Third grade
7
Josie Patel, assigned to the front row because she was the smallest student in Mrs. Groves’s third-grade class, steeled herself not to look back as Seth Raskin and Chip Vasilarakis chose teams for kickball. If she swiveled her head the tiniest bit, it would be apparent that she cared, and nonchalance was the only thing Josie had going for her on that first day at Meeker Creek Elementary School.
As each pick went by and she remained unchosen, she reminded herself that she was a new girl, the only new girl in a room where everyone else seemed to be old friends. She was a short, skinny new girl with what she was just beginning to suspect was a disastrous haircut-boyishly short, an attempt to tame her cowlicky curls. Clearly she was going to be the last or next to last called. She tried to tell herself that it didn’t matter, that she wouldn’t always be new, judged solely by her size and her strangeness and her stupid hair. Still, it hurt. She felt odd-looking, with her dark skin and darker hair. Her old school, back in Baltimore, had been so small that differences hadn’t mattered as much. Here she was the only dark-skinned girl. There was an African-American boy and three girls who were what Josie thought of as real Asians-Chinese and Japanese, with pretty, pretty hair, straight and shiny-but no one who looked like Josie.
“What are you?” a ghostly pale redheaded girl had asked her that morning before the bell rang.
“American,” Josie said, although she knew what the girl was trying to determine.
“I mean your parents. Are they from Mexico or someplace like that?”
“They’re American.”
“Are you adopted? You look like Minetta, in Mrs. Flippo’s class. She had to fly here on a plane from India when she was a little baby, and the plane ride was, like, a whole day. She flew through seven time zones.”
“My grandparents’ parents were from India,” Josie admitted. “But my dad was born in Chicago.”
“So you’re not adopted.”
“No.”
“Oh.” The redheaded girl’s tone suggested this was a failing on Josie’s part. She had a flat, thin face with watery blue eyes that looked even smaller behind her wire-rimmed glasses. “I’m adopted.”
The redheaded girl abandoned her, going to whisper with a dark-haired girl from another class. That was okay. Josie didn’t want to be friends with them anyway. The redheaded girl was funny-looking, and her friend had a sneaky look. She wouldn’t settle for them. The redheaded girl was Seth Raskin’s last pick, leaving Josie for Chip, who made a face and said, “Her, I guess.”
Given the last slot for at-bats, Josie was worried she wouldn’t get a turn before recess ended. What if she never got a turn? What if the game started over from the beginning, every day, and she was always at the end of the line, and the bell rang just as she approached the plate? At least being last gave her time to study Seth’s fast, underhanded rolling style. The ball was the standard red rubber one, lighter than a soccer ball, but it gathered a stinging, intimidating force when kicked hard enough. Josie could tell which kids had played soccer by the way they approached the ball, where they placed their toes.
When her team was sent to the field, she was sent to far, far right, the loser’s spot.
Few of the girls were any good. One on Seth’s team was especially bad, her feeble kick sending the ball only a few feet from home plate. Tagged out at first, she made an elaborate curtsy, turning her incompetence into comedy. The other students seemed to like her, Josie noted, despite the fact that she made the last out, giving Josie’s team another turn. Fourth in line now, she prayed, literally prayed, that she would get up to the plate before the end of the inning.
She did, with runners on first and second, one out. “I could take your turn,” Chip offered. “I mean, if you don’t feel like it.”
“I feel like it,” Josie said.
She let the first ball roll by, paying no attention to the groans behind her. It had too much spin. The second pitch came flat and direct, and she booted it into right field, straight at the redheaded girl, who didn’t even try to catch it, just covered her face with her hands and squealed as the ball rolled away, the other outfielders chasing it. “Binnie!” her teammates yelled, in a way that made it clear they did not find her antics humorous. Josie scampered home. “Hey, she’s good,” Seth said accusingly, as if Chip had tricked him by not choosing her until last.
“I played soccer in the city,” she panted out. “My coach wanted me to be on a travel team, but my mom works and can’t do all that driving.”
It was a promising start. Yet being athletic was not enough to win Josie friends, not at first. All it gave her was some breathing room those first few weeks, as the girls studied her and she studied them back, trying to figure out where she might fit.
The boys would have been happy for her company, for Josie was not only agile but fearless, doing tricks on the monkey bars that few other third-graders dared. But Josie had already decided that she did not want to be one of those girls who have boys for friends. Her best friend back in Baltimore, Parson, had been a boy, and the grown-ups had been stupid about it, asking when they were going to get married. She wasn’t going to make that mistake again. She preferred a best friend, but all the girls in Mrs. Groves’s class already came in pairs. And while some of the girls began to court her-offering her stickers and pogs, which were very big then, inviting her to sit with them at lunch-the two she liked best didn’t seem to notice her at all.
Perri Kahn-the thin girl from the kickball game, the one who had curtsied-and Kat Hartigan had a calm, quiet way about them, as if they were visiting the third grade from some far more desirable place. They were not the prettiest or most fashionable girls. They were not mean or bossy, although Perri’s words were often sharp, shooting down the dumber kids with sharp one-liners. (Lifted from television, Josie would come to find out, but that was allowed. It was okay to copy a television program, as long as you thought of it first. Copying the copier was what was unforgivable.) Kat, who wore her blond hair in fat pigtails, was super nice to everyone and therefore forgiven for her consistent A’s, about which she was borderline apologetic. “Hey,” she said to everyone, even Josie, and it made Josie happy in a way that she could never have explained, getting her own personal “Hey” from Kat Hartigan.
Finally, the week after Halloween, a wonderful thing happened. Strep throat made its way through Meeker Creek Elementary, and Perri was out of school for an entire week. Well, it wasn’t wonderful that Perri was sick. But her absence gave Josie a chance to slide into the empty seat opposite Kat during lunch, something that no one else had thought to do.