We drove down one street lined with pastel-painted mansions, photo-shoot-ready lawns, and driveways dotted with abandoned basketballs and scooters and everything. People just left their stuff outside overnight? NO WAY that would happen on my street; it would be like putting up a steal me sign. I saw a man jogging. An old lady power walking with her elbows out to the sides. A teenage guy delivering newspapers. Like, real newspapers. I thought newspaper delivery people were extinct or whatever. And they were all white. Alllllll white.
My stomach started to cramp up. Did these white kids all really have their own cars? Were they all really allowed to drink beer and wine in front of their parents? Did they hang out with their boyfriends and girlfriends in their furnished basements (or was it “finished”?)? Okay. Maybe Jade and I had watched Mean Girls way too many times. But still.
Finally the bus swerved through a maze of mini rotaries, over speed bumps, and boom, we were at the school’s entrance. I followed the rest of the METCO kids off the bus, trying not to check things out too obviously, like, Hello! I’m the new kid. The air smelled cold, like the ice-skating rink at Stony Brook. My elementary school always took field trips there, I think mostly because it was within walking distance. But man, that smell—did this school have its own rink? Dang. The school itself was huge. A janitor—even he was white!—rolled blue bins toward a dumpster. I could hear birds cawing, the roar of an industrial lawn mower, and the growling of a bus tackling one of the speed bumps in the parking lot. Speaking of, there had to be a hundred speed bumps.
As I walked in the front doors, a girl with long, thick red hair was stopped just inside, trying desperately to peel gum off the bottom of her sneaker. Try scissors, I wanted to say, but I didn’t know this girl, and what if she told me to just mind my own damn business? That’s what happened the last time I’d tried to be friendly with a white girl. Truth. That girl’s name was Melissa, but everyone called her Missie. She was tiny, but boy she had the biggest dirty mouth. She cussed out teachers left and right and held the record for most suspensions. Once, when I tried to help her pick up books she’d dropped in the hall, she told me to mind my own damn business. So, yeah, Missie was the only white girl I’d ever spoken to for more than five seconds. Some people might find that surprising, but it was true. I mean, duh, I’d SEEN white people, especially in Jamaica Plain. That was another thing. White people called it JP, but we call it Jamaica Plain. Well, I used both now, to be honest.
So I gotta admit, I was so surprised when the redhead girl looked up and said “Hi” that I looked around to see who she was talking to. I took in the gold and silver trophies displayed on the walls, protected by Plexiglas. Everyone else seemed to be headed to classes, so she must have been talking to me.
“Hey,” I said back.
Redhead girl was now using a pencil to pick at the gum. “Shit! Any idea how to get rid of this stuff?” Her tone seemed friendly enough. She wobbled over, trying to keep the gum area of her shoe from touching the ground, and extended a hand. “Holly.”
Suddenly I didn’t like how she was staring at my outfit and backpack. “Happy first day,” she added. Was she being sarcastic? And how did she know I was new? My cheeks went hot. I didn’t know what to do, so I adjusted my backpack. Not that there were any real books in there yet, just notebooks and new pens and highlighters I’d bought over the weekend with Mom’s CVS ExtraCare bucks. I scanned this Holly person up and down—loose jeans, white T-shirt, baby-blue flannel tied around her waist—and walked away. Yeah. Totally mature. Not that I knew where I was going or anything. As I turned the corner, I could hear her say, and pretty loudly too, “Okaaay…”
Around the corner I slowed down. What was my problem? I’d just thrown this girl I didn’t even know some major shade. Nice. More and more sleepy-eyed kids began to fill the hallway. I needed to get my schedule at the main office, so I needed to backtrack, and risk bumping into the redhead girl again. Can you spell “awkward”?
5
I managed to get to the office without any red-haired-girl encounters. Phew! A lady wearing pastel everything—even pastel-pink frosted lipstick—looked up as I walked in. “Good morning, honey.” She eyed me up and down. “Where are you from?” I opened my mouth to answer (I was going to say Boston), but then she lowered her voice to a whisper. “Ah, you must be our new METCO student.”
I nodded, forcing my shoulders back.
Clearly ready for me, she held out a half sheet with my schedule, saying, “Oh, you’ll want to check in with Mr. Rivera. He’s the METCO faculty adviser, right down the hall. Oh, wait. He’s at a district meeting today. You can catch him later in the week; he’ll set you up with diagnostic exams and all that good stuff. But for now, you’re in a general schedule. Probably won’t change much.” She looked me up and down once more. “That about covers it. Have a good first day!”
Wow. She’d basically had an entire conversation without me saying a word. Jade would think that was funny. Jade—where was she right at this moment? Probably just leaving for school, and here I was, on another planet.
The bell rang. I had no idea where I was going, but I tried to look like I did, joining the flow of kids in the hall.
Eventually I found the right classroom. Geometry. To my surprise, not everyone was white—there were like three Asian kids. I sat down at an empty desk, and the teacher handed me a textbook. “Welcome,” he said after asking me my name. I flipped through the book—the answers to all the problems were in the back! In Boston the teachers ripped out those sections. Huh. And this math teacher’s breath didn’t stink. Okay. Class number one, not so bad.
At the bell I pushed through the hallway and found my next class. And the next. And the next, and then the principal made an announcement over the loudspeaker that there was a community meeting in the gym. I only knew where that was because everyone started walking in the same direction.
The gym—whoa—was total state-of-the-art. They even had a climbing wall. The basketball nets looked brand-new, probably were. Dad would have been so psyched. He loved basketball, was always saying if he were five inches taller, he’d have had a chance. He used to take me to the courts on the corner of Jackson and Centre, taught me how to dribble, control the ball with my hands. How to breathe before taking a shot. “All the little things add up, Liliana,” he’d say. He never cared that I missed half my shots, just kept showing me how to get better.
I shook my head hard. Stop. Thinking. About. Dad. I climbed into the bleachers and looked for a space to sit. Technically there weren’t any assigned seats, but you wouldn’t know it based on how kids bunched together almost instantly.
The only other time I’d been surrounded by this many white people, Dad had taken me with him on an errand, I think it was in Back Bay, and we stepped inside a building where everyone was white, even the security guard. I remember feeling like everyone was staring at us. Dad had knelt down beside me and whispered, “Don’t ever let anyone make you feel like you don’t belong in the world. ¿Entiendes?”
Did I belong in this world? Which made me think—Dad. What world was he in? I nearly tripped. Focus! Find a place to sit. I searched for the METCO kids, which wasn’t difficult—they were the only other brown kids in the bleachers. I tried not to be obvious as I headed over to them. A couple of guys in puffy black jackets huddled over a phone while some girls with fake nails carefully pulled chips from crinkly bags, then deposited them into their lip-glossed mouths.