Where I Belong (5 page)

Chapter 4

No Potential Needed

G
ETTING INTO PRESCHOOL IN
N
EW
Y
ORK
C
ITY
is a feat and getting into grammar school in the city is a noted accomplishment. And if your parents can manage those obstacles (aka buying your admission), you need to worry about securing a spot at one of the best boarding schools in the country, which takes a near miracle.

The fear of not getting into the right boarding school has been ingrained in my DNA since childhood.
Don’t tease other kids,
our teachers threatened.
We write your recommendations for boarding school.
Or
Don’t cheat,
our teachers warned.
We write your recommendations for boarding school.
I promise the phrase
We write your recommendations for boarding school
is the most commonly used phrase by any exasperated private school teacher in Manhattan. It’s akin
to
Just wait until your father gets home,
which is only scary for girls who don’t know how to work their daddy’s baby-girl button.

I wanted Kent. My dad wanted Kent. My mom wanted whatever would keep me from prolonged wailing and rebound shopping. But see, Waverly wanted Kent too, which wasn’t good since boarding schools prefer to take only one student from each elite private school. Although I am not a fan of admitting it, Waverly was always the A to my A minus. Okay, fine, the A to my
high
B plus. Take, for instance, the ninth-grade science fair: I made a headband that expanded or contracted to fit a head, and Waverly redesigned the entrances and exits of Central Park to better flow pedestrian traffic.

So when Waverly set her heart on Kent, my mom spent weeks telling me that whatever happened, it would be okay. Even my own parents know that I am the princess to Waverly’s queen, both academically and socially. Of course, I didn’t believe my mother that things would be okay without Kent, especially after I fell in love with the campus and its perfectly manicured stables. And on my visit, I had the hottest tour guide ever: Smith Cunnington, who not only gives tours but stars on the lacrosse team and looks like he walked out of a J. Crew ad. After that day, I became entranced by the idea that my life must play itself out on the grassy knolls of Kent.

And then my Kent interview happened. I had prepared myself for the questions. Yes, yes, I definitely plan on volunteering in a third-world nation
every summer.
(I mean, if Nantucket sinks into the Atlantic, I would think about it.
Not a total lie.)
Yes, yes, I can’t wait to balance academics, social life, and extracurricular activities. (I mean, I’ll think about vocabulary words while riding Sweetbread and try to use them later in witty social banter.) But then the interviewer hit me with a question I didn’t expect: “Why should we allow you in over the far more qualified candidates we get every year?” I stopped, caught my breath, and realized that my perfectly coordinated Elie Tahari suit (black with a pink shirt) alone wasn’t going to get me into Kent. I needed to reply with something genius. Raising one eyebrow, just a tad, “I have,” I said calmly, “potential. I think Kent’s the best place for it to finally mature.” When I told my parents my answer, they cackled and said that might just have saved me.

And on April 15, side by side, Waverly and I both opened our thick packages from Kent Boarding School. For the first time in five years, two girls from our school were going to Kent.
Thank you, potential.

Here in Broken Spoke, there are no private schools. There aren’t even mediocre parochial schools. There’s only one public high school. All you have to do is fill out a form with your name and your address, and then you just
show up. A monkey could do it. Hell, even Tripp, a middle schooler, didn’t need help. No potential needed for Broken Spoke High.

“Corrinne, Corrinne, it’s almost time to leave,” Grandma shouts through the bedroom door, “and you haven’t eaten your breakfast.”

I put the last details on my makeup. If this had been my first day of Kent, I would have definitely gone for fake lashes. They totally change someone’s face; it’s the main reason celebrities are so beautiful. Well, that, the Botox, the liquid diets, and the personal trainers…. But in this heat, I can’t trust that my lashes wouldn’t melt and blind me. And who do I have to impress? I am so annoyed that I still haven’t been able to convince my father via desperate emails, texts, begging, or threats that I must go to Kent. Hopefully, I’ll be able to blackmail my mother into it, but I haven’t unearthed any dark and scary skeletons from her past. Although Kent doesn’t start for another week, so it’s not a total fantasy.

“Corrinne,” I hear through the door again.

I try to look myself up and down in the tiny vanity mirror since there’s no full-length one. But when I crouch, I still can’t really tell what I look like. My first day without a uniform in my entire life, and I am in Broken Spoke. I can’t bear to wear what I had planned for my first day at
Kent: a floral Elizabeth and James skirt with a blue cardigan. It’s too depressing, so I am going casual and wearing a J. Crew tangerine cotton dress with wedges, which I’ve already worn before to a brunch. Although no one in
Tejas
knows that, and it’s not as if I really care what anyone
here
thinks.

Adding a final coat of lip gloss, I take one last peek in the mirror, see that even makeup can’t hide depression, and drag myself out to the kitchen, where Grandpa, Grandma, and Tripp are already sitting around the table. Tripp’s wearing a Yankees hat, which makes me relieved that he hasn’t totally forgotten his roots in exchange for, in his words, “an adventure.”

I spot a gigantic stack of nut pancakes in the middle of the table.

“Pecan,” Grandpa says, catching my stare. “Our state nut. Eat up; you need your brain food.”

