The only person observing me, besides Adam Blessing, was Christine Cutler. Her locker was a few doors from mine.
“Hi, Brenda Belle!” she called over. “How are you?”
Since when had she cared how I was?
“Okay,” I answered.
Adam was still standing there.
I told him, “If you must communicate with me, do so by telephone this evening. I cannot risk the sheik’s disapproval.”
He laughed and sauntered away, calling over his shoulder, “I’ll see you in Science.”
Then Christine Cutler came up behind me and said, “Do you want to be my partner in Science?”
I kept my face turned from hers. “Why do I need a partner?”
“You’ve been absent,” she said. “We’re working on experiments for the principle of conservation of mass.”
“I don’t like to work as a team,” I said. Any other time I would have given my right arm to be her partner, but not in the condition I was in.
“We have to work as partners,” she said. “How about it?”
“Okay,” I said giving up. “O-kay.” I took off my muffler and faced her.
She didn’t blink an eye; she didn’t notice anything different about my face.
“Don’t forget,” she said. “We’re partners. See you after Homeroom.”
I mumbled something back and purposely headed in the opposite direction, toward the drinking fountain. I heard about six male voices shout out, “Hey, Christine, wait for me!” and over my shoulder I saw them scrambling forward to walk with her.
I began to wonder why she was suddenly interested in me. All through Homeroom, I feared the worst. Was it possible that Christine Cutler sensed some dreadful change taking place in my body? Since she was never known to show any interest in females, was it possible she was picking up weird vibrations?
Our Science teacher was named Ella Early. She always made me uncomfortable because I sometimes thought I’d wind up exactly like her. She was the kind of person it didn’t matter how old she was, she was old, if you know what I mean: She was never young. She never wore colors, just black. She always had chalk dust on her dresses, and she wore her hair back in a bun, and her face looked as if it would break if she ever smiled, which she never did. You just knew that no one had ever said to her, “Ella, I love you,” and that no one ever waited for her to come, or cared if she wasn’t there. She lived by herself in a room at Miss Jameson’s boarding house, and noons she ate at a table by herself in the cafeteria. She was the type you could never imagine having a father or mother or sisters or brothers. She was cranky and mean, and she was the only teacher who never put up decorations in her classroom at Christmas time. There were lots of nicknames for her: “The Robot,” “Ella Late Who Has No Fate” and “E.E., The Worker Bee.”
She was an example of what can happen to a person who nobody cares about, and I could see myself ending up that way after my mother and my aunt disowned me for never marrying. I’d probably get a job teaching in New York City where nobody knew me, and when I wasn’t in school, I’d wander around the streets of the city talking to myself like a crazy.
Ella Early instructed us to place copper and sulphur in a sealed test tube; then we were supposed to weigh the mixture. I was concentrating on the assignment when Christine Cutler said to me, “Adam Blessing is certainly trying to get your attention, Brenda Belle.”
Every time I looked up, he was grinning at me across the room.
“I can’t help that,” I said.
“You’re not like I thought you were,” she said.
I blushed with apprehension and fear. I was afraid of what she would say next. (“Brenda Belle, have you had a sex change?”)
“What did you think I was like, anyway?” I muttered as we heated the copper and sulphur.
“I didn’t think you were very cool,” Christine said.
“Am I?” I said, trying to raise my voice an octave.
“Yeah,” she answered in her best breathless tone. She was busy tossing back her long yellow hair and watching Adam watch me. He just kept watching me that way, and it began to make me nervous. I figured that he’d probably never get it out of his head that he’d witnessed me buying the Hairgo. Christine was sort of smiling in his direction, smiling at him smiling at me, and I began to imagine that she knew about the Hairgo, too, that while I was absent they’d laughed about it together.
“We’re supposed to weigh this stuff now,” I said.
“You weigh it,” she said.
“I thought we were partners,” I said.
“We are. I’ll record the weight.”
“You can’t record the weight while you’re looking across the room,” I said.
“He’s different from Storm boys, isn’t he?” she said.
“Is he?”
“Not just his clothes,” she said.
“What about his clothes?”
“He wears really nice clothes,” she said. “Expensive clothes.”
“He does?” I said. His clothes didn’t look all that special to me; in fact, I’d never noticed his clothes.
“He has a certain self-assurance,” she said.
“Miss Early is watching us,” I said.
After we’d recorded the weight, while we were waiting for Miss Early to tell us how to graph the results, Christine Cutler said, “What are you doing Christmas Eve, Brenda Belle?”
“I haven’t made up my mind yet,” I said.
“I’m having a small party,” she said. “Why don’t you ask Adam Blessing to come to it with you?”
“I didn’t know I was invited.”
“I’m inviting you now.”
“I’ll try to make it,” I said. That was the understatement of the year. I had never been invited to the Cutlers’. I wondered if she’d been afraid to invite me because I might not be able to think of anyone to ask. Her crowd was always paired off. I supposed she thought Adam and I were a pair.
‘“Come about eight o’clock,” she said.
“No talking about anything but the assignment!” Ella Early said. “This isn’t a social hour!”
After the bell rang, Adam was waiting for me just outside the door of Science class.
I decided that if Christine Cutler couldn’t see anything wrong with my face, chances were that Adam Blessing wouldn’t, either.
It was a wrong decision.
As I glanced up at him, full face, and smiled, he said, “Is that what that stuff did to your face? I was wondering why you were trying to hide it.”
“Lower your voice, creep!” I said angrily.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“You’re really stupid about some things,” I said.
“I’m sorry,” he repeated. “I didn’t know you were sensitive about it.”
“You’ve been going to all-boy schools too long,” I said. I was close to tears, but I wasn’t going to let him know that. I thought of Marilyn Pepper’s pimples, Sue Ellen Chayka’s broken nose, and Diane Wattley’s bowlegs—anything