“You know, this holiday is pretty messed up,” I said, trying to change the subject. We took field trips to Plimouth Plantation every year in primary school, where you could visit Pilgrim houses and Wampanoag huts, each side separate. On the Pilgrim side, everyone was an actor, staying in character no matter what, with fake-sounding British accents. On the Wampanoag side, everything was serious, and the people who populated the scene were the only actual Wampanoags I’ve ever seen. “They act like everyone got along so well, like the dinner was some giant awesome party, when, really, everything was terrible.”
“Don’t be negative,” Sandra said mildly, not looking at me. Then, with her eyes on Susan’s father, she said, “The flowers were really beautiful.”
“You should get flowers for me more often,” said Susan’s mom, also looking at her husband. Other than at Thanksgiving, they were almost never together.
I saw Sandra exchange a knowing glance with Mr. Blackford, like they were in on some kind of joke together.
“Brad is the cutest boy in our whole school,” Susan said. “He has been since primary.” That prompted me to remember Thanksgiving back then, when they had half of us dress as Pilgrims for school the day before break, and half of us as Indians. We fought over the Indian costumes, with their feathered hats made out of construction paper, their fringed pants, which we loved in comparison to the white smocks and white triangular hats the Pilgrims wore.
“Seriously,” I said, getting annoyed at everyone at the table for discussing my life when I didn’t feel like it. “The Pilgrims killed the Indians, and gave them smallpox, and then made the rest of them move away. Everything here is named after them, but I’ve never even met one at the grocery store. They never tell us the whole story. They act like it was just a great party all the time.”
I was aware that I was talking about myself, that I was also sick of everyone thinking my life was one big awesome party, but no one else seemed to notice.
Susan’s mom lit another cigarette, which she brandished at us. “Eat your food, girls,” she said, her own fork untouched beside her plate. “There are kids starving in India.”
This argument never made sense to me.
“Just mail my plate to them, then,” I said. “Better yet, mail it to the nearest Indian reservation, with an apology note.”
Susan’s mom glared at me, but Sandra said, “Don’t force her to eat.”
I brought my fork to my mouth, accidentally dropping a green bean on the floor. When I reached down to pick it up, I saw Sandra’s foot touching Mr. Blackford’s under the table. I blinked, and Sandra’s foot quickly moved back under her chair, like it had been there all along.
“Are you and Brad going to match your clothes at prom?” Susan asked me, flipping the hair out of her eyes.
“Prom isn’t until April,” I said. “I have no idea.”
“You should match,” she said firmly. “Make him get a tie the same color as your dress.”
I glanced at Sandra, who looked kind of guilty. Surely, it wasn’t because we killed the Indians.
“This holiday is so racist,” I said, taking a bite out of a dinner roll. I realized I sounded like Corvis.
I thought about having sex with Brad in Scottie’s father’s boat, and prayed they would change the subject. I couldn’t bear to tell them how wrong it felt, how badly I didn’t want to end up like Susan’s parents.
And I still wanted to ask Corvis about scissoring.
The Hall Pass
It was the first week of December when Corvis got her acceptance letter from Sarah Lawrence College. I was sitting in Mr. Sheehan’s Algebra II class, next to Susan and Heather, when I heard whispers about it. Corvis wasn’t there, because she didn’t take algebra. She took calculus, obviously.
None of us in Mr. Sheehan’s class got early decision letters—we were headed to trade school. Or maybe we would just have a baby and get married and live in our parents’ basements.
I started to imagine it, Sarah Lawrence. It would be beautiful, with stone buildings and professors wearing tortoiseshell eyeglasses and tweed. There would be classrooms where students sat in circles and said what they thought—about the death penalty and abortion and President Clinton, subjects we weren’t supposed to discuss at Hopuonk High—and other things too. Things I didn’t even know existed, like the opinions of French philosophers. I bet they even had opinions about the opinions of French philosophers.
Corvis had a Darwin fish decal on her car, a statement against the Jesus fish everyone else had. I didn’t know what it stood for, so I looked it up on the internet. I learned that the Jesus fish was called the ichthys, and that the fish with legs was a parody of that. Corvis was arguing against evolutionary creationism with her car. Probably Sarah Lawrence was full of kids with parody bumper stickers, and all of it made me feel stupid, because I had to look everything up on the internet just to figure out what my opinion was.
The only bumper sticker on my Volvo was a little purple circle that said KISS 108 FM, BOSTON’S #1 HIT MUSIC STATION. It was free, and everyone else had it too.
At Sarah Lawrence, they probably dyed their hair pink and purple, and pierced things, and their tattoos would be quotes from Shakespeare plays. They would lean back in their seats and exhale deeply before they spoke, and their conversations would have nothing to do with boobs, or highlights, or homecoming crowns.
I didn’t like reading, or school—at least not Hopuonk High. I didn’t want to take philosophy or sociology classes, but I desperately wanted to exist in a different kind of social space. Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences would probably be another version of Hopuonk High—except I’d have to take even harder, more boring classes.
“Taylor?” Susan poked me in the ribs with her pencil.
“What?” I shout-whispered. When I looked over, I saw Heather looking at me, too, her eyes heavily rimmed in black eyeliner.
“Are you going to Scottie’s party tonight?” Susan asked. It seemed like our lives revolved around parties at Scottie’s house.
“If I’m alive,” I said absently. Mr. Sheehan shot us a glance of warning and continued scribbling equations on the blackboard.
I was still failing algebra. My average was a 23 percent. I just didn’t get it. I didn’t care either.
I had sent in my application to Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences that morning. When I dropped the packet off at the post office, my stomach had sunk.
What was I doing? What was I going to do?
“I have to go to the bathroom,” I said to Mr. Sheehan, who barely looked over at me. He’d already decided that I was an idiot, and he was basically right.