Surviving High School

by Doty, M.

  As she went from class to class, Emily felt like a visitor, an impostor, a middle schooler, or a narc trying unsuccessfully to infiltrate the high school. She stared at the older girls’ dark skinny jeans or short dresses and at their arms wrapped around boyfriends in varsity jackets.

  In an attempt to reassure herself, she tried to count the other girls wearing sneakers, but they seemed just as lost as she was, shuffling through the halls with their eyes on the gray tiled floor, holding their books tight against their chests, darting right and left to avoid physical contact—especially with guys.

  CHAPTER TWO

  At lunch, Emily sat with Kimi at a table in a corner of the cafeteria, where she would be able to spot Nick Brown or Dominique before they noticed her. Most tables at the edges of the cafeteria were either uninhabited or populated by pockets of nerds and outcasts, scrubby skaters, and geeks with long white boxes of gaming cards.

  At the table to the left of Kimi and Emily, a pair of boys as pale as vampires rolled dice and pretended they were medieval warriors. One wore a T-shirt that read GAME GEEK across the chest. His questionably cooler friend had a Spider-Man backpack.

  The next layer of tables in was filled with band and drama geeks who weren’t necessarily popular but formed a large-enough contingent that no one messed with them. Then there were the preps, the dumber jocks, some of the more clean-cut skaters and punks, and the cooler half of the emo crowd—kids on the edge of popularity. And just past them, deep in the heart of the cafeteria, was the center table.

  To understand the center table meant viewing Twin Branches High as a solar system. The nerds inhabited the icy asteroids on the farthest reaches. Then, as you got closer to the middle, the planets became larger, warmer, and more desirable—until finally you reached the sun, the bright center, the spot where only the most popular kids dared to sit: the center table.

  The center table stood in the middle of the cafeteria beneath a massive skylight that bathed it in intense sunbeams, even on cloudy days. Unlike the long picnic-style tables that made up most of the cafeteria’s furniture, the center table was circular and surrounded by an elegant, curved bench. Seating was limited, and upperclassmen tended to take up most of the space, but Dominique and Lindsay sat there flashing their perfect smiles at the cute boys who surrounded them. Emily tried not to look.

  “Let me guess, a dark elf thief and a human cleric?” asked a small, plump, dark-skinned boy from the table to their right. “I can always spot fellow gamers.”

  “I don’t—um, steal things,” said Emily, slightly confused.

  “Forgive Amir,” said a tall, lanky guy with a serious computer tan and wearing a Batman T-shirt. “He’s not used to conversations with actual females. We were just curious if you want to sit with us—since we’re stuck together here in the outer reaches, you know? I’m Kevin, by the way. Kevin Delucca.”

  “Uh, sure—” Emily started, before Kimi cut her off.

  “Actually, we have some private matters to discuss,” she said.

  As the boys returned to their game, Emily leaned over and whispered to Kimi, “What’s up with you? They seemed like nice guys.”

  “Emily, Emily, Emily. Don’t be so naïve. Right now, as freshmen, we’re a fresh commodity here. Sure, we’re not popular yet, but I’d like to think that one day we could be. If we start hanging out with guys like that, it’s never going to happen. We’ll be branded nerd girls for life.”

  “Okay,” said Emily, though she didn’t quite buy the logic. “I’m too hungry to talk much anyway.”

  While Kimi sat beside her nibbling on half a bagel and some cottage cheese, Emily pulled out her lunch: yogurt, a whey protein shake, orange juice, half a loaf of whole-wheat bread smeared with almond butter, Muscle Milk, a tin of almonds, a sack of vitamins, raisins, two bananas, and a package of thin-sliced turkey. Laid out in front of her, the food took up almost a third of their cafeteria table. Luckily, no one else was sitting with them.

  “You sure you don’t want a couple of pizzas to go with that?” asked Kimi, her eyes big.

  “I guess I’m not that hungry,” said Emily, smiling. “I had a big breakfast.”

  “I bet you did,” said Kimi, savoring half a spoonful of cottage cheese. “How many calories a day are you up to now?”

