Heft - By Liz Moore Page 0,29

minutes to spare and then I walked directly through the green front door, letting the surge of bodies around me swallow me and make me small. The hallways at PLHS are lettered and my homeroom was in D-Hall, which was on the third floor.

No one was sitting down yet when I walked into homeroom. They were standing in clumps like they were at a party. The girls were shrieking with laughter and the boys were slapping each other’s hands sideways in greeting. I didn’t want to be the only one sitting but I felt I had no choice. I chose a desk and sat at it, rifling through my empty bookbag to give myself something to do. I did not recognize myself in anyone. The girls wore cardigans and dangling silver bracelets.

All of my classes surprised me. My classmates spoke perfect drawling lazy English. They spoke like rich adults.

I think, said one, that what Reagan was forgetting was that people give a damn about other people.

It was astonishing.

I had signed up for the dumb classes, the level two and three classes. What this means in Pells is classes for very smart and nerdy kids who are so smart and nerdy that school is uninteresting to them and so they have behavior problems and get bad grades. A boy in my bio class was wearing a cape.

At lunch I did not even try to go into the cafeteria. I found an empty classroom and sat down and put my head on my desk. If anyone asked I was going to say I was feeling sick. I hiked the sleeves of my giant white T-shirt over my shoulders and folded the waistband of my basketball shorts over once and then twice.

That night I went home and begged my mother for new clothes. I begged her not to make me go back to school without good clothes. She was actually happy. She never liked the stuff I wore, the baggy stuff. It was a nice night with her. We went to the mall and I used money I had saved from mowing lawns. I took it out of my wallet and we went to Target, where I bought shorts like the ones I’d seen the other boys wearing. We bought one pair of cheap brown flip-flops (since then I have learned that these are a giveaway, that these are the things that need to be expensive and leather), and a few T-shirts with collars. I let the clothes fit me. I let the shirts be tight across my shoulders and I let the shorts come to just above my knees. On the way out I convinced my mother to stop at J.Crew and I walked to the back, to the sale rack, and spotted two oxfords: one white and one blue. I wanted them very badly but they were so expensive, even on sale, that I almost wouldn’t let her buy them, but she insisted. She loved them. She said they made me look grown-up. The white one was missing a button at the bottom and the blue one had a tiny tear at the back. I didn’t care.

The next day was better. I was not sure if anyone would recognize me from the day before. I had slouched through every class my first day but walking in I stood up straighter. I had grown a lot over the summer and a girl smiled at me on my way in. I was wearing the blue shirt.

In my first-period class, Señorita Klein went around the room asking, Juegas al deportes?

Sí, I said. Yo juego al béisbol, al basquetbol, y al fútbol americano.

The last wasn’t true. I hadn’t played football since I was a little kid doing Pop Warner because my friends did. But the kid next to me looked at me and later in the class, when Señorita Klein was writing on the board, he leaned over to me and said Yo. You play football.

Yeah, I said.

How come you didn’t try out, he said.

I didn’t know when they were, I said, but my heart was sinking. This was something my mother should have told me. I felt like a dud.

Captains’ started middle of August, said the kid.

Chiquitos, said Señorita Klein. Por favor.

This kid was Trevor Cohen who is now my best friend, along with Kurt Aspenwall. Trevor got me on the football team. In the winter I played basketball. In the spring I tried out for baseball and made varsity and I was the