Big Boned

Chapter 5

By the time I got to school for day two at BWH, I was late. Not because I'd overslept or forgotten to set my alarm, but because it had taken an eternity to get Zac to agree to go to school. I ended up stepping in after watching my mother negotiate unsuccessfully with him for half an hour, getting more and more worked up as she went. In the end, I promised that if he went to school, when we got home we could go to the beach and build a giant sandcastle with five turrets, secret passages for all the mouse spies, as well as a deep moat to keep enemies out. I also promised I would take him to school, despite the fact I was due in class in ten minutes.

At least my mother had done one thing right when she'd rented the monstrosity we now called home: the house was exactly four blocks from my new school and five from my brother's.
But that was its only redeeming feature. Not to sound like an art snob here, but this house was an affront to just about every single one of my aesthetic sensibilities, with its shiny, silver colonnade entrance, blue mirrored glass frontage, and the large lion sculptures with wings that flanked the biggest front door known to humankind. I couldn't help but wonder how we'd gone from cool, downtown industrial to . . . this? Whatever this was trying so hard to be. I guess it made sense that my mother would have chosen a house like this. Over the top, shiny facade. Screaming to be seen by everyone who drove past.

It was hot again today. The weather in Cape Town was different from Joburg. The air here was thick and sticky, like stepping into a steam room, whereas home was dry. You could move through the heat freely at home, but here it felt like it clung to you, weighing you down as the day went by.

I'd anticipated the heat today, though, and was wearing much cooler clothes and extra deodorant. I'd put on my favorite T-shirt, the one with the Andy Warhol pop art soup can print. This was my go-to shirt, and slipping it on felt like chatting to an old friend. You know why I love this shirt so much? Because it takes something so ordinary—a can of Campbell's soup—and elevates it to art. I've often wondered if Warhol was able to see things in everyday objects that no one else could see. Could he look below the surface of something and find the thing inside it that made it beautiful and special?

I finally skidded into a parking place at school thirty minutes late for class. And when I made my way up the long stairs and into the building, and managed to find the right classroom, I was utterly traumatized to discover that I was sitting next to Amber, in the front row.

I hate the front row. I feel like I'm being watched when I sit there, which of course, I am. The anxiety of all those eyes boring holes into your back felt overwhelming, and with Amber next to me, these feelings were only intensified. So much so that when I pulled my water bottle out to quench my dry, nervous mouth, my hands were shaking so much that I spilled water on her book, ruining the work she'd done, while also wetting her skirt. By some cruel twist of fate, it seemed I was destined to go through life at BWH continuously pissing off the likes of Amber—the one girl at school you didn't want to piss off.

And like my first day at BWH, this day also just deteriorated. Because I soon discovered that wearing a soup can on my clothing had not been a good idea. This became evident when the Three Ts cornered me in the bathroom.

"Do you, like, really, really like, like, soup, like, a lot?" Teagan asked.

I wanted to open my mouth and shout, Do you, like, really, really like, like, saying like, like, a lot? Like? But didn't.

"Isn't it, like, too hot, like, for soup, like?" Teagan asked. (Okay, so I'm lying about all the likes. They weren't really saying them, but I was imagining them in my head.)

"Yeah, I'd understand it if it was a smoothie or something," the one called Tasandra added thoughtfully.

"Oh em gee, that's such a good idea!" Teagan clasped her hands enthusiastically. "We should get shirts made with our favorite smoothies on them, and then we wouldn't need to open our mouths to order them, we could just point at our shirts."

What. The. Hell! Had I heard that correctly? I stared in shock, watching Tasandra and Teagan as they looked like they were really considering this as a legitimate new way of ordering their favorite blended drinks. And then something strange happened. Thembi, the tall, golden-brown goddess, tilted her head to the side and looked at my shirt again.

"Isn't that by a famous artist?" she asked.

"Andy Warhol," I replied quietly.

"He did those pictures of Marilyn Monroe and the cows. I saw them when I was in New York."

"You saw original Andy Warhols?"

"Yeah, they're cool," she said and then turned around. This seemed to be the cue for the other Ts to follow. I stared after them as they walked toward the door.

That hadn't really happened, had it? Because surely someone like her hadn't just called my shirt cool? The other two Ts had no idea who Andy Warhol was, and to be honest, a little flicker of artistic superiority had rushed through me, but Thembi . . . she seemed different somehow. There was something about her I couldn't put my finger on. I caught one last glimpse of her arm as she closed the door behind her. The warm light from the passage beyond the bathroom seemed to accentuate the gold of her skin for a second. I mentally made a note to try to re-create that color; how much gold would I need to add to brown to get that?

"Teagan has a point, you know?" I heard a flush and looked up as Amber walked out of one of the stalls. Her long blond hair had been fastened on top of her head in a messy bun. The kind that you knew she'd spent hours perfecting in front of the mirror. Just the right amount of mess for Insta-worthy, curated casualness. I'd spent such a long time wishing that girls like Amber would like me. That they would open their arms and invite me into their inner girly sanctums. We would all do our hair and makeup together. Gossip about the guys and get ready to go out to parties. That had never happened, and even though I had my own little, happy clique now, there was still this tiny part of me that craved some kind of affirmation from an Amber. I hate that part of me.

"No one likes soup that much that they put it on a shirt."

"It's not about liking soup." I swallowed.

Her face scrunched up like she was sucking on a lemon. "Then what's it about?"

"It's art."

"Art!" She rolled her eyes. A sense of inferiority swelled inside me. Why did girls like her make me feel this way? And she knew it, because she asserted her dominance even more when she slowly, pointedly dabbed a tissue over the wet mark on her skirt. When she'd sufficiently rubbed my face in it, she crunched the tissue up, and then with a casualness that bordered on utter disdain, threw it at the trash can and then shrugged when it missed and fell to the floor.

"By the way, Lauri," she said, deliberately mispronouncing my name. "I think you forgot something yesterday. I saved it for you." She smiled. It was glacial. The kind of smile that would make hell freeze over.

I reached out to take whatever she was giving me, and when I saw what it was, embarrassment plugged my throat closed.

My button.

She gave me a smug smile and then exited the bathroom with a low, evil-sounding chuckle. The kind a witch might make while dropping the severed heads of small, innocent, woodland creatures into a fiery cauldron. I picked up her tissue and threw it into the bin. How had this become my life? Living the ultimate teen cliché where a girl like her was picking on a girl like me?

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