  “Eight thousand. But you should see the guy swimmers eat. I mean, most people don’t regulate their percentages of carbs, proteins, and fats correctly. You’d be surprised how even at the Olympic level a lot of the guys are just eating deep-fried turkeys and cheese sandwiches. Some of them eat, like, twelve thousand or thirteen thousand calories a day, which is probably on the high end of what they should be—”

  “Oh yeah,” interrupted Kimi. “That would be a lot. I mean, eight thousand calories is barely anything—for a polar bear. It’s so unfair. If I even eat, like, two extra cookies, my jeans don’t fit anymore. My mom says our family has slow metab—”

  “Eat! Eat! Eat! Eat!”

  At the center table, a group of junior and senior guys had formed a circle around Dominique and were shouting encouragement as she ate. She actually was wolfing down two pizzas. As she got to the last couple of slices, the guys continued chanting: “Dominique! Dominique!”

  Emily rolled her eyes. Show-off. Dominique had been hanging out with older kids—especially guys—ever since she’d come to town. Her older half brother, Cameron, swam for the guys’ team, providing Dominique with an easy introduction to many of his teammates, who were among the most popular guys at school.

  Cameron himself was more of a loner, a strong swimmer with a near-perfect body that left girls tripping over their own tongues. Even Emily, who heard barely any gossip, knew he’d dated half of the popular girls and hooked up with the rest. Today, he sat watching Dominique’s performance with a wry smile, even as his friends cheered her on.

  As Dominique finished the last slice, the crowd applauded and held up the empty pizza boxes for the rest of the cafeteria to see. A couple of the guys peeled off from the crowd and walked away, talking to each other. One was huge, his tight blue T-shirt straining to contain his bulky muscles. He also had the worst haircut in the world: a terrible buzz cut with the words GO LIZARDS shaved into the back, stretching from ear to ear.

  The other boy, though, was gorgeous. He wore a red-and-white-striped polo shirt that hung loose, except for the sleeves, which clung to his well-toned arms. His dark brown hair fell just over eyes that sparkled with intelligence. Emily bet he had a nice smile, too, but he wasn’t smiling now.

  “Dude, a hot chick who can pack away that much pizza is basically a goddess,” said the bigger one, whose letterman jacket read SPENCER on the chest. “I’m all over that.”

  “Yeah,” the hot one said without enthusiasm. “Sure.”

  “You okay, man?” Spencer put a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “You seem—I dunno—off, or something.”

  “Just bored. One day back and I’m already bored. Maybe there is something wrong with me. I just can’t get excited about a girl putting away two pizzas.”

  “Are you crazy?” asked Spencer. “Dominique is basically the perfect woman. She’s like a guy—but in an incredibly hot girl’s body. And did you hear that she watches every NFL game on Sundays while she runs on the treadmill—for six hours? I started fantasizing about her listing quarterback ratings while she wrestled me to the ground and—”

  “Okay, okay, I get it,” said his friend. “But can you imagine going on dates? She’d totally empty your wallet every time you went out for dinner. I’ll stick to girls who only want a slice or two.”

  “Whatever, man,” said Spencer. “I still say she’s hot. I could see her perfect abs through her dress! Where did she even put those pizzas?”

  The guys began walking toward the door, on a path that would take them right past Emily and Kimi’s table. Emily instinctively looked down, preparing herself to avoid eye contact, and then she remembered the banquet she’d laid out for herself. I’ll stick to gi
rls who only want a slice or two. Great. This guy clearly wasn’t going to be impressed by her megacalorie meal. Now the only boy in the world she actually thought was hot (besides Taylor Lautner, maybe) was going to think she was just as high maintenance as Dominique.

  “Kimi!” she said, trying to keep her voice down. “Help!”

  “Help what?”

  Emily picked the bread and turkey off the table and laid them on the bench by her side. She reached for her vitamins next. Catching on, Kimi picked up the almonds and set the can in her lap.

  Emily was reaching forward, trying to hide one more thing when the guys walked by, and she tried to sneak a glance at the cute one. As he passed, a strong scent filled her nostrils, something like a combination of vanilla and chocolate chip cookies. Emily couldn’t believe it: She was literally salivating over a guy.

