A Tale of Two Besties (7 page)

I couldn't think. I needed Harper to help me make this decision, but she was miles away in a classroom, probably surrounded by a bunch of new, glamorous friends who got all of her music references. While posing for photos, they would probably all be making that silly open-mouth “excited face” to show their contouring, too. I could even picture the Instagram tag for this imaginary picture before I caught myself and realized: I was spiraling, hard. I shook my head to snap out of it.

Nicole, Jane, and Drew were all still staring at me. How long had I been silent? I needed to say something.

“I guess . . . I could just keep wearing these ones?” Nicole and Jane and Drew squealed and clapped their hands before turning back hungrily to their phones and whipping out their credit cards. I felt an instant twinge of guilt—had I broken my Harper BFF pact about not changing to fit in already? Or did it not count, since I was wearing the wings to school anyway so it wasn't really a change, just . . . more of an adjustment, really. And just what constituted a “change,” anyhow? I realized Harper and I had never set out terms and conditions for our pact, but once again my mind had wandered off and it took all my effort to corral it back in.

“Excellent!” said Nicole, as Jane and Drew finished their giddy applause. “So you should definitely come to this year's inaugural NAMASTE meeting. I know you're going to love it. Who knows, you just might be our first new freshman member!”

“Definitely,” I promised, almost not believing that finding a new group of friends could be this easy. I mean, it's
me
we're talking about here. The Gawkward Fairy, princess of social faux pas. Not Harper, the Queen of Cool . . . no, that wasn't the way to think about it. I decided that in order for me to not self-destruct entirely from the excitement and confusion of all these new experiences, I had to try to push thoughts of Harper out of my mind—just for now.

The bell rang, and Nicole offered to show me to my first class.

Walking up to the Pathways entrance with Nicole and her friends, I didn't feel any of my former nervousness. The old classroom building that I'd found so threatening in the brochures now looked actually beautiful, in an industrial-Gothic kind of way. Small clusters of kids were sitting out in the Lane, and a couple of them waved to us as we made our way across.

“I love your wings!” called out one boy with blond man-bun knotted on the top of his head, flashing me a patchouli-scented thumbs-up. I grinned back.

“See?” said Nicole, smiling warmly. “When you're here, you're family!”

“Like Olive Garden?” I teased.

Nicole's smile dimmed a couple wattages. “I don't get it.”

I blushed. “Never mind, it's a reference to this dumb commercial.”

“Oh,” Nicole sniffed. “Never seen it.” She said it with the sort of casual distaste that most people use to refer to Blu-Rays or Super Nintendos or some other totally worthless piece of junk. I could have strangled myself for bringing up something so lame.

I said goodbye to Nicole and Jane and Drew after they dropped me off at my first cl—oops,
session
! Nicole looked down at my schedule and told me that I would be in good hands with Jamie Godfrey, or “God,” as he is better known around Pathways. He teaches my film course “Anxiety of Influence in French New Wave Cinema” and I guess is a big deal around here. I recognized a lot of the other students' names listed on the roster, because their parents are the kind of people who get top billing when their films open internationally. I wondered if we were going to be graded on a curve, or if the fact that I couldn't get someone who'd been on the cover of
Vanity Fair
to star in my final project would be counted against me.

I watched Nicole, Jane, and Drew walk down the hall to their first sessions. Alone and feeling a little panicky for the first time since the coffee shop, I took out my rose quartz crystal and held it to my chest, and tried as hard as I could to center myself. Then I took the deepest breath ever, and headed into God's classroom.

A lot of Pathways sessions involve us students sitting around and sharing our feelings about various topics and theories. There's also a lot of required eye contact with our “learning doulas,” which Nicole says is part of a very progressive learning style, but it's definitely a little off-putting at first. During a science session called “Beyond Cosmos: The Exploration of Self and Space” (I know, every session name sounds like a TV show title!) there was one kid, the son of a famous musician, who said that his religion doesn't believe in evolution, but rather teaches that humans first came down here in spaceships from Uranus four hundred years ago. It was really hard to tell if he was just messing with us, but Violet, our learning doula, just smiled and told Uranus Boy he was brave for expressing “such a unique perspective.”

Pathways is kind of strange. It's a little like Hogwarts, I guess, in that everyone there is special and kind of an outsider. Plus, a disproportionate amount of students and faculty members seem to believe in magic. Also? There are a
ton
of kids in capes. Like, so many. My wings don't even look that out of place in a school where half the kids seem like they are dressed up for some kind of cosplay event. Even though I was so happy I decided to wear them, I worried they were the only reason Nicole and her NAMASTE crew took any interest in me at all, and that instead of making me stand out, I'd need the wings to
fit in
at school. But maybe I wouldn't
actually
need to wear them every day—maybe I'd be kind of like
Dumbo
with the feather, and it'll turn out I can fly at Pathways even without them!

After my second session, Nicole picked me up outside class and took me during our fifteen minutes of “unstructured social time” to get a chai latte from one of the Vietnamese food trucks parked in the Pathways parking lot during the day. As we mingled amongst the foodies, we ended up actually having a pretty deep talk. One thing I liked about Nicole, or what was
refreshing,
I should say, is that she's really about
empowerment
. I don't know how to describe it, except to say that before Pathways, people would talk to me
despite
my awkwardness. Because they were friends with Harper, they felt like they had to be nice to me. Which was fine . . . I am not complaining
at all
. But Nicole is much more in your face about personal acceptance than Harper is. Like, when I told Nicole that I had recently retired Sir Zeus, my old imaginary friend.

