First, Last, and Always Page 2

  Hustling, I head to the opposite side of the building, away from the classes, toward the gymnasium, and down a long hallway. My original plan was to take care of this at lunchtime, but I’m worried I may change my mind. I’d prefer to just get it over with.

  Less than a minute later, my feet stop at the entrance of a doorway with a sign that reads: ATHLETIC OFFICE. My heartbeat quickens. I take a moment to look around. To the left of the door stands an oversized trophy case packed tightly with awards, pictures, and memorabilia from the more notable Radcliffe High sports teams—teams that have won state championships over the past fifty years. A basketball on the top shelf catches my eye. The inscription beneath the ball reads, 1985 STATE CHAMPS. A picture of the team from that same year is framed next to the ball. There’s a player wearing jersey number eleven in the front row. I feel like I’m looking in a mirror.

  “Can I help you with something?” A man pokes his head out of the athletic office.

  “Oh, uh, I was just looking for information about basketball.”

  He looks me up and down. “You a freshman?”

  I nod.

  His hand flies up and points to a bulletin board and table across the hall. “Over there. You’ll find some brochures. There’s also a signup sheet.” He cocks his head. “You planning to try out?”

  “I think so.”

  “What’s your name?” he asks.

  “Fiester. Miles Fiester,” I respond, hoping I don’t sound too nervous.

  “You look familiar. Do I know you?”

  I shake my head. “No, sir.”

  “Strange. I know that name from somewhere.”

  “My dad played here,” I tell him. “A long time ago. He was on the state championship team in 1985. Dale Fiester. He’s in the picture over there.” I point to the trophy case. “Number eleven.”

  “Oh. Yeah.” He seems surprised. “You’re Dale Fiester’s kid?”

  I nod.

  “No kidding? He was a couple years ahead of me, but I knew of him. Real good player. You as good as your dad was?”

  “Uh,” I stammer, “not quite, but I’m working on it.”

  “Well, nice meeting you, Fiester. I’m Coach Chad. I don’t coach the freshmen—I coach the JV team—but I’ll be at tryouts at some point with the other coaches. Look forward to having you there.”

  “Thanks,” I say.

  He nods. “Good luck,” he adds before disappearing back into the office.

  Taking a deep breath, I walk to where he pointed on the other side of the hall. In the center of the table is the signup sheet for open basketball tryouts. On the same table I notice a separate flyer with a picture of a basketball on top that reads, INFORMATION FOR BOYS’ BASKETBALL. I scan it quickly. The body reads:

  Radcliffe High School Basketball Tryouts

  for Freshmen, Junior Varsity, and Varsity Teams

  OPEN TO ALL STUDENTS

  Tryouts will be held in the Radcliffe High School Gymnasium and will be broken out by grades:

  Freshmen: September 29 and 30, 4–6 p.m.

  All other grades: October 1 and 2, 4–6 p.m.

  Proper clothing and footwear are required.

  Note: Freshmen boys will be considered for any of the three teams. Sophomores, juniors, and seniors can only play JV or Varsity.

  For additional questions, please contact the Athletic Office: 555-2901

  I let the air out I’ve been holding in. Four weeks doesn’t give me a lot of time.

  Thirty seconds before the final bell rings, I grab the flyer off the table, scribble my name on the signup sheet, and sprint to class.

  Charlotte

  Only four classes down and I can’t seem to shake this feeling that I’m in a place I don’t belong. High school feels like a big family get-together, and I’m the weird neighbor who’s crashing the party. It’s ten times worse than junior high. At least I’ve gotten through half the day without incident.

  Mr. Gossman, who teaches my first-period science class, said to all of us as the bell rang and we settled into our seats, “Let’s get one thing straight.” His eyes panned the room like he was analyzing what he had to work with. “I don’t give homework,” he said. “Never have, never will. Hands-on is the best way to learn.” He spoke with a slight lisp. He raised a foot onto a stool and leaned forward on his knee. “I know some of the teachers here don’t agree with my philosophy, but that’s their problem. This is my class and I’ll teach it how I teach it. If there isn’t a practical application for what we do in the real world, then it isn’t worth knowing about. Any complaints?” Still leaning forward on his knee, he peered around the room. No one raised their hand. “Okay, then. I guess the next thing you should know is my name....” It was pretty much the best intro to any class in the history of classes. I wish I could have stayed in his class all day.

