Chapter Eight
Indian Springs
I couldn’t help but contrast my first day six months earlier. Luke was no longer there, having already begun college classes. Somehow that diminished Indian Springs High in my mind. Luke leaving home had expanded my world, holding out a destination which lay ahead but which, for the time being, was out of my reach. He was my trailblazer.
But balancing that was my newfound poise. This school finally felt like it belonged to me instead of the reverse. I wasn’t a visitor anymore, an eccentric from another world. My hair had grown out a bit and was styled, thanks to the assistance of the Kitty Committee. My clothes were no longer embarrassing. My makeup was subtle, but noticeable. Even though I didn’t need one, I wore a bra. I was taller. Thinner. I had the confidence of making an entrance with the most amazing person I knew, Carly Sullivan. Her mother had stopped to pick me up along the way. Maggie and Jane waited for us in the parking lot.
“Okay, Kitty Committee, are we ready to rock our junior year?” Carly looked extra confident with an emerald-green top and matching drop earrings that shimmered under the still-hot sun of late August.
We linked our right pinky fingers and then threw those hands up in the air. It was something Maggie had thought up, and Jane giggled at the silliness but went along. There was nothing between us except the promise of a year of fun. Why these girls, each one magnificent in her own way, had decided to include me was still a wonder I grappled with every day as though pinching myself upon awakening from a dream. Why Maggie and Carly only had each other before Jane and I came along was something I never stopped to consider. They were girls with high standards, head and shoulders above all others at Indian Springs High.
I believe we actually strutted through the doors that day, although Jane in her natural gainliness appeared to lope. Class schedules were passed out alphabetically in the gym. We’d meet up afterward to compare. Classes were shortened accordingly that first day to make up for the special first period.
Students began to form groups, nervously scanning schedules side by side with best friends or boyfriends, eyes darting back and forth. I was with Carly for PE but nothing else. Still, if I had to choose one class, that’s where I wanted to have Carly watching my back. Maggie had two classes with me. Carly and Jane had three in common, all AP classes that Maggie and I weren’t eligible for. But when it came to lunch, Maggie, Jane, and I had first lunch and only Carly had second. It was only a small cloud that slightly darkened our high spirits—after all, the odds of us all being in the same lunch were minimal. Overall, everyone seemed satisfied with the cards they’d been dealt.
We continued to meet in the parking lot every morning, beginning our day with the pinky salute, but lunches took on a different feel. Without Carly, Jane became our de facto leader, although it was more a matter of Maggie and I acceding to her rather than any inclination on Jane’s part to lead. After only a few days, two other girls from Jane’s PE class joined us at the table that we’d claimed outside under an eave. Meant for eight people, it seemed more comfortable now that we were five. Maggie brought out wet paper towels and cleaned the benches each day before we sat down. That would become her unofficial duty for the rest of the year. Our trays made cleaning the actual table unnecessary.
By the end of the week, a boy sat with us, clearly smitten by Jane. He was sandy-haired and starry-eyed with a slight lisp and an even slighter limp. He was a drama kid, Jane informed us. She was too. Her ethereal quality was beyond physical beauty, which I wasn’t convinced she possessed. It was an unnamable thing, irresistible to those who came close enough to its winsome appeal. I watched her speak to the boy, who I soon learned was named Kyle. I watched the way his eyes consumed her, hair so blonde as to be white, eyes so blue as to be clear, skin so pale and milky it made me think of candle wax. I watched Kyle that day and thought what a wonderful thing to be Jane—to be so admired, perhaps even desired by someone, and yet so oblivious to their esteem.
Although she was a modest person, Jane regaled us with tales of her travels. She had done modeling for a major agency when they lived in Chicago but dropped out when it began to interfere too much with reading and family time. She became scuba certified when they lived on the Gulf Coast and spent every weekend exploring those warm waters, once coming face-to-face with a bull shark that inexplicably turned on its tail and fled. Her passion was skiing, which she hoped to pursue extensively come winter at the family cabin at Lake Tahoe, only three hours away. She loved anything by Jane Austen or Emily Brontë, neither of whom I’d read but was overwhelmed with a sudden desire to do so. Her family always spent Thanksgiving in New York City, where the girls would shop with their mother until they couldn’t take another step.
Jane took a great interest in my travels as well. She hoped to travel the world one day, and I opened up to her questions, which would have embarrassed me in the past. Before, the exotic nature of my former life only set me apart and added to the insecurity I felt when I moved to Indian Springs. But Jane made me proud of this side of myself, and I realized with regret that I hadn’t fully appreciated the experiences at the time they were happening. I’d experienced them in the reflexive way of children—the way that is our life, not to be questioned or examined too closely. I never stood outside of myself to marvel at the worlds I saw, so vastly different in nature from anything I would ever experience after moving back to the states. I decided if I was ever given another chance, I would do it differently. I’d experience the water from under the surface where life was really happening. The way Jane did.
Maggie and I dutifully reported these stories to Carly when we were all together.
“Did you know that Jane used to be a model?”
“Did you know Jane’s family owns a place in Tahoe and she’s going to invite us all to go up there for Labor Day weekend?”
“Did you know that Jane is scuba certified?”
Carly didn’t react with the same breathless enthusiasm, but then again, it probably wasn’t the same hearing the story secondhand. Whenever we repeated one of her stories, Jane would only smile wanly and not add anything of her own. She usually found a way to change the subject, asking Carly about a chemistry assignment or a book they were both reading for English. It was still one for all and all for one, and Jane had no desire to make it about herself.
It didn’t take long for the reality of my parents’ decision to skip me ahead a grade to make itself known in an unfortunate way: beyond just the physical development, in which I was always lagging; the emotional maturity; and the social milestones, such as receiving my driver’s license long after it had ceased to be a source of pride and excitement for the others. I was smart, sure enough—especially in a small expat school of twenty to thirty students. But at Indian Springs, more than a year younger than my classmates, I was decidedly average, especially in math and science. Compared to Carly or even Jane, schoolwork was time-consuming and difficult.
Keeping afloat became my overwhelming obsession, as my greatest fear was to have my parents realize their mistake and request to have me repeat my sophomore year. As a result, when I wasn’t with the girls, I spent every spare minute cramming for tests and puzzling out homework with my dad’s help. It was doable. It just meant there was no kickback time for watching TV or being alone in my room with nothing but Bob’s company and my own lazy thoughts. I didn’t share this struggle with the others. I didn’t want them to be reminded of my relative youth.
Maggie, a struggling student herself, would have understood, but it was different with Maggie. Nobody expected her to be school smart, although we all knew she was smart in the ways of the world. I was supposed to be a smart kid, although it had to be obvious to Carly that I wasn’t.
Two weeks after school began, Carly called us with the good news. She had conferred with Mr. Sutherland, a school counselor who was also her private SAT tutor, and he’d agreed to rejigger her schedule. She was no longer in the same PE class as me, and she was in one less class with Jane, but the exciting news was that she was now in first lunch with the rest of us.
After that, the Kitty Committee closed ranks. The two girls and the starry-eyed boy who had shared our table soon drifted off to other tables with other groups. Jane’s orbit was eclipsed by Carly’s.