"I've been called all sorts of things, Mrs. Brentwood, but never a disease."
"I'm not accusing you of anything or saying anything like that- about you in particular. I don't judge people on what they look like. I wait for them to show me who and what they are through their behavior. I simply want to make you aware of my full responsibilities here. The welfare of the student body as a whole is paramount. I have promised that to the parents who have entrusted me with the welfare of their children and who pay a great deal of money to have this extra TLC."
From the way she spoke, I couldn't imagine that care to be tender or loving.
"Never will any individual take on more importance than that, no matter how wealthy his or her benefactor might be," she emphasized.
She cleared her throat and relaxed her stiff posture. "Now then, you are starting here under the cover of a deception I have agreed to because of how concerned your foster mother is about your well-being and assimilation into the family at the Dickinson School. I assured her there was no reason to have such fears, but she was very concerned and beseeched me to go along with the story."
"Story?"
"Frankly, everyone's personal business is everyone's personal business. This is not one of those public school general offices where things are leaked out through the gossip pipeline. We eschew gossip, and any one of my staff who perpetuates it will be let go instantly.
"In short, what you tell your fellow students about yourself is your business, as long as it does no one else any harm. I have no problem with your being Mrs. Emerson's cousin, if that makes her feel better. I have made this promise to your foster mother, and now I am making it to you, but I am adding that point, Celeste. Don't do anything that will bring harm, disrespect, or bad publicity to the Dickinson School. Am I understood?"
"Yes, ma'am," I said, holding my eyes on her the way I used to hold them on adults when I was much younger, even though my mind was reeling. How could Ami have done this before last night? She had obviously already planned out our spontaneous fiction about me.
Mrs. Brentwood looked immediately
uncomfortable under my glare and stood up. She came around her desk and headed for the door.
"Follow me, then," she commanded, opening the office door and stepping out.
The two women in the office glanced up at us but quickly dropped their eyes back to their work as we stepped into the hallway.
"Our school is small enough that I can fulfill the responsibilities of what guidance counselors, principals, and deans of discipline do at public schools," she began as we walked down the hallway. "If you have any problems or questions, you can make an appointment to see me, regardless of the issue.
"This," she said, pausing at a doorway, "is our science lab." She opened the door, and a bald-headed man with just some gray fuzz around his ears, dressed in a lab coat, looked up from his desk, which was built higher than the student desks. He adjusted his glasses on the bridge of his nose and lowered the flame on a Bunsen burner.
"Good morning, Mr. Samuels. This is Celeste Atwell, the new student whose paperwork you were given at the end of last week. You'll recall that she will attend your period-three chemistry class."
"Yes, of course. I saw you were already in chemistry at your old school. I hope we'll match up," he said.
I could feel Mrs. Brentwood bristle.
"I have no doubts about that, Mr. Samuels," I said. "My class was so large, we had to take turns using the manuals."
"Yes, well, welcome to Dickinson, Celeste," he said, smiling. His round cheeks bubbled out.
"Thank you," I said,
"I'm giving her a very quick tour," Mrs. Brentwood said, and backed up, closing the door. "Mr. Samuels has been with us twelve years. He has written a significant paper on genetics that was published in a prestigious science journal. He also sponsors the science club after school, should you be interested," she added, her words like nails pounding her pride into my head.
"This is the ninth-grade homeroom," she said, nodding at room 9.
"And the tenth, eleventh, and your homeroom," she continued, but didn't pause.
We followed the corridor to the cafeteria, which was less than half the size of the one at my old school, but with far nicer furniture and much cleaner looking. Two elderly ladies and a young woman were working vigorously on the day's menu.
"You don't pay for anything, so there is no cashier," Mrs. Brentwood explained. "It's all part of the cost of the school. We ask only that you clean up after yourself properly and don't waste food."
We continued on to the gym, which, although smaller than my school's, was again cleaner and newer looking; even the bleacher seats looked more comfortable. The girl's physical education teacher was setting up a volleyball net.
"Morning, Mrs. Grossbard," Mrs. Brentwood called, her voice echoing.
Mrs. Grossbard, short and stout for a physical education teacher, turned. She had very thin, closely trimmed light brown hair and wore a uniform with a skirt and blouse in the school colors.
"This is Celeste Atwell."
