New Girl

I met her in gym class freshman year
Tall freakishly skinny.
She stood a little hunched over, like she was carrying her weight in her back.
Looked like her legs would break.
Bleach blonde hair in a hundred tiny ringlets,
It looked as though she were headed to prom.
Not a stitch of makeup on her face she didn’t need it,
her presence was striking enough.
She came and stood next me, where the class leaned against the padded walls that lined the gymnasium.
Laughing to myself I pictured the gym as an insane asylum
No sharp corners or exposed walls. It may as well have been one
Everyone in this place was out of their fucking mind.
That's giving them the benefit of the doubt, that they had minds of their own.
I assumed the majority of them didn’t.
They had probably lost them sometime between the day they realized that in order to secure their place high in the pecking order they had to abandon all unique and differentiating characteristics they had, and the day when they realized that they spent the majority of their days picking on the people that had decided to maintain dignity and resist the urge to become one of the masses.
I turned to new girl, and sized her up.
I wondered if she had gone through her exorcism already, at her old school.
It was too early to tell.
Her tiny white t-shirt with big maroon letters spelling out A-B-E-R-C-R-O-M-B-I-E
Didn’t give me much hope though.



I passed the principal’s office on my way to lunch, and saw her sitting there on a bench, Like she was about to puke.
She had pin-straight hair now
A year of growing out her perm and cutting it off.
"Hey, you ok?" I asked The school was small, so although we didn’t spend anytime socializing outside the River walls, I considered her...a friend, or something.
She clutched at her sides, "I just have really bad cramps. “My mom's picking me up."
I had never missed school because of PMS-ish symptoms... Well besides the day after I got my period for the first time; I stayed home where I cried under my blankets all day.
New Girl beckoned me over, seeing that the thought of missing school for such a miniscule and treatable (with Advil) discomfort was perplexing me.
"You see…" she whispered in my ear, "One of the reasons I moved here was because, a few years back I got really sick and had an infection in my uterus. I had to get it removed.
Now every month when I'm supposed to get my period my body freaks out, and I get sick. Everyone at my old school knew and thought I was weird. So my mom moved us here."
I pulled away and looked at her. "I’m so sorry, that sucks!"
"Don't say anything about it to anyone, ok?"
"Of course not" I replied as though I was used to be chosen as someone’s confidant." Feel better."
Hoping she wouldn’t see the excitement behind my feigned expression of pity, I turned and walked into the cafeteria with a new and bizarre sense of confidence.


Later that year she disappeared from school for a week.
I didn't really care…
Figured she was on vacation or sick.
A couple girls started to suspect she was on a bender, doing coke, and who knows what else.
By the end of the week a buzz had been growing, spreading from one group to the next that her dad had died.
An overdose on drugs, the night after he sold some to his own daughter.
Went home got fucked up, and died.
I tried to think,
I had never heard anything about her father before, now I understood why.
She came back to class the next week, and no one said a word.
I’m sure her "close" friends attempted to talk to her about it,
But everyone went along as usual,
The only difference was in the hallways, people passing, holding their stare on her fragile frame a couple seconds too long.
Probably thinking the same thing that nagged at the back of my mind, every time I saw her porcelain skin, and meek demeanor,
"How does such a beautiful girl slip out of sight to do the dark and twisted things that we all heard about?"
Poor girl,
First no uterus...
Now, no father.

One day in class I turned and looked at her skinny arm hanging, limp, off the edge of the desk, while her body slumped forward, her head in the crook of her arm.
She had this giant silver bracelet on.
It was molded into the shape of countryside, with houses folding into the hills, sitting under an open sky.
"Hey…Where’d you get your bracelet...I love it."
"Huh..uhhm"
I think I woke her up...It was for own good anyways.
"My sister and her boyfriend took me garbage picking on the side of the highway...I found it." She set her head back down in her arms, tucking her bracelet away into her now, strawberry blonde hair.

I don't know why I was at Becky's birthday party.
She was one of the…"Queen-bees"
Apparently I was being taken under her wing for a while.
Not sure what I had done to "deserve" the special attention.
I was usually content to stay home on weekends and hear about the social events the next week.
Tired of all the fake girls, and their fake squealing hellos, and hugs...I snuck out of the backyard and sat on the curb wondering how long till it was appropriate to leave this godforsaken gathering of idiots.
That’s when New Girl pulled up in her Audi. My longtime best friend sat in the passenger seat.
"Wanna come with us; we're going for a burn run."
"uuuh...ok." I didn't smoke...but I didn’t feel like sitting alone anymore.
I jumped into the back seat, and we took off down the back roads.
"ummm guys??" they both turned back to look at me. Smoke pouring out slowly as she mouthed, "What?"
"You know there's a baby back here right??"
"Oh yeah" she coughed and laughed a little, glanced in the rearview mirror, and said "That’s my sisters kid."

I lost track of her for a while.
I was caught up in my first love.
The ups and downs.
One day sitting on the couch with my boyfriend, we had just finished fighting.
If you can even finish...it’s always bitter...and the buildup is what kills you in the end.
He had disappeared for the weekend. Without calling.
He, being out school, and me, finishing up my senior year...I was always jealous.
I think he was trying to make me laugh…or something. But he decided to tell me a story.
"So I was hanging out on Earl St. with the whole crew (a bunch of guys from the surrounding grades, and New Girl) and we found this leather mask on the side of the road. We were videotaping skate tricks and next thing I know She comes out of the bushes completely naked with the leather mask on!"
Is he seriously telling me this right now, I thought to myself.
The fact that he disappeared without a word was annoying enough, but now he was hanging out with a psycho that gets coked up and dances naked in the middle of a neighborhood, in the middle of the day, in the middle of ORYA soccer practice,
Wearing a leather mask.
"We got it all on videotape! You should see the soccer moms' faces!!"
I got up and walked out the door.
Idiot.

I finished school up a semester before everyone else in my grade...
Broke up with my boyfriend,
Moved to Portsmouth, and pretty much had nothing to do with anyone anymore.
One afternoon passing through my hometown I stopped to pick up something from store 24.
I saw a familiar Audi parked right outside.
I looked to the convenient store and pushing through the front door, I saw her.
The sun shone off her dark brown hair, and her boots went all the way up to her knees.
Her skinny little legs, lost in the dark leather.
Heels made her another 4 inches taller and maybe twice as fragile looking.
From the side she looked like she was about to tumble forward.
Must have been 7 months pregnant.
"Hi!!" she yelled as she swaggered over to me.
One hand on her belly, the other clutching a giant handbag.
"Hey" I said. "It’s been a while…"
"I knowwww!" she had a shit-eating grin on her face. It pissed me off.
I thought about the awkward and tedious routine of small talk that was about to begin, catching up...like we cared.
Fuck it. Fuck this.
I cocked my head to the side, frowning, and with a concerned voice I said, "Wow it must really suck to be pregnant without a uterus."
Her mouth opened and closed.
I could tell she was trying to figure out what I was talking about.
It was then I realized she had no idea, about half the shit that came out of her mouth.
"Have a good one, and...Good luck." you will fucking need it.
I turned on one foot and headed back to my car, without going into the store,
Wondering the whole time, where she had actually gotten her silver bracelet.