My dad was the painting teacher at our high school. The Academy was the alternative public school in the district; it functioned on a system of quarters instead of semesters and offered classes like Skate PE. We had a surf team but no football. On gray Saturday mornings, the popular upper-class girls would wake up early and drive to various beaches to watch the surf team compete. They’d stand barefoot in the sand, wearing zip-up hoodies over their bikinis and waving their hands in the air, screaming the boys’ nicknames from the shore.
I’d transferred to the Academy from middle school knowing no one but my father and a few of his fellow teachers. My dad wore flip-flops every day and wouldn’t take attendance until the end of class. To have his class after lunch was “the dream”; you could come back as late as you wanted, and stoned, too. Everyone was convinced that my dad’s policies were lax because he was a former hippie and pothead, but I knew that wasn’t true. He simply enjoyed his reputation as a chill teacher. The cute guys on the surf team adored him, calling him Rata. “Rata is a legend,” they’d say, their eyes red and their skin freckled from too much sun.
The year before I arrived, my dad told some of the surf-team boys that his daughter was coming to the school in the fall. “Keep an eye on her,” he said.
On the first day of my freshman year, I put on a thin red tank dress over a push-up bra and rode to school with my dad in the cab of his Toyota pickup truck. The Academy had no dress code, and I was thrilled to be able to wear whatever I wanted. It felt new, an exhilarating adult freedom. I walked to classes, keeping my head still as upper-class boys passed by me, exclaiming loudly enough for me to hear: “Yo, that’s Rata’s daughter!” “She’s hot, dude.” I gripped my three-ring binder to my chest.
Later, word got around that “Rata’s daughter models.” It wasn’t just the way I looked that made the boys notice me; it was also my perceived status in the outside world as an attractive girl. I was scared by the older boys’ attention, but also glad: the way I looked was getting me noticed in a new school, and I was grateful not to be invisible.
Sadie was often with those boys. She had all their numbers in her phone, saved under their nicknames. She knew which classes they were taking, what plans they had for the weekend, where they lived, and which girls they thought were hot, remembering the names of the freshmen with big boobs and the sophomores with bedroom eyes. She made sure to say hi to these girls and compliment them on their outfits when she saw them in the hallway. This is how she and I started spending time together.
Within a few months, the boys began inviting me to lunch off campus. I’d awkwardly accept and meet them in the parking lot, surveying the crowd for a familiar black ponytail. We’d usually spend our thirty minutes talking about my dad. “Have you ever smoked with him?” they’d ask, peering at me from the driver’s seat. （No.） The pretty, popular girls took note of who grabbed the boys’ attention, watching me climb into their Nissans and Toyotas with suspicion and interest. Some chose to be mean or ignore me completely; Sadie decided to bring me closer.
On weekends, she’d drive a packed carful of boys around to their skate spots. Her boyfriend, Mike, always sat shotty. Pulling a furiously heavy U-turn, she’d screech to a stop beside me, her head sticking all the way out the window, both hands on the wheel, her long arms extended forward.
“Emski—get in!” she’d shout. I’d crawl into the cramped backseat, balancing on a guy’s lap, ducking to avoid hitting my head on the car’s roof as she put her foot on the gas and tore out.
Before she started modeling, Sadie had a job as a cashier at a sandwich place by the beach. I was impressed that she always had cash on hand. “From my tips,” she’d say, as she pulled out a handful of dollars to pay for gas, burritos, handles of alcohol （purchased by any means: our terrible fake ID; friends who were older）， spontaneous shopping trips, whatever she wanted. She was only a year older than me, but I felt as if she were an adult and I a kid.
When Sadie got drunk at house parties, she’d stand on the street in front of her parked car and play-fight with one of the Scab Crew, usually whichever guy was the most fucked-up. She’d laugh deeply and kick suddenly and expertly high in the air, her hands clenched into tight fists near her chest. She was taller than most of the guys, and at some point they’d tell her they’d had enough.
“Chill, Sadie. Seriously!”
Some of them, though, liked this opportunity to hurt her. When that happened, I’d usually move a couple steps away and nervously pretend to text. But Sadie seemed to especially enjoy the fighting when one of them got into it, grabbing her wrists and pushing against her as hard as he could. She wanted the challenge. She seemed to want to feel them try to hurt her.