Like Mandarin - Kirsten Hubbard [3]
“Done,” Taffeta announced.
I grabbed her wrist, ignoring her protests as I towed her schoolward.
Like always, we paused at the edge of the great lawn, still glittering from that morning’s watering. But my stomach knotted up even more than usual. The winners of the All-American Essay Contest would be announced in homeroom.
“Can’t I go with you today?” Taffeta asked. “I’ll be good, Grace, I promise. I hate school. Todd at my table looks up my dress.”
“You know you can’t come with me. Just keep your legs crossed like Momma told you.”
Taffeta scowled at me. “School is horseshit.”
My jaw dropped. Before I could demand where she’d heard that word, Taffeta scampered off toward the other kindergartners, brandishing her kaleidoscope. They swarmed around her like ants to a fallen bit of candy.
I remained awhile longer, squeezing my quartz stone and watching the high school students on the other side of the lawn. At the beginning of the year, administration had decided I belonged with the sophomores, a year ahead of my class, instead of with the kids my age. Like I could possibly fit in any less.
It was as if all the other students spoke some language no one had ever taught me. The pretty girls, who squealed with laughter. The monkey-armed guys in cowboy hats, who never looked my way. The wholesome farm kids, like glasses of milk, and the bored bad kids, who made their own fun. I didn’t even fit in with the so-called brainy kids—the handful of them—because either they knew how to fake it, to stand out in a good way, or they were weird. Like Davey Miller, who thought wearing socks with sandals was the greatest idea since Velcro.
The bell rang, and the other kids headed for the double doors. I knew that Mandarin Ramey probably wasn’t among them, but I searched for her anyway.
My homeroom and history teacher, Ms. Ingle, was proud to be an American. She plastered proof on every available surface. Even the ceiling was a crazy quilt of glossy rectangles, blazing with stripes, spangles, pictures of presidents, and a massive map of Wyoming, emblazoned with The Equality State in four-inch fancy letters. Her boyfriend, Mr. Mason, ran the Washokey Historical Society, located in a trailer parked behind the gas station. I’d spent all ten hours of fall’s community service project there, organizing sepia-colored photographs of covered wagons and surly pioneers.
Although I liked Ms. Ingle, sometimes I found myself sneering at our forefathers or extending my middle finger, unseen, in my lap.
Then I felt guilty, as if George Washington were hiding underneath my desk.
Davey Miller tapped my shoulder. He sat behind me and was always trying to make conversation. “What’s up, Davey?” I asked.
“I forgot to give your pencil back yesterday,” he said, blinking hard.
The blinking was a nervous tic. It made him appear forever on the verge of tears. His little sister, Miriam, was the same age as Taffeta. When Davey dropped her off to play, he often lingered in my kitchen to talk until I fabricated some excuse to make him leave.
“Keep it, Davey,” I told him. “I’ve got plenty.”
Before he could say anything else, Alexis Bunker, who sat to my right, backhanded me across the shoulder. Washokey High mixed kids of all grades in homerooms, and just my luck, Alexis and I had been placed together.
“Grace, guess what!” she squealed. “Did you hear?”
Alexis had squinty blue eyes, freckle-prone skin, and blond hair she’d hot-curled so many times for the regional teen pageants it looked like frayed twine. The summer before, she’d sprouted an enormous chest, and it amused me to watch her attempt to navigate around it. Since our mothers had been best friends since their childhoods, Alexis and I had also considered ourselves best friends until we started high school and realized we had nothing in common. At lunch, I still sat with Alexis and her cronies—aka Alexis & Co.—only because I