  Suddenly, the boys stopped. Right in front of Emily and Kimi’s table. Emily tried to act like she’d been looking at something over the guys’ shoulders.

  “Uh, hey. Are you okay?” asked the cute one.

  Emily looked up to confirm that, yes, he was actually talking to her. He had a confused look on his face, but she detected the faintest hint of a smile arcing up at the side of his mouth.

  “I’m—fine,” she finally said.

  “It’s just”—he glanced down at the table—“you have your hand in a bowl of yogurt.”

  Emily looked down and saw that what he’d said was true.

  “Oh. That’s. Yes. That’s, uh. I burned my hand on—a beaker. In Chemistry. And the yogurt is supposed to help the skin heal.”

  The guys stood silent for a second, looking at her. Then the cute one broke out into a big full-faced smile that reached all the way up to his eyes.

  “Chemistry, huh?” he said. Then he turned and left, laughing a little to himself as he and Spencer walked out the side door. Emily took her fingers out of the yogurt and wiped them off on a napkin. Perfect. Now the rest of the container would taste like her hand—meaning it would taste like chlorine. Maybe she could make up the yogurt calories at dinner.

  “I can’t believe it,” said Kimi, putting the almonds back on the table. “You were just talking to Ben Kale!”

  Emily spent the rest of the day in constant alert mode. Now she had three people to avoid at all costs: Nick, Dominique—and Ben Kale. Not that she would hate to see him again, but the thought of running into him in the hall and having him ask about her “injured” hand filled her with enough embarrassment to send a shiver down her back.

  At least her classes didn’t seem too hard—that was, until she got to her last one of the day: Honors History, where the teacher, Mr. McBride, gleefully handed out thick “supplementary” textbooks to the entire class. Mr. McBride was a tall, wiry man, towering over the students. He was Ping-Pong–ball bald, but he made up for it with two extremely bushy eyebrows whose gray hairs seemed to stick out as far as a cat’s whiskers.

  “Technically, the administration has deemed this textbook too difficult for first-year students,” he said, pacing the room and slamming the books down one by one on the students’ desks. “They even went so far as to ban the library from passing them out to Twin Branches students. Luckily, I have a friend at a used bookstore who picked me up my own personal set for pennies on the dollar. But be warned! There are no replacement copies. Lose your book, and I dock you a letter grade. Worse than that, though, you won’t have a book to read. Get the message? Hold on to this book as if your very life depends on it! In many ways, it does.”

  Mr. McBride got to Emily’s desk and slammed her textbook down. Her heart skipped several beats as he glowered down at her and said, “Welcome to Honors History.” Then he turned on one foot, took two monumental steps toward his dry-erase board, and shouted, “Lesson one: the Fertile Crescent!”

  Emily took a deep breath, trying to slow her heartbeat. Why hadn’t she just taken regular classes with Kimi? Emily carefully opened the book, trying to make sure she didn’t so much as bend a page.

  It wasn’t until after school, when she’d changed into her swim gear and walked into the gym housing the indoor pool, that the tension drained from Emily’s body and she felt at peace. The deep chlorine scent of the water filled the air, and the tight fabric of her swimsuit hugged her like a long-lost sister.

  She got up on one of the blocks and stared down the length of the pool. Official practices during the fall semester were on Mondays and Thursdays. Right now, the rest of the girls on the team would be in their living rooms, snacking and watching MTV or texting their friends about which guys had gotten cuter over the summer. The gym was empty, the water perfectly smooth. Emily felt like a mermaid returning home: Over the past few years, she had probably spent as much time in the water as out of it.

  The smooth grain of the white block tickled the undersides of her feet as she rocked slightly back and forth, readying her body for the wet shock of the water. She leaned forward and bent her knees to get into the forward-start position.

  She imagined the announcer’s voice echoing through the gym: “Three… Two… One…” And then the horn.

  Emily dove forward, slicing through the water. She came up a third of the way down the lane and reached forward with both hands, pulling her head up for air. She did the breaststroke down the length of the pool, touched the wall with both hands, and pushed off again, kicking once underwater, the way Sara had shown her.

