Molalla High was different than West Linn. On the first day of school I stood out in front of our white fence in my new tight black t-shirt in the rain for a half an hour before I decided that the bus had passed me through the fog. It was cold inside the school, when I arrived late to first period, where we sat in groups instead of by ourselves. I didn't like their faces in the classroom. They were alien and different than the kids that I had grown up with in West Linn, and so I found myself lounging back in my chair looking smug and trying to frighten the partners at my table. They were not frightened of me.
Second period was painting, and I sat alone in the corner as friends reunited and near the end of class their was only laughter.
Third period was Spanish, and the class was huge, yet I knew no one.
Chemisty. Still, nothing.
American Studies passed slowly, and I missed the bus again trying to get home.
The second day was the same. I talked no more than I had to, and even though I caught the bus I was still having the worst time of my life.
A week or so passed, monotonous and ever so the same as my first two days of school. I talked to people, smiled at them, and forced myself to laugh. But even if they were nice to me they were not good enough. I couldn't figure out how to talk to people who joked about chewing tobacco and Mexican immigration, when what I was used to at West Linn was Shakespeare and bulimia. I was so out of place that it was ripping me to shreds, and everywhere I went I must have stood out like a stop-light in my skinny jeans and Beetles t-shirt. They wore Romeos here, and Levis that stetch up to your belly button.
It must have been the middle of the second week, when I moved my stool over in art class and simply started talking to a girl named Liz. She looked nice, and at that point all I was thinking was what the heck, I can't get any more pathetic. She talked with me, oddly, and I didn't have to prompt her to keep speaking. I sat there again the second day, and soon I was talking to the guy next to me, Shane, and his friend Lisa. It became more comfortable, and I wanted to believe that I was somehow fitting in somewhere. I found out that Lisa was in my Spanish class, and that Liz knew almost all the sophomore losers that I didn't want to associate with. It was alright. I began following Liz around at break, and instead of sitting alone outside at lunch I sat at a table with some of her loser friends.The topic of conversation seemed always to swing towards who dumped who or who beat the living crap out of some freshmen. I began to curl up inside myself again, frusterated and lost and wanting so much to know someone like myself.
I sat in my room, staring at a poster of Kurt Cobain. My old friend Katherine was on the phone, chatting my ear off about some girl who got raped near my old house. I wasn't really listening. Hours later I forced myself to pick up the phone again and call Liz. We ended up going to the movies the next day, and I realized she was semi-alright outside of school. We walked to Fred Meyer and I bought yellow nail polish, and then we speed-walked back to the theatre in time to catch three hours of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest. It was the most pitiful movie I had seen in years, but somehow it was alright to be sitting next to Liz and be totally put out. She was laid back in the cinema chair, and it felt like we had seen many movies together, instead of just this one. I was more at home than in all the months that I had been here, and I realized this just as Jack Sparrow took his leap into the giant sea monster's throat. People in the theatre gasped, and I was in another demension now, and everything was flipped and strange, but it was slowly begining to show signs of life. I must have smiled slightly in the darkness before I threw another piece of popcorn into my mouth.