One.

I cried at my seventh birthday party.

I remember this because it was after the puppet show—which made me laugh so
hard I had the hiccups, and after birthday cake—which had dark chocolate frosting that
made its way to front of my party dress. The bawling started just before the piñata
though, because I watched through teary eyes from the living room couch as each of the
girls from my first grade class took their turns whacking the paper pony with my hot pink
T-Ball bat in the backyard. Mom was on the kitchen telephone while her friend Courtney
jabbed numbers into a cellular; together they called all of the parents of my party guests
to warn them that the party would have to be cut short by an hour because of my
“meltdown.”
My humiliation turned to fury, though, when I saw Julia Monroe take the
victorious hit, and how all of my playmates cheered for her as they scrambled to get their
pieces of candy. By the time the sweet-toothed tots cleared away from the pile of sugary
treats, I cried even harder because there weren’t any pieces left for me, the birthday girl.
Shortly thereafter, I bid sniffly farewells to friends from my safe place at the dining table
while I sipped a mug of warm milk. Courtney and Mom took over the job of handing out
the colorful party favor bags. I didn’t want that mean mean Julia to be able to walk past
me, so I stayed planted at the table, a good distance from the door. I managed an
exaggerated frown and a shaky glare instead of a goodbye when Ms. Monroe, Julia’s
mommy and my mommy’s friend, took her daughter’s hand. She mouthed an, “I’m sorry
about this,” to Mom, nodded at me, and left. Then I burst into tears again. More hiccups.
My nose dripped a bit into my mug, and Courtney came over with a tissue. I was
still dressed from head to toe in a princess costume that I had worn every year for
Halloween since I could remember (mom just took it out a bit each October to
accommodate my growing). The tiara was missing nearly half of its plastic jewels and
some of its spokes, so that it sat lopsided on my head and I had to keep scooting it back.
Thank goodness Little Walkers sold those black satin slippers in several kids’ sizes, or I
may have caught on that Mom kept replacing them as my feet got bigger. This little act of
hers might have disproved her claim that Princesses had magic shoes, like Dorothy in the
Wizard of Oz. While these shoes never transported me over the rainbow, I did believe that
they could expand to specially form to my feet.
It was Julia who had laughed and pointed when I emerged from my room after
changing from the chocolate-stained dress into the princess outfit. The exchange went
something like this:
“HAHA!” (point) “You can’t wear your Halloween costume yet!”
Naturally, I had no idea what “Halloween” really was; my mom had convinced
me that it was just a day where children revealed their “true identities.”
“Princesses can wear whatever they like.” That was my rebuttal.
(Julia giggled more and rolled her eyes.) “You’re not a Princess, Cassie. You’re
not pretty and you don’t have nice things.” This was her counter.
And then I cried. And missed my own piñata hitting, and my birthday party came
slamming to a halt, and my mommy opened all of my presents for me so that the thank-
you notes could get out on time and I was in no mood to partake in that activity.
Though my mom reassured me that day that sometimes other kids are jealous of
Princesses and that is why they poke fun, the fanciful tales had to stop sometime. As I
grew older, my mom had to start admitting to me that the stories she had told me about
my father the King who had fallen in love with my mother—and a she had me but then he
had to go back to his kingdom to save it from the dinosaurs from outer space—and
Mommy never heard from him again…well, they were exciting stories and everything,
they just weren’t…true.
And while I’m not sure that Julia remembers anything about that incidence, she
has been one of my least favorite people since then. I never cared much for her to begin
with, and the only reason she was at my birthday party that year was because our moms
happened to be friends. For me, it became a fact that day. Julia was an enemy.
In Julia’s world, however, she and I were just in different circles. We played with
different kids in elementary school, ate lunch at different tables in middle school, and
now had different friends that we went shopping or to the movies with. Coincidentally,
we never had a class together since the first grade. Well, Mom may have had something
to do with that. I would have to go out of my way to interact with Julia, which was fine
by me.
That is, until earlier this month. Almost ten years after the infamous party, Julia
strolled into my second-period Biology class. The next day, the seating chart revealed
that we would have to sit and learn science side-by-side for the next few weeks. And if
Mr. Hernandez hadn’t already done enough, today he assigned us to be partners for the
Genetics project.