  Second period is English, with Mrs. Foder. Unlike Mr. Gossman, she gives homework by the truckload. “When you’re finished with my class you will all be literary geniuses!” She didn’t actually say those words, but she may as well have. According to her, she’s the smartest teacher in the school, if not the entire state of Pennsylvania. “I have three degrees: a bachelor’s in English literature, a master’s in English literature, and a PhD in English literature. So if any of you think you can outspell, outwit, outwrite, or outsmart me, you will be sorely mistaken.” She really did say that. And she said it with gumption. I wanted to ask how a woman of her rare intelligence ended up teaching high school English. None of us can possibly live up to her high standards. Needless to say, I don’t think I’ll enjoy her class much.

  Third and fourth period went as expected: lots of introductions, no big surprises. Teachers seem okay. Some of the other freshmen seem as frightened as me. We’re like mice among wolves. The upperclassmen are everywhere, stampeding through the halls like they have something to prove—like they own the school and we’re merely here because they allow it. They look at us with curious glances and sneers, declaring us trespassers with their eyes, treating us as if we’re aliens from another planet. I spot my sister briefly before lunch. She’s walking with Jazz, her best friend, and a couple other girls. They’re all smiling and laughing. Not wanting her to see me, I stay out of sight until she turns the corner and disappears down another hall.

  Lunch follows fourth period. It goes by fast. Too fast. Lani spends most of the time talking about the obvious social groupings among the tables, all of which, she says, seemed to have strengthened and grown since junior high. Like cells within cells, breaking off and regenerating. “Clones,” she says with disgust. “Just a bunch of clones. It’s cultish, really, the way everyone looks like one another. No originality.” Her diatribe goes on while Miles and I stare around at the plethora of new faces. Every now and then I see a person I recognize from junior high, although even the recognizable faces somehow look different, like everyone but me is older and more mature. Toward the end of lunch my gaze crosses Miles’s face. His eyes are wide and nervous-looking. He catches me staring at him. I’m wondering what he’s thinking.

  Three more hours, he mouths.

  Can’t wait, I mouth back.

  Lani continues to talk as the bell rings and we clear the cafeteria for our next class. We each say our good-byes, and with a sigh I look at my schedule and try to figure out where to go next. Room 205. Algebra—a class I’m actually looking forward to. Math is one of the few subjects I feel like I’m any good at. Calculating numbers is more natural to me than developing proper sentence structure or memorizing significant dates in history of people I couldn’t care less about.

  Two hallways and three minutes later, I’m standing in the doorway of algebra class, scanning for a place to sit. From the looks of it, the teacher hasn’t shown up yet. Only a few students are in seats. A spot in the middle of the room catches my eye. As I approach the desk, I pull my backpack off my shoulders, set it on the floor, and sit down. A girl with shoulder-length brown hair sits in the seat on my right-hand
side. She turns to face me. It takes a minute for me to fully comprehend who she is. Holy crap. I gulp. Vanessa Meyers. There’s no mistaking her face. What’s worse, she notices me too.

  “Oh. My. God.” she croons, giving me a once-over, raising her perfectly manicured eyebrows. “Chartreuse Hubbard?”

  “Charlotte,” I correct her. “My name is Charlotte.”

  “Oh. Right,” she says, rolling her eyes.

  Vanessa Meyers is one of the last people I would have wanted to run into on my first day. She went to Springville West Junior High. Miles, Lani, and I went to Springville South. There are actually four junior high schools in the area. All are conveniently named based on their directional proximity—east, west, north, or south. Unless you decide to go to a private school, everyone from the four junior highs ends up at Radcliffe.

  I only know of Vanessa because we crossed paths this past summer. Lani, Miles, and I spent a couple weeks hanging out at the public pool, and so did Vanessa. Every once in a while she would be there with her posse of pretties, as Lani liked to call them—four other girls who, like Vanessa, showed up to the pool totally glammed up, with their Maybelline faces, knockoff Prada glasses, and four-inch wedge sandals. Right away we could tell Vanessa seemed like the ringleader of the group. The posse of pretties followed her everywhere, and it was obvious to us right away that their only reason for being at the pool was because they wanted to flirt with the older boys. There was no shame in their technique. They would stick it out and suck it in like they were part of some Sports Illustrated photo shoot. As over-the-top as they were, they sold it; boys noticed them. We observed the shameless monstrosity from the far side of the pool where it was quieter, and watched as Vanessa and her friends sat at the edge of the pool, dangling their feet in the water, giggling and puckering their lips. It was like that almost every time they were there, like a bad rerun—dangle, giggle, pucker.