"Oh, yes. How's your golf game?" she immediately asked me. "I have a spot on the team."
"I never played," I replied.
She looked dumbfounded.
"Maybe she has natural talent," Mrs.
Brentwood offered. "You can test her."
"Yes. Of course. Yes," Mrs. Grossbard said, but without much enthusiasm. She returned to her volleyball net, and we continued. I looked out the rear doors, which opened to the ball fields, the tennis courts, and a golf driving range and putting green. None of that had been visible from the front of the building, and I was surprised at how big the school grounds were and how beautifully kept.
"The courts were a gift from one of our anonymous benefactors," Mrs. Brentwood
commented.
The corridor took us around to additional classrooms and the library. A tall, lean, dark-haired man was working at the file cabinet.
"This is Mr. Monk, our librarian," she said, and he paused. "Our new student, Celeste Atwell."
"Welcome," he said. "I'll give you a tour on your study period. We have a half dozen computers and twenty thousand volumes," he said proudly. "Students from the community college come here often to do research. With written permission first, of course," he added, nodding at Mrs. Brentwood.
She nodded without speaking, and he returned to his files as if it were brain surgery and he couldn't spare a second of his attention.
"Thank you," I said, and we walked to the lobby and then down to her office, where she paused.
"I guess that's easy enough to navigate. You can go to your homeroom. You still have three minutes, and your teacher, Mr. Hersh, who is also your math teacher, will enter you in his books. Good luck and welcome," she said, her pretty smile and soft eyes returning.
I thought of a deer in the woods and how it could blend in so well it could almost disappear. Like a chameleon, she could change colors, but in her case it was moods, appearances, whatever fit the moment. Perhaps that was the skill of a successful
administrator, a politician. She was telling me she could be all things to all people. Satisfy her, and she'd be Mrs. Sweet. Cross her, and she'd be Mrs. Executioner.
"Thank you," I said, and continued down the hallway to my homeroom. Even though she had spent time giving me a quick tour of the building, a lecture full of veiled threats, and introductions to some of the teachers, I felt tossed into the unknown. At my old school, the student body provided what we called Big Sisters or Big Brothers, who would at least show the new students about for a while and introduce them to other students. They had someone to talk to so that they didn't feel completely alone and strange. I guess everyone here is assumed to be independent and sophisticated enough not to mind, I thought. What choice did I have anyway?
Despite what I had been told about the size of the student body, I was still surprised to see only about eighteen students in the entire senior class. All eyes were on me the moment I opened the door and entered the room. The redheaded boy I had seen down the hall was in the first row, slumping, his long legs sprawled under the desk so that his black running shoes protruded in the front. He had patches of freckles on the crests of his cheeks and a dimple in his left cheek. The sharp bright blue of his eyes and the orange tint of his lips gave him a colorful face. He was smiling impishly, as if he knew all about me.
Beside him sat, I thought, a far more interesting and good-looking dark-haired boy, whose ebony eyes announced his sensitivity and intelligence. He sat straighter, firmer, and, without radiating arrogance, looked more athletic and self-confident. His eyes held mine for a moment, and then he softened his lips and looked at the teacher again.
I gazed at the rest of the class and thought the girls had as much interest in and curiosity about me as did the boys. One girl in particular, a pretty brunette with hazel brown eyes, looked a little upset at my entrance.
It was as though I had interrupted something she was saying or doing. She glared at the dark-haired boy and then back at me as I approached the desk.
Mr. Hersh was standing with his hands on his hips, his jacket unbuttoned. He looked at least in his fifties, with curly black hair sprinkled with gray and blue-gray eyes. I could sense he was in the middle of reprimanding the group. He straightened up quickly and turned to me.
"Welcome," he said. "Class, this is Celeste Atwell, who was just enrolled this morning." I waited as he jotted something in his register. Then he looked up and smiled. "Why don't you take the empty desk at the end of the first row, Celeste. I was just finishing up today's announcements, and we have only another minute or so before the first-period bell rings."
"Thank you," I said.
"How polite," the redheaded boy quipped. Some of the other boys widened their smiles, but not the dark-haired boy beside him. He simply shook his head.
