Ms. Williams often leaves me little notes on my writing, too, asking questions, adding comments, and underlining and putting smiley faces next to her favorite lines. I love that.
Today, though, we’re talking about The Catcher in the Rye. I don’t love that.
“So now that we’ve finished the book, I want to hear your immediate takeaways. What did you all think?” Ms. Williams asks.
I wait a second before raising my hand. She calls on me.
“Honestly? I thought Holden was kind of a jerk,” I say. Ms. Williams smiles at that. “I felt he was incredibly judgmental about the world around him. He hardly gave anything a chance. And he felt like he was better than everyone. I understand he was depressed, and I want to be mindful of that, but it also sometimes felt like he was just a whiny white dude who hated people for trying to make their way in society.”
At this, Chad, the Goody-Two-shoes who hates when race comes up, raises his hand. I know what’s coming.
“I disagree with Charlie.” There are a few giggles, because honestly, Chad always disagrees with me. “I loved Holden. I found him incredibly sympathetic. And he’s right; it is stupid that most people try to blend in with society. I think he was relatable regardless of his skin color.”
I try not to roll my eyes. Technically, like, US Census technical, I’m white, but I’m also Puerto Rican, and Chad’s always trying to invalidate my criticisms about race and race relations. But I don’t take the bait.
“Holden takes a typical privileged perspective here. It’s not always possible or even safe for everyone to stand out—not when their identities are villainized, questioned, discriminated against, or attacked,” I say. “Some people need to conform rather than stand out.”
“How can you say Holden is speaking from a place of privilege?” Chad’s face looks both annoyed and disgusted at what I’ve said. “He’s talking about embracing being an individual! That’s the least-privileged thing ever. He’s basically saying be you, whoever you are, and I agree with Holden. Anyone who chooses not to is just looking for an excuse and, yeah, is kind of a phony.”
Before I can interject and run down the laundry list of ways in which Chad is wrong, Mrs. Williams swoops in. “Thank you, Charlie and Chad. Two fair and thoughtful perspectives. Let’s dig into this.”
It’s an hour of literary bliss.
As the bell rings, Ms. Williams reminds us to grab our notebooks from her desk on our way out of the classroom. When I reach for mine, she smiles at me.
“I loved what you wrote about The House on Mango Street. I’m glad you could relate to Esperanza. She’s one of my favorites, too,” she says. “Keep up the great work.”
I leave the class beaming.
Outside, Amelia is waiting for me. Her first period is right next to mine, and she’s always the first out the door.
“Why are you all smiley on this dreary day?”
I shrug. “Just a great class.”
“Nerrrd,” she teases.
We start walking toward our next class. As we do, Cal passes us, surrounded by his flock of football bros. They take up more than half of the hallway—they’re all so big and muscular, I bet they could collectively pull an eighteen-wheeler without much effort. Most of the boys nod at or say hello to Amelia, and she offers polite smiles back. But Cal grins at both of us.
“Hi, ladies! Looking beautiful today, as always!” he says.
Amelia ignores him, but I smile big and take a step toward him instinctively. “Hi, Cal!”
“Oh my gosh! Watch out!” Cal’s friend Tony shouts, dramatically putting an arm in front of Cal as if protecting him. Cal looks puzzled, and Tony stares at me, a smile spreading slowly across his lips. “Oh, sorry, man. Thought that was an elephant stampeding toward you.”
You know how the movies always show moments where time seems to stop and everything goes in slow motion?
This is kind of like that, only worse.
Because it’s happening to me.
I was just called an elephant in front of my crush, all of his popular friends, and my beautiful and perfect best friend.
Some of the boys around Tony yell “Ohhhh!” and “Shit!” but most of them are just laughing, and so are a few randoms in the hall. I wish an asteroid would hit our school right now or, at the very least, that I could say something witty back, but I do something worse: I laugh, too.
Cal frowns at Tony and says, “Come on, man,” at the same time that Amelia lunges toward him yelling, “What the fuck did you just say?!”
I grab her arm and pull her back. “It’s fine,” I manage, even though my insides are trembling.
“Let’s go,” Cal says, motioning with his chin toward the stairwell and signaling to his friends to get walking. He starts to move after them but then turns around. “Sorry,” he says, looking between me and Amelia. “See you in history?”
I nod and say nothing.
“Fuck that guy!” Amelia says, turning to me. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. It’s no big deal.” I ignore the water that’s welling in my eyes. The last thing I want to do is start crying in front of everyone.
She shakes her head. “You’re not.”
Through gritted teeth, I say, “I’m fine. Can we just drop it?”
Amelia stares at me for a second and I can tell she wants to press, but she doesn’t. “Okay,” she says, relenting. “I get it.”
Only she doesn’t. That’s the thing. She has no idea what this feels like.
Still, I cling to the fact that Cal didn’t laugh at the joke. I guess that’s why I like him. Even though his friends make fun of me and he could easily join in, he doesn’t. He’s nice to me. Maybe that makes my standards too low, but I don’t care.
“Babe, you want to go shopping later?” Amelia asks softly as we head into our next class. She knows that I like to shop to make myself feel better when things are bad.
“No Sid today?” I ask. Because I’m still tense, it comes out snarkier than I intend.
“He’s meeting up with his band. And I’d rather shop with you anyway,” she says calmly.
“Okay. Fine. Yes,” I say. “That would be nice.”
My insides are still jumbled, and I know that this is a moment I will probably remember, think of, and turn over in my brain again and again. But my hope is that we won’t ever talk about it. Pretend it’s fine and it will be.
Even if I know that’s a lie.
After school, I drive us to a nearby plaza with a few different stores. We go into Amelia’s favorite, and I look through the clothes with her, making idle chitchat about her ten-year-old sister, Tess (who annoys her, as sisters do, and keeps trying to steal from her closet).
As I look through racks of clothes I can’t fit into, I try to stop the voice in my head that keeps replaying Tony’s comment over and over. When I fail, I give up pretending these clothes will fit and wander over to the accessories. At least I can wear a purse.
The truth is that I’d need to be shopping at a plus-size store—or, at the very least, a store that carries a plus-size section—to buy anything. I haven’t ever really pointed this out to Amelia, and I like to think I’ve gotten pretty good at blending in during our shopping trips—here and there scoring a couple of straight-size items that run big, stocking up on so many accessories that I’m always buying something, even if it’s not clothes. It’s entirely possible that Amelia totally knows what’s up and is too polite to say anything, but I don’t necessarily live for the conversation that is Hey, I can’t shop here, can we go somewhere else?