ONE
P R E S E N T D A Y
IT’S THE KIND of situation most people would dread. Starting at a new high school, in the middle of my senior year, in a new town, in a new state. I know no one. No one knows me. That's what I'm counting on.
It's not like it is in the movies. You know - where you walk into the building in slow motion, and cue emo background music as every unfamiliar head suddenly turns in your direction, some internal radar having announced an outsider in their midst. Or maybe the outsiders are more noticeable in other schools- in small towns anyway. I suppose it would have gone like that in my old hometown in northern Florida. Not the part of Florida with Mickey Mouse, or retired grandparents, or even the part with the spring breakers. Orpartswith spring breakers. I grew up in the part that could just have easily been in Alabama, or South Carolina. A small, southern town in Baker County where everyone has known everyone since birth, and their parents, andtheirparents. Linton, Florida is where my father is from, but thankfully not my Mom.
Mom grew up here - Port Woodmere, in Long Island, New York. Not exactly the big city, but thirty miles is close enough, and the three hundred or so in my new senior class certainly cast a beautiful shadow on the fifty two of my former class. Total population of my new high school? One thousand, three hundred and nineteen.
Perfect.
The first thing I notice is the way people are dressed. Back home, my jeans and gray tee shirt would have blended into the rest of the student body like a uniform. My favorite black motorcycle boots in place of sneakers are the only thing that would've stood out, if anything. But here, although the guys are in jeans, they're most definitely not the kind they wear back home, but the three hundred dollar kind. The girls are mostly in skirts, or even dresses, and they look even more expensive. It doesn't bother me though. My outfit was chosen with care for one singular purpose. Not to bein, not to fitin, or to impress theincrowd. I don't want to be "in" anything exceptinvisible. And it appears that I am.
I keep my head down as I navigate my way to the main office, just in case someone does notice me as anew girl. As someone who doesn't belong.
Someone who doesn't belonganywhereanymore, for that matter.
The receptionist is typing away on her keyboard looking disinterested in her task, and doesn't even look up as I approach. I stand there a few moments waiting for some acknowledgment, somecan I help you,or even a glance.Nothing. For a second I wonder if I actually am invisible after all, and how awesome would that be? I could forgo this whole school thing altogether. I clear my throat.
I'm rewarded with a raised eyebrow and an impatient glare in response. At least it's an acknowledgment.
"Um, hi," I stammer. I hand her the form I was told to bring today.
"Oh, a transfer," the receptionist, whose name plate reads "Ms. Sussman", mumbles unimpressed. "Aurora Pine," she reads from my form.
"Rory," I murmur automatically, and she gives me a look.
Right. She doesn't care about my preferred nickname. She's an administrator I'm likely never to interact with again. Especially if I plan to remain invisible, at least figuratively.
Ms. Sussman continues to click away at her keyboard until something spits out of the printer behind her. She hands it to me, along with a few other sheets of paper which I realize are a Student Handbook and a map of the school, and wishes me luck.
How big is this school that I need a freaking map?My old school was a box. Two floors, four hallways each, all surrounding a courtyard. Definitely no map necessary.
This building is enormous. The kind you see on television. Red brick, white columns, even a damned bell tower. The one thing both schools have in common,of course, are the athletics fields. Especially the football field. It's naked of its painted white yard lines and numbers since it's February, but it's clear that significant funds have been invested in this part of the grounds.
I was under the impression that high schools up north didn't make the same kind of fuss over football that they do back home. I'd hoped anyway. An electric current of uneasiness surges through me, making me shudder.
Fuck football. I hate it. Hate the sport, hate the people that play the sport, the people that watch it- the people who are convinced it's the most important fucking thing in the world. And fuck this school for being presumably
included in that.
I sigh and open the map, trying to find Hall 6 in Wing B.Could this have been organized any more poorly?I quickly realize that there is an older part of the building - the part with the red brick facade - and a newer part. Clearly the old building wasn't big enough to accommodate the student population and, judging by the unsightly architecture, they must have expanded it sometime in the eighties.. Unfortunately they don't seem to have bothered taking the layout of the old structure into any kind of account when they drew the plans for the extension. The two parts of the building don't appear to have anything to do with one another, besides the fact that they're attached, of course.
It takes me fifteen minutes to find my way to my first class, which is of course my most detested subject, calculus. I got to school early enough to have time to go to the office and still be on time for class, but I didn't exactly account for the hallway maze.
I stand outside the door to room 313 and take deep breaths. Math has always stressed me out - as much as classes ever stressed me out anyway - but mornings are tough for me, so having it at the very start of my day just makes a bad situation worse. My pulse starts to quicken, and I briefly consider just ditching since they're already twenty minutes into the period. I bark out a short ironic laugh. Nowthatwould make a fantastic first impression - cutting class, something I've never done in my life.
Old Rory would never have skipped class. But New Rory... I suppose I don't know her well enough to even make that determination.
My heart rate races like an out of control freight train and beads of sweat break out on my forehead. I close my eyes and count backwards from ten. Twice. Yes, math has always stressed me out, but the panic attacks - those are relatively new. Usually there are particular stressors that trigger them - ones related to what happened last year. Not something like being late to calculus. I step back from the door and lean against the adjacent row of lockers, pressing my forehead to the cold metal, hating myself for being so damn weak. This isn't me. Or thiswasn'tme.
I guess now it is me.
The counting isn't helping. I reach around to the front pocket of my backpack and feel for the shape of the pill bottle in the front pocket. I loathe them. I've been trying to depend on them less and less, and sometimes other coping methods, like the counting, really do help. I snort as I think of how proud I was of myself just this morning for not taking a pill to deal with my first day jitters, even though that really is an understatement as to how I was feeling.Nervous, anxious- also understatements. But no panic attacks - not until now.
Somehow just feeling the shape of the bottle, just knowing they're there if I really need them, helps me start to calm. I start counting again, but instead of counting nothing, I count how many pills I think are left in the bottle, knowing how desperately I want the last time I refilled the prescription to be the last time I fill the prescription. Because yes, they help the panic attacks, but they also make me feel completely numb.
For a while, after everything happened,numbwas all I wanted to feel. In the aftermath, it felt like things just couldn't stop going wrong.