That really big-fat-hefty-junior-year-research-paper-and-multimedia-presentation-
worth-twenty-percent-of-our-class-grade project that was supposed to take us all semester
long. Julia nodded in my direction after our names were announced as a pair, and then
she went back to filing her nails. I nearly vomited.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I did try to switch out of second-period Bio as soon as
I walked, err, ran out of class on the first day. Third period had an opening, but that was
going to conflict with my honors Calculus class. I said I would be willing to take math at
the University, but my mom rejected that proposal when we found out it was $950 per
credit. When I learned that the period seven class was completely full, I offered to stand
in the back. The guidance counselor just laughed. And when I bravely decided that I
would give up my lunch hour to take Biology through independent study, Mr. Hernandez
actually told me to “get a life, kid.”
Options exhausted, I accepted the painful fact that I would have to see Julia
Monroe every morning. But this morning when I came to class, I was still feeling beside
myself from yesterday’s rearrangement of the seating chart. Julia and I were in opposite
corners of the room and nothing was going to burst my bubble.
“Okay,” Mr. Hernandez stood up from his desk. “Before we go over last night’s
homework, I have a few announcements. First, a reminder that your first Unit Test is on
Friday, that’s a reminder for those of you who haven’t bothered to check the syllabus
since I handed it out. If I were you, I would start studying this afternoon, unless you’re
planning to retake this course next year.”
Someone in the back row groaned. Samantha Chen pulled out her day planner
and bubbled and starred the already large “BIO TEST DAY!” note that filled the Friday
box. Mr. H. went on. “I do not make them easy and I do not take excuses for your
slacking off. Second, if anyone forgot to check their calendars and/or cellular phones—
put it away, Michael—today is October 1, so it’s time to assign your semester projects.
You all know the drill, and if don’t, read the assignment sheet—it’s not that hard.” He
pulled a stack of papers off his desk and counted out six sheets per row as he walked
down the far right isle of the classroom. Sam took one for herself and handed me the last
paper from our row’s pile. “This year’s project is on Genetics. Topic proposals are due
next Monday. The rough draft of the paper is due in a month. Dylan, eat you’re breakfast
at home, there’s no food allowed in class.”
Mr. Hernandez went to search for something on his desktop computer as we
continued looking over the handout. Behind me, Curtis Newman started folding his into a
paper airplane while Sam Chen pulled out her colored pens and marked down the
important due dates in her day planner.
“Since your term projects are partner projects, I’ve paired you all off, sorry if you
had the privilege of picking your own buddies in other courses. We don’t it that way in
my class.” He put on his reading glasses and blinked twice at the screen. “Landon, you’re
with Vanessa. Caitlin and Max. Taylor B. is with Anthony.” Those two had been best
friends since sixth grade and gave each other air high-fives from three rows apart. I guess
Mr. H. didn’t know that, or he never would have assigned them to work together.
“Samantha and Michael, you’re a team.”
Damn, Sam would have been such a good person to work with. Even with Mike
Daly as her partner, she’d probably have the project done in a week. And published.
“Taylor G. is with…” Hang on, my brain interrupted. Landon Abrams was with
Vanessa Alvarez. Caitlin Arthur and Max Baker. Taylor Brown…Anthony Castro…
Samantha Chen, Michael Daly, Taylor Garrick…nothing about these pairings were
coincidental. That meant Cassie Morton would either be paired with Curtis Newman,
or… “Julia, you are working with Cassidy.” Or Julia Monroe.
Nod. Nausea. My bubble went pop.

Two.
Michelle, Henry and I started eating lunch together in seventh grade. The three of us
were taking Algebra that year with the eighth graders, and if we didn’t already stand out
enough being the youngest and half everyone else’s sizes—let’s see, shall we? We sat
with one another in the back of the room (because we needed the least amount of help
and supervision), we never rotated table groups (better to keep all small smart students
together), and we were usually given extra work to complete (just in case we weren’t
being challenged enough).
So there was our little team, all three of us comfortably able to sit in the same
chair, straining to see the board over the big kids’ heads, realizing we could finish the
work without paying attention to the lesson, so that we spent 75% of the time working on
something entirely different and always more advanced than the rest of the class—we
attracted attention like kittens in a dog pound. For awhile, the eighth graders just watched
us with confusion and contempt. Before too long, though, they started finding ways to
mess with us.
First, a few of the boys offered to pay Michelle their lunch monies if she would
do their homework for the rest of the month. She didn’t just turn down their offer, she
told her parents about it, and they called our teacher Ms. Duffy and the principal; the
boys had asked for a month of homework, what they got was a month of detention. A
week or so later, Henry, Michelle and I came to class to find our chairs on top of the
bookshelves in the back. Ms. Duffy had to call for a janitor with a ladder to get them
down, and after that she issued a rule that everyone had to wait outside for her to arrive
before we could enter the classroom. That rule was revoked three weeks later when
Henry got trampled—no, that’s putting it nicely—stampeded by the largest kids who
played on the flag football team but probably didn’t know the flags from the footballs.