“Wow, it sounds like your old school was really repressive,” she'd said. “Why wouldn't they encourage you to talk more about him and keep him alive, rather than stifle your creativity and tell you to kill him?”

If she'd been there when I was making that decision, she told me, she would have prompted me with “Yes, and?” questions, which promote creativity and out-of-the-box thinking, and improv theater groups too, which Nicole
also
has experience with. She also said I should never think of myself as “gawkward,” because even if I came up with that description myself, it's still pejorative, which means bad. Then, when she caught me mumbling to myself when we were washing our hands in the bathroom, instead of calling me a spaz, she started doing it too! And at the end of the day, Jane and Drew caught up to me and asked me to teach them how to chant and do mantras like the ones I'd done with Nicole. Well, that wasn't exactly what I was doing—it's more like whenever I'm embarrassed or nervous, my head starts going in loops and I won't even notice I'm saying stuff out loud. The words wouldn't even make sense if you heard them, they're just sentence fragments, like the end of a thought, or a dream. Word salad. But I guess it's sort of similar to a chant or a charm, which I'd never thought about before, so I just went with it.

Everyone at Pathways seems to like Nicole, even though she says high school is not a contest, and “popularity” is for “normals.” Normals are repressive, and keep us from being our best selves, and didn't I agree? So I guess Nicole wouldn't call herself
popular,
but she's definitely well-known and respected, and I could tell no one wanted to let her down.

Like during lunch I maybe let it slip that I've hate-watched that show
Fashion Police
with my friend Harper, and Nicole literally stopped mid-chew. Jane and Drew gasped.

“You. Watch. TV.” It was not a question. “You mean you actually willingly
consume
entertainment from corporate conglomerates, whose only vested interest in its production of quote-unquote ‘culture' is to exploit idiots for ratings and to reward the ideals of the existing patriarchal power structure with a prime-time lineup of insipid reality housewives and tortured male antiheroes?”

“Sure,” I said, immediately realizing that was the wrong thing to say. “Well, I don't really watch it that often,” I stammered, trying to figure out the correct response that wouldn't have Nicole giving me the same fierce treatment she had given to Leopard Print.

Nicole pulled a piece of fluff off my wings and frowned at it. “No,” she said. “Of course you don't.” And then she smiled and kept eating and told the story about how last year Drew staged a monthlong naked protest at PETA headquarters for the way their ads sexualized women, like nothing had even happened!

“Don't worry,” Jane whispered as we were walking out of the cafeteria. “We just end up streaming everything on our iPads anyway. Nicole is actually a gigantic
Scandal
junkie.”

“Oh,” was all I could think of to say.

Then, after lunch we had our Crafternoon session, where Nicole told our learning doula, Sarah Matheson, that she found our syllabus to be “unengaging and pedantic in its overuse of traditionally feminine looming methods.” At my old school, that would be enough to get you into real trouble. But not here, where even Sarah seemed worried about not meeting Nicole's high standards. She just nodded and told Nicole that she “appreciated the thoughtful critique.”

Another thing I like about Pathways: Everyone really likes being creative, and the energy is for the most part really positive. At lunch, Drew brought out his guitar and asked to name a song, any song. I said “Team” by Lorde, and he just started playing it! (I'm obsessed with Lorde. My mom says it's because she went through a big Kate Bush phase when she was pregnant with me, so I probably internalized a taste for strange, anachronistic songstresses with a penchant for dramatic choreography in utero.)

When Drew got to the line “Call all the ladies out . . .” I started to kind of sing along under my breath, but Nicole yelled “Get it girl!” The next thing I know we were all belting it out. Even kids I hadn't met yet were coming over to join and it was like a big a capella chorus in the Lane, like something out of an old MGM musical where everyone breaks into song. Another freshman—the son of the monster movie director,
The Purge
or
Paranormal Activity
or one of the P-films, I think—pulled up some bongos and Jane filmed the whole thing for her blog and for a moment I felt like what other kids must feel when they score at lacrosse or take a bow after curtains close on their play, or form a formation during halftime at the Super Bowl. Like they were part of something bigger, but that the something bigger had a piece of them in it and you didn't have to feel like such an outcast anymore because here was everyone, singing the same song.

As soon as the song was over, the circle kind of dispersed and it was almost like it never happened in the first place, like it was a magical little moment that I'd just daydreamed up. It was like those flash-mob videos, where everyone coordinates ahead of time what they're going to do, or something out of
Glee
right before a commercial break. I really wished I had asked Jane to send me the video, because Harper would die if she saw it.

Harper. From her texts I knew she wasn't having as awesome a day as I was, and then I felt slightly guilty that I was having such an amazing time at school.

But seriously, how did I get so lucky? Jane and Drew and Nicole are all juniors, but they walked me to each of my classes on the first day and said hi to all of their old teachers. That would be totally unheard of at Beverly High! Even the adults seemed impressed, and not one person asked me why I was wearing wings or hanging out with older kids, or if that was my real voice or why I was mumbling, or any of the things new people normally said to me. I guess these wings are making everyone like me. Even though I'd never really been hurt by the assumptions people usually made about me, it was surprising how nice it felt being able to engage people without feeling on guard, ready for some judgment. It wasn't until the last class was over that I even noticed I had gotten through my first day of high school unscathed.

As I walked out the main door, I thought about the owl of Minerva that visited us on the Pier the night before. Maybe I was wrong after all, because from where I stood it looked like freshman year was going to be
ah-
mazing!