smile stretched tight and thin, turning it into something entirely different. With a sigh, she said, “That was quite a lot to ask of a barrette, don’t you think?” Then Mrs. Finn threaded it into Lauren’s hair, securing a sweep over her daughter’s ear, and pulled the quilt back so Lauren could lie beside her.
Lauren hadn’t experienced the feeling her mother had described, but one much more unnerving. Like with Randy Culpepper, who sat one desk away in her English class.
On her very first day at Mount Washington High, Lauren had noticed that Randy smelled strange. Woodsy and sort of stale was how she’d first categorized it, until she overheard in the hall that Randy was a small-time pot dealer who smoked a joint in his car each morning before school.
That Lauren now knew what an illegal substance smelled like encapsulated how much her life had changed, whether she’d wanted it to or not. She swallowed this secret, along with so many others, because knowing them would break her mother’s heart. She could never confirm that things in her new school were as bad as she’d been told.
If not worse.
A while later, after Mrs. Finn had finished studying and turned off the light, Lauren stared into the dark and held on to her mother’s words. Despite all these changes, she would stay the same girl. Before falling asleep, she touched the barrette, her anchor.
Lauren reaches for the barrette again as the sedan slips into a free space along the curb.
“How do I look? Like an accountant you’d want to hire?” Mrs. Finn turns the rearview mirror toward her and regards her reflection with a frown. “It’s been so long since I’ve had an interview. Not since before you were born. No one’s going to want to hire me. They’re going to want some beautiful young thing.”
Lauren ignores the sweat stains in the armpits of her mother’s blouse, the small run in the panty hose that betrays the paleness of her mother’s skin. Paler still is Mrs. Finn’s hair, blond like Lauren’s, but dulled by gray.
“Remember the things we talked about, Mommy. Focus on your experience, not the fact that you haven’t worked in a while.”
They’d done a mock interview last night, after Lauren’s homework had been finished and checked. She’d never seen her mother so unsure of herself, so unhappy. Mrs. Finn doesn’t want this job. She wants to still be Lauren’s teacher.
It makes Lauren sad, their situation. Things hadn’t been good the last year out west. The money left by Lauren’s father was running out, and her mother cut back on the cool field trips they used to take to get a change of scenery from The Kitchen Academy — what they called their breakfast nook between the hours of eight and four. Lauren hadn’t even known her mother had stopped paying rent on their apartment. Her grandfather dying and leaving them the house was a blessing in disguise.
“Lauren, promise me you’ll talk to your English teacher about the reading list. I hate the idea of you sitting in her class for the whole year, bored to tears with books we’ve already read and discussed. If you’re afraid to do it —”
Lauren shakes her head. “I’ll do it. Today. I promise.”
Mrs. Finn pats Lauren’s leg. “We’re doing okay, right?”
Lauren doesn’t think about her answer. She just says, “Yeah. We are.”
“See you at three o’clock. I hope it goes fast.”
Lauren leans across the seat and hugs her mother tight. She hopes for that, too. “I love you, Mommy. Good luck.”
Lauren walks into school, barely a force against the tide of students flowing from the opposite direction. Her homeroom is empty. The fluorescent lights are still off from the weekend, and the legs of the upturned classroom chairs spike four-pointed stars, encircling her like oversize barbed wire. She turns one over and takes a seat.
It is terribly lonely at school.
Sure, a couple of people have talked to her. Boys, mostly, after daring each other to ask her stupid questions about homeschooling, like if she belonged to a religious cult. She expected as much — her male cousins were just as goofy and awkward and annoying.
The girls were only slightly better. A few smiled at Lauren, or offered tiny bits of politeness, like pointing out where to put her dirty cafeteria tray after lunch. But no one extended herself in a way that felt like the start of something. No one seemed interested in getting to know her beyond confirming that she was that weird homeschooled girl.
It shouldn’t have surprised her. It is what she was told to expect.
Lauren lets her chin rest against her chest. She pretends to read the notebook lying open on the small patch of desk attached to her seat. Really, though, she discreetly watches the girls filter into the room and take chairs beside her. She picked up the trick from Randy Culpepper, who used the same posture to sleep, undetected, in second period.
She doesn’t see the girls’ leader with them, the pretty one with the icy eyes. It’s a rare sighting.
The girls are frantic, whispering like crazy. Stifling giggles and laughs. Completely consumed with whatever they’re gossiping about. Until one notices Lauren watching them.
Lauren lowers her eyes. But she’s not fast enough.
“Oh my god, Lauren! You are so lucky! Do you even know how lucky you are?” The girl puts on a big smile. Huge, even. And she runs on tiptoes over to Lauren’s desk.
Lauren lifts her head. “Excuse me?”
The girl ceremoniously places a piece of paper on top of Lauren’s open notebook. “It’s a Mount Washington tradition. They picked you as the prettiest girl in our grade.” The girl talks slowly, as if Lauren spoke another language, or had a learning disability.
Lauren reads the paper. She sees her name. But she is still completely confused. A different girl pats her on the back. “Try to look a little happier, Lauren,” she whispers sweetly, in the same way one might discreetly indicate an open zipper or food stuck in her teeth. “Otherwise people will think something’s wrong with you.”
This throwaway line surprises Lauren most of all, because it completely contradicts what she’s already assumed.
Sarah Singer’s plan is to break it to him fast, so there’s no scene. Forget dressing it up, explaining things. That’s only going to make it worse. She’ll just say something like, I’m done, Milo. Our friendship, or whatever the hell you want to call it now, is over. So go ahead and do what you want. Live your life! Become best bros with the captain of the football team. Feel up the head cheerleader, even though everyone knows Margo Gable stuffs. I’m not gonna judge you.
That last part will be a lie. She’ll totally judge him for it.
Sarah sits on her bench, nibbling the edges off a strawberry Pop-Tart. The tangy smell of smoke on her fingers sours the sweet. She forces down what’s in her mouth and chucks the pink frosted center — her favorite part — into the grass, because all this sugar clearly isn’t helping. Let the squirrels eat the crack; she needs to calm the hell down. She
