Spit Catherine Miller Michelle stamped her feet free of snow at the door and trudged up the stairs, her galoshes squeaking, to the second floor of Dillinger Day School. The acrid smell of radiators on full blast and institutional paint filled the air. She tried to banish from her mind all traces of the last hour: being trapped in the school van as it wound its way through one neighborhood after the other, the driver stopping every so often to pick up another bundled child. Michelle always marveled as smiling parents waved from warm doorways as their little ones were driven away. They don’t even have a clue, Michelle thought to herself. The driver seemed impervious to his surroundings. His habit was to stare straight ahead, amid the shouting and taunting of others already on board. Ugly, ugly, ugly, they had chanted at Michelle in unison today. She took a deep breath and entered Mrs. Daly’s seventh grade homeroom. At this hour, the room was half filled with her classmates. No teachers were there yet, unless they were in their lounge. Michelle wondered what teachers did in their lounge, anyway. Jenny and Millie (short for Millicent, as she was loathe to be reminded) were in the corner by the world map, playing jacks. The soft, dull thud of the ball and the gentle clink of the jacks drew her attention there momentarily. Millie was smiling. Jenny looked cross. Michelle could guess who was winning this time. His face dappled with freckles, Danny was taking his usual pleasure in sneaking up behind unsuspecting others and plopping down one of his assortment of bouncy rubber snakes, bugs, and bearded dragons on their desks. This drew satisfying screams at first, and then the inevitable attempts to shake Danny off. She watched as Danny’s maniacal grin faded when Russell, his latest victim, finally shouted, “Get lost, man!” Steven, with his thick, black glasses (Four eyes, four eyes...) Had his head together with Jason, the Amad scientist,” as he was often called, talking about the latest Trekkie artifacts he’d gotten at the convention over the weekend. Alma, who’d arrived from the Philippines only one month ago, was doing what she always did in homeroom, drawing pictures of palm trees, and what Michelle imagined were fishing villages from home, her head bent over her sketchbook, her colored pens neatly arranged on the old wooden desk. “Hey, Chel! Over here,” called Amy, her best friend at school. She walked past the In Crowd, the girls whose hair was never out of place, whose clothes always looked in fashion, and the boys whose confident swagger was by turns captivating and unnerving. She felt their eyes on her. Their conversations were easy, but the bits and pieces Michelle could hear suggested their laughter was usually at someone else’s expense.
Volume 13, Number 1
SPRING 2001
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