BHCS

My feet sink through the crust of the snow and I can feel the ice through the hole in the bottom of my shoe.  Slowly, my jeans absorb the winter as I take deliberate steps towards the swing.  Around me, classmates are applying lipgloss and playing foursquare and talking about kissing in the woods beyond the playground.  I'm thinking about my step, and not falling over, and if I'm going to eat tonight.  I threw my sandwich away in the lunchroom again, I can't remember the last time I ate during the day.  The bread was a week old and hard as a rock, even if I had wanted to eat it to begin with.  I had gazed longingly at the bright pre-packaged food around me at the table, and without thinking had crumpled the whole brown bag up and stuffed it into the can. 

Tonight, maybe, I will eat the green spinach goo that always seemed to be appearing in the toaster oven.  I will make jokes with my little brother about alien food, and maybe he would eat some of his reheated pizza with the fake cheese on top.  If my mother doesn't have another concert.  Or another boyfriend.  Or both.  Last night she didn't come home until two am.  When she did she yelled at me and called me a selfish bitch.  I could smell the wine on her breath, and after she went to bed I had snuck back into brothers room and we had held each other and told stories. 

Today I'm dressed in a over-sized purple sweatshirt.  I'm not allowed to shop for myself, and I am painfully aweare that I am the only one on this playground over the age of ten still wearing clothing from a kids store. I look like an oompa-loompa, I know, but the first day I wore my winter jacket to class they all started calling me marshmallow, and asking me where I parked my spaceship.  So now I brave the snow in my sweatshirt and jeans.

I don't know what they thought, on that first day of school.  They expected someone rich, that I know.  They told me all the NEH kids were rich, and when I didn't have the clothes or the makeup they decided I shouldn't fit in at all.  It took them a day to dislike me, and a week for them to come up with my first nickname.

I remember my old school sometimes.  I remember my best friend Sarah and I lying in a field and picking wild strawberries and telling each other that everything was going to be ok.  Sometimes, I remember- but mostly it's easier to block it out.  That's not me now.  I am quiet.  They said I wanted to have sex with my teacher, but I've never even kissed a boy.  I try to do well in school, but the teachers here only want to talk to the girls with the makeup and the clothes.  They wrote me off the first time they saw my overly long skirts and bushy brown hair. 

Today, I am walking one step at a time.  I make it to the swing and feel the numb as I wrap my hands around the cold metal links.  Pushing off, I close my eyes and begin to dream.  If I close my ears too I can be anyone in the whole world.  Sometimes I am a princess, others I am fighting in the revolution.  Most of the time I am safe and sound on my island, with my little brother.  We eat delicious fattening Italian food and we watch PG13 movies that played in actual theaters.  I am allowed to listen to dance music, and my dad teaches me about blues and rock and roll. 

By the time the bell rings, I almost have a smile on my face.