But much more than bored, I am boring. If you asked anyone I know to describe me, they would say, She’s the normal one. I’m not short or tall, skinny or fat, buff, buzz cut, braided, or dyed. I’m not pierced, tattooed, or even mascaraed most days. I’m a boring straight white girl, but I don’t think much about race. (Maybe so. I’m a boring straight white girl so I don’t think much about race.) And my sexuality doesn’t matter since there’s no one in Bourne for me to date anyway. I am ordinary, unremarkable, average, your typical American teenager. Picture a high school girl. That’s me. That girl in your head right now? Me exactly. I could not be more normal if I tried.
But here? That makes me weird. “Weird” would also have been a good adjective to describe me.
If Mrs. Radcliffe had chosen my word for me, she’d have gone with “indebted.” Track A has a tutoring credit, one of those requirements Pooh was so skeptical about, like we have to take history and we have to take English and we have to take math. We have to tutor. Since it’s after school, you’d think they couldn’t make us, but you’d be wrong. Some of us get out of it because there’s football practice (never mind it’s only touch because no one here wants to risk a head injury, and it’s only intrasquad because there’s no one else to play). Some of us get out of it because we have after-school jobs (never mind after-school jobs are discouraged in Bourne where there aren’t even enough jobs for the adults). There aren’t many of us left after that, but the rest of Track A tutors a few days a week after school, in pairs. So at least Petra and I get to do it together. It’s not that I don’t get how many birds this kills—the kids who need job experience get job experience; the kids who need extra help get extra help; the kids who need occupying and distracting after school get occupied and distracted—but even free labor is only worth the cost if you know what you’re doing. And none of us do.
When Mrs. Radcliffe explained that first week that it was Track A who would staff the tutoring center after school, there was a lot of whining and moaning and protesting and complaining until she cut us off by hissing, “You are the lucky ones. This is the least you can do,” and stood before us, arms crossed, daring us to disagree. We would have, vehemently, for Bourne is nothing if not a study in how it’s not that simple, but there is no arguing with overworked, underpaid guidance counselors, and we accepted our lot just like everyone else.
Today when Petra and I walk into the tutoring room five minutes after the last bell, Nellie Long is sitting at her desk, gazing at the ceiling with a huge smile on her face as if there’s something wondrous up there. (I check. There’s not.) But I ruin her good mood as soon as I suggest we get to work.
“I don’t want to read Lord of the Flies.” She scowls at me like I assigned the book.
“Why not?”
“It has nothing to do with my life.”
“It seems like it’s just about boys,” I concede, “but really it’s about the human condition.”
She looks at me blankly. “I am not a fly,” she says.
“Or a lord,” Petra adds from across the room. I glare at her.
“How about your history essay?” I offer Nellie.
She sighs and agrees to this reluctantly, hands me her essay, watches the worry accrue on my face as I read. “See, what I’m trying to say,” she explains, “is that even though World War II happened thousands of years ago, it’s still relevant now.”
“Okay,” I say. “How?”
“How?”
“How is World War II still impacting our lives today?”
“Obviously because”—her expression suggests maybe I’m the one who needs tutoring—“I have to write this big report about it.”
Kyle M. and Kyle R. are wrestling on the floor instead of letting Petra help them with geometry. Petra is doing her nails. When Mrs. Radcliffe shoots her a dirty look, Petra says, “I’m not getting in the middle of that. I’m a pacifist.” When I shoot her a dirty look, she raises her eyebrows and says, “Trade you?”
I look at Nellie’s essay. She’s written “World War Too” a dozen times already, and she’s only got three paragraphs.
“Deal.”
The Kyles are likelier to pay attention to me than Petra anyway because they want to get in good with my sister. They like Mirabel. Everyone likes Mirabel, but them more than most. They’ve had a crush on her since we were little, though it would take a lot more than being nice to me at tutoring for her to be interested in either one of them.
I stand over the Kyle-ball and try to be as fierce as possible though I am small and they are huge, though I am one and they seem many, though I am standing still and they are rolling around like drunk puppies.
“Liar,” Kyle R. spits.
“You’re the liar,” Kyle M. retorts.
“Liar,” Kyle R. says back. Limited vocabulary. They should study with Petra and me. Actually, I guess that’s what tutoring is, but it doesn’t seem to be working.
“I saw it.”
“You didn’t.”
“My dad saw it.”
“Then he’s a liar too.”
Petra rolls her eyes at me. I smile at her. She smiles back.
“Go for it,” she tells me, because sometimes the only way out is wading over to the other side.
“What did you and your father see?” I ask Kyle M.
They stop, part, and sit up, panting, still drunk puppies.
“Moving truck,” he wheezes. “We both saw it. Down by the library. A moving truck.”
* * *
Petra’s mother does not leave her house. It might be that what happened broke something in her brain, or it might be that what happened honed something in her brain so that she realized she was safer inside, but in any case, it’s been five years since she went outdoors. She used to leave on Sunday mornings to go to church, but she’s Sikh, and though Pastor Jeff did his best, she felt she could do just as well on her own at home. She’s perfectly loving and involved in her daughter’s life, but only in her house.
Petra’s father lives in New Jersey but works in New York, which he calls “the city,” as if there’s only one. This sounds glamorous, and might be for all I know, but Petra reports that he lives in a dark one-bedroom apartment with a view of a parking lot, spends hours commuting on a train that smells like summer feet, and then does other people’s taxes all day for not even enough money to be able to afford to get an apartment large and non-gross enough that his only child could at least visit more often.
Since Petra’s mother only lives in her house and Petra’s father only lives in New Jersey, they bought Petra a car. It is older than we are, at least fifty percent mold, and also smells like summer feet, but it is better than my car which is a bicycle.
After tutoring, I climb into the passenger seat, and with absolutely no discussion, Petra heads toward the library.
If I could have one wish for Bourne, it wouldn’t be enough. It would be too hard to choose. But in the running would definitely be a coffee shop. Maybe it would change everything, having a warm, bustly place to sit and chitchat wittily in oversized cushy chairs and make smart observations about the world going fascinatingly by, someplace to get a part-time job, know all the regulars, find yourself the recipient of all the good gossip, and save some money so you can leave one day.