I told my mother the Shepherds’ car was used and they couldn’t pry the anti-Christian fish off. She hmphed at me, not buying it but not forbidding me to see them, either.
By August I’d thrown myself into the Shepherd household completely. Without a flicker of loyalty to my own slow-moving, well-meaning, predictable parents.
I kayaked across the lake every chance I got. I spent the night almost every Saturday, ignoring my mother’s hmphs, her narrowed eyes.
On Sunday, I rushed over again as soon as I ditched my church clothes. Paddling hard, like I was racing backward across the river Styx, from the land of the dead to the land of the living.
I wished school would never start.
September 2
Casey and I did walk to school together the first morning, just like my mother had commanded back in June. We arranged to meet at the gazebo in the park at 7:45, and everything about it felt strange.
It was strange to see Casey on land. It was strange to see her in jeans. It was strange to see her with her hair brushed.
When I walked over I found her using a stick to pick a tile from the crumbling old mosaic inside the gazebo. “A little first-day-of-school gift for you,” she said, handing me the small green square. “For good luck.”
“Thanks.” I dropped it in my pocket, next to my Ziploc.
We walked up the shoulder of East Shoreline Road to town, Casey kicking pinecones and chattering, asking about every backpacked kid we saw on the way, me dragging my feet and answering in monosyllables.
Her whispered questions started out genuine. “Are they a couple? Is that girl on the bike a freshman?”
When we were so close we could see the brick and white plaster of CDL High through the pines, she finally picked up on my death-row vibe and tried to make me laugh.
About a pasty guy in a skull T-shirt taking last-minute drags off his cigarette—“That’s the school nurse, right?”
About a sour-looking teacher in the parking lot wearing an ankle-length black skirt and a curious, drapey gray cardigan—“Ooh, I like the cheerleading uniforms.”
I could manage only a tight smile.
I’d dressed carefully, in a denim skirt and my blue peasant shirt. As we walked up the broad brick steps together, surrounded by keyed-up, tanned kids, I tucked my blouse in and tugged it out for the hundredth time.
“You look great,” Casey said. “Don’t be nervous.”
“I’m not nervous.”
“Yes, you are. You’re petrified. I’m the new girl. I’m the one who’s supposed to be nervous.”
Then, too soon, we were in the auditorium with the entire school—240 students. A puny enrollment by California standards, but we could still barely hear each other. We had to get our locker assignments and ID pictures, and I was a C and Casey was an S, so our lines were on opposite sides of the room.
“Meet me outside the cafeteria at lunch?” she shouted.
I nodded. We only had two classes together. PE and study hall, both in the afternoon.
Casey started to walk toward the R through Z line. But then she turned back to me and whispered, leaning close, “Is it your boobs?”
“What?”
“Is that what they tease you about?”
“What do you...”
She kept her voice low as the wave of kids parted around us. “You always hunch. You wear those baggy old-man T-shirts instead of a bathing suit. I know you hate school, you’ve been dreading it all summer, and you won’t talk about it. So is that it? Or is there more?”
I managed to look down at my extra-blousy blouse and say, “They don’t help.”
She didn’t laugh. She just squeezed my wrist and said, “I’ll kick their asses if they mess with you. See you at lunch.”
I nodded and let the other kids pour in between us, so relieved I could have cried.
And the morning went fine. My ID picture came out pretty. Not one person called me Sister Christian. Even Pauline, who was of course a frosh cheerleader, was in a big pond now, with diluted influence, and seemed to be more interested in trying to get attention from the upperclassmen than messing with me. We had English together but she ignored me for the whole fifty-five minutes.
I was not Carrie, the hopeless freak with the bible-banging mother. I’d never been close. And by third period I was a little mad that I’d let an idiot like Pauline get to me for so many years.
By fourth period I was almost relaxed.
Then I found out about the rally.
I was in fifth period Spanish, happily conjugating sports verbs (to kick, to run, to swim), when Mr. Allendros said, “Tiempo para ir al gimnasio.”
Time to go to the gym.
It was still half an hour until the lunch bell, so I thought it was part of the lesson until the sophomores started getting up. The other freshmen looked as clueless as me, but we all stood and filed out the door.
“What’s going on?” I said to the girl behind me in the packed hall.
“Pep rally,” she said, her notebook knocking my elbow as she got jostled from behind. “Sorry.”
So I was swept along to the gimnasio, feeling far from peppy.
I hunted in the bleachers for a flash of red hair but I couldn’t find Casey, so I gave up and sat near the door in the first row, hoping I’d at least catch her on the way out. For something called a rally, it was pretty tedious. Announcements about elections, and football tickets, and a fund-raiser over at the skating rink/bowling alley in Red Pine.
And once again, I let myself relax.
Until ten minutes before the lunch bell, when the cheerleaders started pulling kids from the bleachers. There was to be some sort of audience participation to cap things off, and I wished desperately that I’d sat in the top row, far from their perky reach.
They could have targeted the leadership types, but no. They recruited poor Dan Novacek, a boy I’d known since kindergarten who rarely bathed, and Ellie Jacobs, who always wore a fishing cap, and a sweet, gray-bobbed teacher who’d been standing by the exit minding her own business.
Still, I thought I might be safe. The morning had gone okay. I shrank down and sat very still.
But Pauline found me. Pauline, with her new Rachel hairdo and her old taste for cruelty.
She gripped my elbow and I shook her off, smiling wildly, unfocused. But I was pushed, pulled, prodded by others who were relieved they hadn’t been singled out. Until I was onstage.
Not a stage exactly. The gym floor. But it might as well have been the Roman Forum. There were eight of us that the cheerleaders were arranging in various poses. I grasped that we were to act out some sort of cute chain reaction.
I was the first link in the chain. Someone handed me a fake coin the size of a small pizza, made of foam and wrapped in tinfoil. On my left was the teacher, who had to stand with her elbows locked together and her forearms up in a V, making a kind of receptacle. I was to pivot from right to left and set the tinfoil coin