I wonder if I ever learned anything.

Let's say you were twelve years old again, what would be a typical day for you?

Wake up early, walk to the bus, get on the bus, go to school, go to my first class (science, with Mr. Mig) and fuck around with Clyde and Martin, go through the rest of my day with Clyde because we had every class but social studies together. Get in trouble for talking too much and making fun of Mr. Pond. Try to ditch PJ, while being unnecessarily mean. Get on the bus to go home. Go to Katie's, watch TV, go home, eat, go to rehearsal everysinglenight (hang out with Clyde and Josh after Fortissimos Tuesday nights, hang out with Sam and the boys during Once On This Island rehearsals), come home, pretend to do homework. Sleep.

I turned twelve in seventh grade. That was the year that Clyde dated Kayla Gordon for a while. Katie, Angela, Gabby and Clyde were in my music class. We would draw faces on pictures of composers. Clyde drew a giant afro on Beethoven once. A car and the moon were in it.
Clyde and I were also in a secondary math class with about nine kids because we scored poorly on the state math exam the year before; but we were in the accelerated math class ninth period.

My English teacher's name was Heidi Wagner. She set up a giant "Shakespeare festival" at the end of the year for the seventh and eighth grade. Our class split into groups and performed our own rewritten renditions of scenes from Hamlet. PJ and I did the scene where Hamlet doesn't kill his uncle. I was Hamlet. I had a lightsaber.
This week marks the first time I stepped foot into Sunshine Studios.

We went to the Bronx Zoo that year. Josh and Chalen started singing the Spongebob theme song while we were in the ghetto and the entire bus started singing with them.
The last day of that year was really amazing. Because our math class was inter-academy, Josh Chalen PJ Clyde and I wound up spending the period sitting in an empty classroom because the other two academies were at an assembly. We talked about blanking out on tests and our parents and Josh told me I should start wearing contacts. I think he was trying to imply that he thought I was pretty. I never pressed the subject.
The five of us also took French together. I was never very good. Josh and Chalen always sat together, Clyde and Martin paired off and I sat with my friend Amanda and Ashley most of the time.
PJ was in love with me for all of middle school. We were best friends in first grade. I had no interest. It put a strain on our friendship and I handled it poorly, due to being a twelve-year-old girl. I still feel bad. Amanda and PJ started dating years later. Looking back, I was more surprised than I should have been. Clyde and Olivia were on and off that year. I was in love with Clyde but everyone knew that, didn't they?

It's funny how much I remember now, seven years later.


The next year went to shit. Amanda moved a few months through the year. They split classes up by gender. I wasn't friends with any of the girls in my academy. I actually hated a large portion of them and I was miserable most of the time.
I had social studies and health with Angela, Katie Alicia and Gabby. Jon was in that class for some reason. We also had health together with Clyde and Josh and some of the other Jefferson boys. For some reason health and gym weren't seperated by sex. That makes no sense to me.

Angela tried to commit suicide that spring. I don't remember the exact number, but it was around thirty stitches. Nobody saw her after that.

I lived with my dad. My mom moved out and Ian and Melissa moved with her.

I was terrible at French. We had it first period.

We got a new English teacher. Her name was Lisa Puckey. I always had a feeling that she was a lesbian. I thought she was fantastic. She had us keep weekly journals. We could write whatever we wanted. I wrote constantly. She always gave me an A. She said "I don't know how to grade a person on their thoughts. I feel like a shrink."
She called me out once. I was generally unmotivated. She saw my standardized test scores from the year before.

"You have no excuse now. You are so smart. You are in the 98th percentile of all New York students on your ELA test. You are a genius. I'm not accepting your slacking anymore. Hey ladies?! LADIES! I need your attention! THIS GIRL IS A GENIUS. SHE IS A GENIUS SLACKER."

I thought the boys' class must have been able to hear every word of it. I was mortified.
She gave us an assignment to write a short story. I poured my heart into it. I worked on it every day. I rewrote it three times. It was two weeks late. I got an A+.
I think most of the stories averaged three pages. I wrote 14 and a half. I handed in a fucking novel. It was about a band. I think writing and music were really the only things that mattered to me at that point.

I quit band. I stayed in choir.
Etienne and I got close again.
I didn't eat much. Sometimes I didn't eat anything.
My lunch was usually exclusively vanilla milk and ice cream from the vending machines.
Katie and I both moved at the end of the year. They got evicted from their house. They had 48 hours to move everything out.
Her mom died when we were in ninth grade.