  On this one particular scorcher of a day, at the end of the summer, Lani and I were wading in the pool trying to beat the heat when Lani noticed two other random girls at the pool sitting in recliners, staring and pointing at Vanessa, who was standing at the edge of the pool giving her sales pitch to a group of boys. I couldn’t tell what the girls in recliners were pointing at, but Lani immediately noticed whatever it was and swam toward Vanessa. I followed close behind.

  “Excuse me,” Lani called out. “Can you come over here for a sec?”

  Vanessa didn’t hear her at first.

  “Excuse me,” Lani said again, a little louder.

  This time Vanessa turned her head. When she saw Lani, she narrowed her eyes and crossed her arms. “Are you talking to me?”

  “Yeah. Hey, um...I’m Lani. This is Charlotte,” she said, pointing over her shoulder to me. “Uh, can you just come over here for a sec?”

  “Sorry,” Vanessa said in a snotty tone, “I’m kind of busy.”

  Lani should have left it at that, but she felt obligated to try again. “Look, I don’t mean to bother you; it’s just...you have something showing.” She said it as inconspicuously as she could. She even tried to lower her voice.

  With a huff, Vanessa rolled her eyes. “I can’t freakin’ understand a word you’re saying. Are you speaking English? What country are you from?”

  If there’s a wrong thing to say to Lani, that’s it. Although her family is Polynesian, Lani is one hundred percent American and speaks perfect English. She takes pride in her heritage, and she doesn’t deal well with ignorant comments like Vanessa’s.

  Casually, Lani smiled back at Vanessa, chuckled, then cupped her mouth and shouted, “I was trying to tell you that you have a tampon string hanging out of your bathing suit!”

  Over the next five seconds, Vanessa’s face went through every shade of red imaginable. The boys around her broke out into hysterical laughter.

  “Was that clear enough English for you?” Lani asked.

  Gritting her teeth, Vanessa went flying off to the bathroom.

  Because of that, Vanessa hates Lani. But I’m best friends with Lani, so by default she hates me too.

  She delivers another fake smile. I decide it’s probably best to sit away from her. Moving to the back of the classroom, I find the farthest available seat. Vanessa is still glaring at me when I sit down. “You know,” she says aloud a few seconds later, “I just realized why I didn’t remember your name.” She leans onto the desk as if trying to tell me something in secret, but clearly anyone listening can hear. “You look...” Another pause, a smirk, and a tilt of her head. “Much bigger than I remember,” she finishes before snickering and turning around in her seat.

  My face heats.

  At that same moment four girls rush in, talking loudly, gossiping, saying something about a party, some boys, some crazy something-or-other. Vanessa waves. “Hey, you guys! Here! Over here!” she calls. The three shriek as soon as they see her. One girl, with a pixie haircut, notices me watching all of them and gives me a long, lingering once-over, as if to say, Who the hell are you? I recognize her. I think she’s one of the girls who hung out with Vanessa over the summer.

  Vanessa immediately notices Pixie Haircut sneering at me and leans over to whisper in her ear.

  Pixie Haircut gasps. “Oh, gawd. Are you serious?”

  A nauseous sensation bubbles up in my stomach and into my throat. Their insidious laughter echoes around me. Great. I’ve been in high school half a day and I’ve already been branded as “that problem fat girl who should be ignored.” The snickers continue. Pixie Haircut looks back at me and whispers to the others. I cover my face, wishing I were invisible.

  “Don’t let them get to you,” says a voice on my left. Some guy is talking to me.

  I turn my head. The first thing I notice is the shape of his face—square, chiseled. Then I notice the other features; they’re just as prominent: blue eyes the color of sky, solid, full lips, medium-length brown hair, flecks of blond throughout. His body is strong—not muscular-strong, but solid. Height appears average, maybe a few inches taller than me, although I can’t quite tell, ’cause he’s sitting. The red T-shirt he’s wearing is loose. There’s a print on the front, the name of a band, I think—Dragon something or other.