For a couple of weeks, we had administrators come to “observe” Ms. Duffy’s
teaching style but really, how much does one teacher need to be observed? I think they
served more as class cops. They were able to catch the offender who entered
inappropriate words into my classroom graphing-calculator before passing the basket to
our table group, but they didn’t catch the kid that stole my lunch out of my still-open
backpack.
Ms. Duffy’s ultimate solution to this bullying problem was to allow us to show up
a few minutes before the other kids and then to let us stay in during lunch as long as we
liked. At the time I was still eating with Jackie and Kendra; the three of us were good
friends since we played Flopsy, Mopsy and Cottontail in the school play.
During recess in elementary school we liked to reenact scenes from TV shows
that Kendra’s mom and older sister watched. I still remember the look on my mom’s face
when I showed her that I could recite quotes from Desperate Housewives. Both Kendra’s
and Jackie’s moms seemed unconcerned, but my mom must have complained about
Kendra’s TV privileges. She started bringing us scenes from Spongebob Squarepants
instead of Sex and the City, after which the game got kind of boring.
The summer before middle school, Kendra went to a drama camp for eight weeks.
Most of my lunch hours in sixth grade were spent helping her rehearse lines for whatever
community theatre play she was in at the time and working on my pre-algebra
homework. The summer before seventh grade, though, Kendra found her first boyfriend
at drama camp and Jackie grew into a B-cup bra. Lunch hour conversations became this
boy this, that boy that, how many weeks until Kendra’s boyfriend came to visit and how
far she should let him “go” (I tried to pretend I knew what that meant while trying to
pretend I wasn’t grossed out by the fact that he was sixteen). By October when Ms. Duffy
told us we could stay in for lunch, I was really bored with my friends.
We nicknamed ourselves the CHAMPS team: Cassie, Henry, and Michelle
problem-sets team. Clever, no? We worked on challenge problems that Ms. Duffy found
on the Internet, often without her help. She was somewhat disappointed that we didn’t
need her until she realized she had all of this free time to catch up on text messages and
e-mails while “monitoring” us, what little supervision we needed.
The CHAMPS acronym broke down the next year, when we took the afternoon
geometry class together at here at St. Mary’s High. Lillian was the new eighth grader
who was also took Geometry since she was smart in math. We tried CHLAMPS and
CHALMPS but neither sounded like a good name for champions like us.
Henry promised he would take all three of us to the Junior Prom if we didn’t find
other dates. Lucky Henry.
I still spent my lunch breaks with these friends, and we mostly still worked on our
honors Calculus assignments or sometimes homework from other classes. My mom
certainly approved of these peers because unlike other parents at her Hi-Lo gym class,
she had a child who never procrastinated.
Sure, we did other things too, outside of school. Friday night movies were at
Lillian’s house. That was how I learned that there are a lot of Star Wars movies and I
didn’t really like any of them. Once I also joined Henry at his Saturday karate class. That
was how I broke my wrist.
Today after Bio, I met them for the brunch break outside the Student Activities
Office where we usually convene. Michelle was snapping several pictures of a bench that
she described as “picturesque” for her Beginning Photography class and Henry was
explaining to Lillian what it meant for square matrices to be invertible. His sister Holly
went to Dartmouth and had to take Linear Algebra for her Chemistry/Pre-Med major. She
always excelled in science but usually called Henry for help in math.
“See, with two-by-two matrices, it’s really easy. The determinant is just A times
D,” Henry circled the diagonal pair, “minus B times C. If it’s nonzero, then the matrix is
invertible. Then with three-by-three matrices we apply Sarrus’ rule.” He sketched the first
two columns of the matrix behind the third. “We multiply along the diagonals again,
adding up the northwest-southeast diagonals and subtracting off the southwest-northeast.
Hey, Cassie.”
I had plopped down on the other side of Henry to watch what he was explaining.
Lillian was very bouncy; she loved these brunch-time college class lectures. “Heya,
Cassie-roll,” she leaned her head over Henry’s so she could greet me. Her dad made tuna
casseroles for dinner every Saturday; he was a good cook but this was his specialty. She
loves them and it’s been my nickname since I met her. “I have an orthodontist
appointment at one. Can you hand in my Spanish homework?” She passed me her
Pretérito verb conjugation worksheet. I noticed when I saw her conjugation of the first
verb, estudiar, that most of her answers were different than mine. Since Lillian basically
never got anything incorrect in Spanish, or other any other class, I accepted the fact that I
would have to corregir mi tarea before sixth period.
