She looks almost as skinny as Chris. Partly that’s because she wears my dad’s shirts, and they’re too big for her. Partly it’s because at dinner she is often feeding me instead of feeding herself.
When Chris leaves, I try to tell her that cooking for the Wohls is not her job, that he has to learn to do life without drugs but also without her, that there are hurts she cannot fix and holes she cannot fill, but there are no preprogrammed Pep Talk folders and it’s a lot to type, so I tell her with my rolling eyes, sideways from my lolling head.
“I know,” she answers me. “But what can you do?”
One
Two years ago, on the day we started ninth grade, the first thing we did as high schoolers was herd into the auditorium for a welcome meeting and getting-to-know-you games. Mrs. Radcliffe said we were young adults now, with opportunities and responsibilities. She said high school was an adventure we were lucky to be embarking upon. She acknowledged that this would be the last school many of us would ever attend. She said we were rockets sitting on a launch pad, and from here, we would blast off to college or to careers or to parts unknown, worlds unexplored, mysteries unfathomable. We were all pretty sure she got this speech from a book because there was no way she wrote it for Bourne High. Then she had us write down and sticker to our shirts two adjectives that best described us.
Mirabel’s words were “perspicacious” and “immured.” If Mirabel were studying for the SATs, she wouldn’t have to study for the SATs.
Monday’s were “yellow” and “yellow.”
Petra’s were “here anyway,” which now I’m pretty sure are adverbs, but it was only our first day of high school so we didn’t know much yet.
Mine were “bored” and “boring.”
Bored because it is dumb to play get-to-know-you games with a bunch of people you got to know at birth which is true not just of the ones I shared a womb with but everyone else in that auditorium as well. Bored because there is nothing to do in Bourne. Bored because high school is supposed to be a fresh start, and there were no fresh starts happening that day. Or any day.
But much more than bored, I am boring. If you asked anyone I know to describe me, they would say, She’s the normal one. I’m not short or tall, skinny or fat, buff, buzz cut, braided, or dyed. I’m not pierced, tattooed, or even mascaraed most days. I’m a boring straight white girl, but I don’t think much about race. （Maybe so. I’m a boring straight white girl so I don’t think much about race.） And my sexuality doesn’t matter since there’s no one in Bourne for me to date anyway. I am ordinary, unremarkable, average, your typical American teenager. Picture a high school girl. That’s me. That girl in your head right now? Me exactly. I could not be more normal if I tried.
But here? That makes me weird. “Weird” would also have been a good adjective to describe me.
If Mrs. Radcliffe had chosen my word for me, she’d have gone with “indebted.” Track A has a tutoring credit, one of those requirements Pooh was so skeptical about, like we have to take history and we have to take English and we have to take math. We have to tutor. Since it’s after school, you’d think they couldn’t make us, but you’d be wrong. Some of us get out of it because there’s football practice （never mind it’s only touch because no one here wants to risk a head injury, and it’s only intrasquad because there’s no one else to play）。 Some of us get out of it because we have after-school jobs （never mind after-school jobs are discouraged in Bourne where there aren’t even enough jobs for the adults）。 There aren’t many of us left after that, but the rest of Track A tutors a few days a week after school, in pairs. So at least Petra and I get to do it together. It’s not that I don’t get how many birds this kills—the kids who need job experience get job experience; the kids who need extra help get extra help; the kids who need occupying and distracting after school get occupied and distracted—but even free labor is only worth the cost if you know what you’re doing. And none of us do.
When Mrs. Radcliffe explained that first week that it was Track A who would staff the tutoring center after school, there was a lot of whining and moaning and protesting and complaining until she cut us off by hissing, “You are the lucky ones. This is the least you can do,” and stood before us, arms crossed, daring us to disagree. We would have, vehemently, for Bourne is nothing if not a study in how it’s not that simple, but there is no arguing with overworked, underpaid guidance counselors, and we accepted our lot just like everyone else.