Where It Began(8)

“Anita!” says Lisa. “That could have such double meaning.”

News flash: Catty clique of mean cheerleaders in Texas cause sad, chunky cheerleader to leap from bridge!

Oh no, boys and girls: If you can’t say something nice, don’t say it!

“If you can’t say something nice, welcome to Winston School,” Anita says.

“That is so mean.” Lisa says. And then she snickers. “Are you by any chance a member of a catty clique?”

“I want to be in the catty clique!” I say. I am not completely joking.

“Sorry,” says Anita. “I think you might have to be pregnant first. And you have to look like a Slutmuffin.”

We don’t look as if we’re members of the same species as the Slutmuffins, as if we are fit to inhabit the same planet, as if our skin is made of the same dewy membrane, or that our hairs were ever genetically programmed to spring out of our scalps and line up in perfect order like theirs.

Cut to a montage of sleepovers at Lisa’s house with everybody sitting in their sleeping bags watching old Technicolor movies with Doris Day and Debbie Reynolds and making large sheets of semi-inedible marshmallow fudge, shooting at each other with Silly String.

I don’t know. Maybe all over the country, this is what deliriously happy teenage girls are doing Friday nights, but it seems as if all of the people worth being at Winston are engaging in somewhat less boring activities involving sex and drugs and rock and roll.

What I want is to be one of those people.

But I am stuck in my Before and I have no idea, not a clue or an inkling, that I am even going to get an After.





VIII


I AM SO DEEP INTO GABRIELLA GARDINER PRESENTS Scenes from Teen Life in the Three B’s, trawling through it looking for some faint clue as to how I ended up like this, that it is seriously annoying when people show up to take my pulse and check my blood and squirt mildly hallucinogenic drugs into my IV bag.

Ponytail Doc, possibly because she can’t stand the pressure of trying to keep me from getting a look at myself in the crystal of her watch or the lenses of her big retro Italian glasses, has sent in reinforcements. An occupational therapist named Wendy shows up in my room pushing a green metal cabinet on wheels through the door, grinning as if she hasn’t heard that (1) I am not in a good mood, and (2) I do not have an occupation.

“This is a mistake,” I say. “I don’t need an occupational therapist. I go to high school.”

But Wendy, it turns out, is a pediatric occupational therapist whose goal in life is to help little damaged, hospitalized children play. This is so sad that I can hardly stand to think about it.

“I’m a playologist!” she says.

There is some possibility that I am the oldest person Wendy has ever dealt with. To prove it, she hauls out coloring books, glitter markers, peg boards, and stickers with Elmo in a wheelchair. She has faded clay that is squishier than Play-Doh. She is so chirpy and perky that you have to figure even someone a lot nicer than I am would want to poke a glitter marker in her eye.

Wendy tries to find some space to unload her stuff on the counter between the botanical splendor and the shopping bags of beauty supplies, but I end up with tacky kindergarten art supplies piled on my stomach.

“You’ve got Barbie and Midge paper dolls,” I say.

Wendy is over the moon that I can name Barbie and Midge. When I ask her if she’s got Ken and Skipper, she is one orgasmic playologist.

It is so weirdly easy to please these people.

She hands me a pair of blunt scissors and admires the way I cut things out. I cannot believe that I am lying here cutting out paper-doll clothes.

“Do you have any actual art supplies?” I say after what seems like hours of this, when it seems like my right hand at least is somewhat functional and I could actually draw something. “Like real paper and good pencils or charcoal or anything?”

Wendy admires how precisely I have cut out Barbie’s tiny high-heeled shoes, which I am kind of seeing quadruple but are nevertheless perfect.

“I mean it,” I say. “I’m an actual artist.”

“Of course you are, dear,” Wendy says.

“Seriously,” I say. “I really am! Werner Rosen is my art teacher!”

Wendy looks deeply impressed, but when I think about it, I remember how deeply impressed she was about the Barbie shoes, and I can’t even tell if she knows who Werner Rosen is. But she does go scuttling off to get more stuff.

So I can sit there by myself with my auto-closing eyes and miss the art rooms at school. I miss Miss Cornish’s and Mr. Rosen’s art rooms, all right?

Look:

Me and Lisa and Lisa’s semi-boyfriend, Huey, hanging out in Miss Cornish’s art studio at Winston. Back when I think Huey is the artist and not me. Because photography counts but I am mostly good at throwing pots and glazing ceramics, which I kind of think doesn’t count much.

Close-up of Huey running around with a giant classic camera from the 1940s strapped around his neck over his father’s ancient Grateful Dead T-shirt, which hangs on him like an old, raggedy dress.

If Huey had given off the slightest hint that he cared what other people thought, the jocks would have ripped him to pieces before he had a chance to finish middle school. But what Huey wants is to take spectacularly weird pictures that fill the spectacularly uncool Winston School Wildcat yearbook and that hang in the Winston School gallery (aka the hall outside of the gymnasium) and that win prizes.