  I gawk for a moment at this good-looking guy sitting next to me. Other than Miles I’m not prone to talking to boys. Any possible response I could come up with is lost in the haze within my brain. After a couple seconds, I blush when I realize I’m looking at him with an open mouth. Stuttering, I say, “U-um...did you say something?”

  He nods. “Yeah...those girls, the ones who were just making fun of you...”

  Awesome. He heard.

  “I know a couple of them,” he says. “They’re mean to everyone. They’re even mean to each other. I was just sayin’, don’t let them get to you. Don’t take it personally.”

  I act as if they didn’t faze me. “Yeah. It’s cool.” I don’t want him to know that ten seconds ago I was ready to break into tears.

  He smiles and nods. “Good.” Shifting in his seat, he leans over, elbow on knee. “I’m Grayson, by the way. Grayson Miller.”

  My stomach lurches. He’s so close I can smell him—the scent of oranges and maple, sweet and sweeter. Our eyes connect.

  Just then the teacher walks in. “Welcome, welcome!” bellows the short, round Asian woman in a singsongy voice vaguely reminiscent of Mary Poppins. Everyone in class, Grayson and myself included, pulls back and faces forward. “I’m Ms. Ming,” says the teacher, before turning to write her name on the board. “And this is freshman algebra.”

  As she writes the word “algebra” on the blackboard in block letters, Grayson whispers again. “So what’s your name?”

  A tingling sensation passes through me. My eyes remain fixed on the teacher’s hand, at the chalk lines being drawn, the letters being formed. I’m not sure why he’s still talking to me or why I’m so nervous all of a sudden. “Charlotte,” I whisper back without looking. “Charlotte Hubbard.” I can feel his eyes ho
vering over me. I wonder what he’s thinking. I’m guessing something like: oversized, drab, homely girl.

  “Cool name,” he says.

  Clearly he’s being sarcastic.

  “I’m not kidding,” he says, as if reading my mind. “I like it. I grew up in Charlottesville, Virginia. Makes me think of home.”

  His explanation is so matter-of-fact and unusual that an uncontrollable guffaw escapes my lips. The teacher stops talking. All heads turn toward me. Pixie Haircut gives me an evil stare. Immediately I cover my mouth. I can’t believe I laughed out loud like that. “Sorry,” I say, my voice meek.

  The teacher is frozen, hand in air, head tilted. Then, without saying anything, she returns to her work on the chalkboard. A few seconds later everyone is facing forward again and Ms. Ming is starting to explain why we’re all going to love freshman algebra. “‘Algebra is the metaphysics of arithmetic,’” she says cheerfully. “Can anyone tell me who said those words?” She rotates her head around the room. “Anyone?”

  “You did,” says a dark-haired boy with glasses. The rest of the class chuckles.

  The teacher smiles. “Funny, but no, it wasn’t me. It was John Ray. Now, who can tell me who John Ray is?” Everyone looks at one another. Imaginary crickets chirp in the distance while we all wait for someone to respond. Grayson leans into the aisle with his head facing forward. “By the way,” he whispers to me, “Vanessa is wrong.”

  “Wrong?” I ask, feeling my forehead scrunch. I keep my voice low, trying not to attract further attention.

  “Don’t let her get in your head. I dunno what she meant by ‘you’re bigger,’ but you aren’t big.” He shrugs. “Just thought you should know that.”

  My head spins to the right, almost causing a severe case of whiplash. When Grayson smiles at me again, I melt, my heart leaps, my head spins.

  “Thanks,” I squeak, feeling the corners of my lips turn upward.

  As class proceeds, Ms. Ming, I’m sure, is explaining what we’ll be doing for the first week or two, but all I hear is the thumping of my heart inside my chest. I’m already nervous for the first day of school. And now Sweet Maple Citrus sitting next to me is doing something to my concentration. Grayson glances at me once or twice over the next fifteen minutes. I fluff my shirt, unfurling it from the valleys of my abdomen, attempting to hide the pouch hanging over my pants. Taking a deep breath, I suck in my stomach and sit up straighter. It helps, but now I’m so stiff I feel like a stuck-up snob. I think he looks at me again. Elongate the neck. Think thin, but act cool. This can’t possibly be working. Why am I doing this? I feel ridiculous.