  Sara’s nickname had been “the Machine,” and it fit her well: Her mechanics were perfect. She’d shown Emily how to look for the overhead flags when she did the backstroke to gauge how long she had until she hit the wall and the way to breathe on every other stroke in freestyle to maximize her oxygen flow.

  Their father had liked Sara’s nickname. “Girls don’t win gold medals,” he’d say. “Machines do.” And when Emily would ask to go to the mall with Kimi, her dad would remind her of it, telling her, “Just ask any swimmer who’s ever stood on the podium how many parties she’s gone to, what her favorite stand at the food court is, how many boyfriends she’s had. She’ll look at you like you’re nuts. Those are things you do when you’re too old to win anymore.”

  Emily went back and forth for several laps at 75 percent effort and kept swimming well beyond the length of an actual race. As she felt the cool water slide over her skin, the stresses of the day—the bad picture, the confrontation with Dominique, learning that she shared no classes with Kimi, embarrassing herself in front of Ben, and Mr. McBride’s supplemental textbook—escaped her body and dissolved into the water.

  The only thing she couldn’t quite shake was her fear of seeing Nick Brown. Even now, she half expected to pop out of the water and find him staring down at her from the side of the pool. The last time she’d seen him had been at the hospital, when he’d tried to get in to see Sara’s body. Black stitches had lined the bridge of his nose, and both of his eyes had been bruised purple in the crash. When she imagined running into him in the hallways here, she still saw him like that—cut, bruised, and shaken, barely alive.

  But when Emily pulled up her goggles and rested her arms over the side of the pool, it wasn’t Nick Brown she saw but rather her father, sitting on one of the blocks, his legs dangling above the water. His paunch stuck out over his too-tight pants, and his dark beard couldn’t cover up his fast-growing double chin. Looking at him, you’d barely recognize the guy who’d shocked the world by winning the Olympic gold medal for the butterfly in ’84. Even a few years ago he’d still been trim, swimming in the mornings—but not anymore. Emily wondered how long he’d been watching her.

  “Why are you in your race gear?” he asked. “We bought you that resistance suit for a reason. You’ve got to build muscle or you’re never going to lower your split times.”

  “It’s my first day here. I just want to relax.”

  “And you think Dominique is relaxing in that big indoor pool her parents built her? Or Chelsea Wong? Or Kate—”

  “Fine. Fine, Dad. I’ll chan
ge.”

  “Coach,” he said. “You’ll call me Coach while we’re at school. Just like the other girls.” She nodded. At least she didn’t have any actual classes with him. Although the school had hired him for his proficiency as a coach, district policy dictated that he had to teach at least two classes. He had ended up teaching two juniors-only courses in Family Health, which included such topics as nutrition, stress management, and—most disturbing—sex ed.

  He looked down at Emily resting, and she reflexively pulled off the pool’s edge and started treading water. “One other thing—I almost forgot. A reporter from Swimmer’s Monthly is coming by in a couple of weeks to do a story on you and Dominique. It’s a chance to get your name out there, and it’s good practice for later. Unfortunately, part of being an athlete of your caliber means dealing with the press.”

  Emily frowned. The swimming she could handle. Reporters were a different matter. Not that she had a choice. She tried to make eye contact with her dad, but he looked away from her, up at a list of names and times on the wall of the gym:

  MARION KNOWLES, 50M FREESTYLE, 25.45

  STACEY JACKSON, 100M FREESTYLE, 58.22

  And there, in the bottom right-hand corner:

  SARA KESSLER, 50M BACKSTROKE, 28.30

  In fact, Sara’s name appeared in several places across the board, but it was the 50-meter-backstroke time that truly mattered—not just a school record, but a national one for high schoolers. The mark had stood for almost a year now. Most impressive, Sara had set it as only a sophomore.

  “You’re on the right track,” Emily’s father said as he got to his feet and hopped off the block. “Stick with your training program, and you could own every record on that board.” He looked again at the wall of names, and Emily could tell which one he was concentrating on. “Now get to the locker room and put on your resistance gear. We’ve only got two hours before this place shuts down.”