I walked across the room and turned up the aisle, gazing at the pretty brunette girl as I passed her. I looked at her with some interest because of how hard she was staring at me, but she didn't smile back. As soon as I took my seat, Mr. Hersh continued.
"And so, as I was saying, Mrs. Brentwood wanted me to point out that someone has been careless about throwing paper towels into the garbage can in the girls' room in this corridor. If anyone sees a paper towel on the floor, she should put it into the bin."
"Ugh," a short, light-brown-haired girl moaned. "Who wants to pick up someone else's dirt?"
The girls around her nodded.
"Why can't you girls be as neat as we boys?" the redheaded boy cried. The other boys cheered.
"You don't wipe your hands on towels, Waverly. You wipe them on your pants," the short girl retorted, and there were cheers and hisses.
"All right, that's enough," Mr. Hersh said firmly. The students quieted down instantly. "You all spend most of your day in this building. You should be treating it the way you treat your homes."
"That's the problem," another boy shouted, and there was more laughter.
"If it continues," Mr. Hersh said firmly, "you might find no towels in the bathrooms. Then you'll all be wiping your hands on your clothes, and
considering how expensive some of your outfits are, girls, you should think about that."
If that's the biggest problem here, I thought, this will really be a new experience. The girls' room in my school always smelled of smoke and had towels crunched and thrown about, graffiti on the walls and mirrors, and often toilets overflowing or full of cigarette butts, gum wrappers, and even tampons.
The bell rang, and everyone stood up. The darkhaired boy gazed back at me and then started out. The pretty brunette stepped toward me.
"I'm Germaine Osterhout," she said. "I'm the senior class president. Welcome to Dickinson," she blurted.
"Thank you," I said, but before I had finished, she had turned away and started out of the room.
"That's more than I got when I entered this school for the first time," said a very tall girl with long, straight, brown hair. "It was weeks before anyone would say hello or even recognize I existed."
I stared for a moment, and then she laughed.
"C'mon, stupid, I'm just kidding you," she said, seizing my arm and starting us after the others. "I'm Lynette Firestone. My mother and your cousin are good friends."
"Oh?"
Ami had never mentioned her, but she had never mentioned anyone for that matter, and what was again surprising, she hadn't mentioned that she had told our fiction to anyone else already.
Lynette paused and turned to me in tile hallway. I noticed that just about everyone passing by us looked at me with some interest.
"Sony about your parents. Lucky you weren't much younger when it happened. It's really nice of your cousin to take you in like this," she recited, "even though it makes you feel like a refugee."
"Pardon me? A refugee?"
"Just kidding. It's nice of her to care about you, and nice of me to volunteer to help you get
acclimated."
She had a long mouth that dipped in the corners, as though her facial muscles collapsed with fatigue around her lips. Her dark eyes were a little too large for the narrowness of her face, and her nose had an arrogant turn that looked recently constructed by a plastic surgeon. She was shapely, but not pretty enough to become a model. Her height, which looked to be at least six feet, had to be a detriment
considering the rest of her, I thought.
"You could say thank you," she added drily when I didn't say anything in return.
"What?" That's all I need, someone to remind me of when to say thank you, I thought.
"Nothing," she said, smiling. "Just kidding. No one says thank-you much around here. And no one apologizes for anything, so don't expect it."
"I don't," I said. "I don't expect anything from anyone. That way, if something good happens, it's a wonderful surprise."
She smiled.
"Actually, my mother made me promise, hand on the Bible, to be your friend. She had promised that to your cousin!'
"Oh, don't worry about that," I said, glancing at my schedule card to confirm the classroom for my first period. "I don't expect to make any friends here."
"Huh?" she said, her mouth opening with surprise.
"Just kidding," I told her, and walked on.
"Nicely done," I heard on my right and turned to see the dark-haired boy flash me a smile and walk on toward the same classroom. I had no idea he had been standing nearby and listening to our
conversation.
As it turned out, he sat across from me. It was our class in economics taught by Mr. Franks, a spry little man in his forties with prematurely gray hair, whose flow of energy and excitement was designed to fill his students with enthusiasm and interest. Sometimes he looked like he was teaching to the back of the room, to an imaginary perfect class of students. I was amused by the way he would ask a question and then, anticipating no response, answer it himself as though someone in the class had done so. I could see that the dark-haired boy was just as amused by him as I was.