“Are you okay?” Michelle came back over from her photo shoot. “Look at how
perfectly symmetrical this one is,” she beamed as she handed me the digital camera so I
could look through her shots. There was only one thing Michelle loved more than art and
that was Geometry; she was great at it too. She tutored the freshmen that found it
confusing as well as seniors who found that they couldn’t flunk the class for the third or
fourth time. She was especially passionate about reflections over the y-axis. “Neat, huh?
But seriously, you’re about the color of the grass over there.”
“Genetics project,” I groaned. Lillian looked a little perplexed—she took Biology
last year and had already assured us that there was nothing to worry about: it was a piece
of cake and we would all get A+’s like she did. “It’s not that I think it’s going to be
hard,” I preempted her motivational speech. “It’s that…I’m working with Julia. Monroe.”
“Oh God,” Henry blurted out, but covered his mouth quickly. His very devout
parents strictly forbade taking the Lord’s name in vain, or something like that. What they
didn’t know about Holly didn’t hurt them though, apparently. Henry came back from
visiting her for a weekend last April with confirmation that she actually did go to parties
where she drank beer. “Shell-shocked” is how I would describe him when I saw him at
school on Monday.
Now, my beef with Julia is from that seed planted 10 years ago when she
humiliated me at my own party. In reality, we all had our reasons not to care for her. Two
years in a row Henry had History class with her and two years in a row she sat behind
him and cheated off all his test papers. She never got in trouble for it though since Mr.
Levin was about 95-years-old and wasn’t about to notice any kind of foul play in his
classroom unless it happened two inches in front of him.
Lillian was paired with her as a tennis partner last year in gym class. The tennis
unit was three weeks and fell right after Julia had gotten an immaculate French manicure,
pedicure, and facial at the day spa. In an effort to stay gorgeous, she refused to exert
effort in gym, which made her the worst doubles partner Lillian could imagine. They lost
every match, but to Lillian’s horror Julia made the JV team in the spring while she was
cut. “I hate her!” she would come to our lunch table fuming after class. “I keep telling her
to get her FREAKING head in the game and she says, ‘Take a chill-pill, Lil!’” That was
as close to swearing as we ever got with Henry present, and usually happened whenever
anyone tried to butcher her name. It was Lillian, always. Lil was a character on Rugrats, a
show that she found trite, and she was ironically allergic to most flowers, which meant
Lilly was out. Lillian. Always.
Finally Michelle spent over a month in the math department tutoring her in
“Algebra” in ninth grade, or so she thought, but evidently Julia’s knowledge of math
ended with 2 × 2. She had an impossible time grasping the concept of x as a variable and
not a multiplication sign and fractions had clearly gone in one ear and out the other.
Michelle had to get treated for migraines from then on. We had a little party (with
brownies that Lillian’s dad made from scratch) when Julia finally got a private home
tutor.
“That’s awful, Cassie,” Michelle grimaced as she sat down on the concrete to my
right.
Lillian extended a hand over Henry. “Totally, let me know if she’s a deadbeat
partner. I can help with it after I finish the roller coaster.” Students in Physics had to
make a roller coaster for their term project. A lot of our time this summer was spent at the
amusement park for Lillian’s research purposes.
“Wait, so Mr. H doesn’t let us pick who to work with?” Henry had seventh period
Bio with Michelle and they were all set to partner up with each other.
I shook my head. “Hernandez pairs us off alphabetically. If only our class roster
could change by one person; I could have been with Curtis Newman. Even that would
have been better.” Michelle and Henry did some mental calculations. Michelle Zhang
was easy to place.
“End of the alphabet,” Michelle said with a shrug. “Alex Young I guess. He’s not
so bad. Though I’m pretty sure he’s on the water polo team so I hope he’ll have the time
to meet up.”
“I’ll bet I’m with Alyson Graham,” Henry chimed in after going through his class
list to find the people alphabetized near Gallagher. “Or Karl Freedman. But Mr. H always
calls some name between me and Ally. He probably dropped, the kid hasn’t showed up
once.”
They had an opening in their class? And I was stuck in second period. With Julia!
The passing bell rang then for third period, and we all hoisted ourselves up to go
to Calculus. But I decided I would try one more time to get that open slot in seven. How
could they say no? and then Michelle and Henry and I would be together!