna fail. Got it?”

Jesus Christ. I cannot cut a break.

“Josie and I will walk with you,” Mary says.

I look at her legs dubiously.

“I can’t go fast though,” she says, noticing my gaze.

“OK,” I say. I’m up for company. I need friends and at least these girls are nice. So the three of us set off to walk laps. They talk incessantly and I half-heartedly listen to them as everyone stares at us. It takes the whole period to walk those three laps, but I can think of millions of worse ways to spend a morning. So I don’t complain.