I sigh and pull out my red vinyl chair. Pancakes are totally off-limits unless they are from Clinton St. Baking Co., which serves an out-of-this-world chocolate and blood orange pancake. And I eat those only if it’s a national holiday.

Grandma and Grandpa keep watching me, so I serve myself and take a bite just so my grandparents will stop looking at me so creepily. But then something in my mouth tingles. I take another bite. More tingles.
Grandma’s pancakes are even better than the ones at Clinton St. Baking Co. This can’t be. And I can’t stop eating. I’ve got to get out of this place before I will need a crane to lift me out.

“So I’ll drop Tripp off at the middle school and then drop you and Grandma at the high school,” Grandpa says as he forks another pancake off the platter.

“Why’s Grandma coming to the school with me?” I say, and put down my knife.

“She works at the school, so I always drop her off before I head to my work,” Grandpa says.

With pancake still in my mouth, I manage to choke out, “You both work? At your age?”

Aren’t grandparents required by law to be retired?

Grandpa slaps the table with his hand and grins at Grandma.

“Of course we have jobs,” he says. “We’re only seventy. Besides, I never want to retire.” And he forks another pancake off the platter, “Keeps my metabolism going.”

Grandma just stares at me as if I were a unicorn and not her granddaughter.

I try to explain.

“In New York, I know people who are forty and retired. The grandparents I know golf, play bridge, and have cocktails,” I say.

“Not us,” Grandma says. “We’ve had the same
jobs since we got married. Work is good for you. I can’t believe your mother’s never mentioned this. Actually, I can believe it,” she says, and looks down at her plate.

Tripp’s face twists and he gives me a look, similar to the one my dad often shoots me when I’ve overstepped some line. “No, Grandma, I knew that. Corrinne has a listening problem when it comes to topics about other people. I know that you do attendance at school, and Grandpa’s a mechanic and fixes farm stuff.”

Grandpa reaches across the table and puts his hand on my shoulder.

“Don’t worry,” Grandpa says. “Grandma promises that she won’t chaperone prom.”

No worries, I want to say. I won’t be here for prom. But I keep my mouth closed. I know better than to blab about my plan to find juice on my mom and exit the B.S. ASAP.

With the thought of Broken Spoke prom haunting me, I finish my pancakes. I’ve always been an emotional eater. There goes my diet.

Grandma forces me to walk into the school by myself.

“I know that you don’t want to be walked in like a toddler by your grandmother,” she says, and walks ahead of me.

Yes, yes, yes, I do, I think, but I keep quiet. You rode the subway alone at eleven. You once walked into a wine
shop in Brooklyn and bought two bottles of wine without being carded. You were fourteen. This is easy. You can handle this.

Outside, the high school looks rather generic: a typical three-story brick building with a football field and track out back. It’s nothing like my gated Upper East Side prep school with a park view and an interior courtyard. And at the door, metal detectors greet me. I am not sure what this
Dangerous Minds
metal detector gimmick is about. Maybe it’s a public school thing.

After the security guards search my oversize purse (backpacks are for losers), I scan the lockers. Here, one full-size locker is divided into three lockers: top, middle, and bottom. Even the lockers at public school are budget. I search for A15, the number that I got in the mail with my class schedule. Please, please don’t be a bottom locker. I wear way too many dresses to have a bottom locker. Of course, A15 is a bottom locker, and I have to squat to open it. Thank God there are no paparazzi in Broken Spoke.

My first class is Spanish I, which is just offensive. I should be in Latin III, but apparently the fine state of Texas has no appreciation for the ancient languages. The classroom number is 305, so I start the trek through the gigantic school to find it. By this point, kids are pouring into the school. There’re a bunch of high fives, shouting, and pushing. I keep my head down and try not to inhale
the vapors. The whole school smells like a cheap salon. The girls’ locks are curled, sprayed, and cementlike. I doubt even a tornado could move a single hair on their heads. And boys, not girls trying to channel Daisy Duke, are wearing cowboy boots. Nearly every guy has boots on, and you can hear them all click on the floor. It sounds like a subway taking off. This is Mars, and I am an alien from Earth. It’s the only explanation.

Room 305 is empty, so I take a seat in the back. My dad actually had the nerve to email me this morning:
Good luck, Corrinne. And remember: blank slate. You don’t have to be a note passer who sits in the back anymore.
At last year’s teacher-parent conferences, Ms. Havisham, the total sellout that she is, told my parents that I sit outside of “the zone.” This means that I don’t sit in the front-row spots where the students (read: total geeks) that get only A-pluses sit. Only Waverly manages to sit out of the zone and still maintain a 4.0.

As the class fills in, a few kids look at me strangely, but no one says anything. I guess at a school with a class size of four hundred, one new face isn’t that big of a deal. For a second, being anonymous does feel good. At my old school, new kids who were rejects at their previous schools would come and attempt to reinvent themselves as popular.
Reinventors,
we called them. It never really worked since someone’s cousin or friend from camp would tell
someone at my school how the new kid used to be a loser, so their reputation would follow them. And here I am at a new school in a new state, and I could totally reinvent myself because no one in Texas knows me. But why would I? I am awesome. Or at least, I was awesome.

“
Hola.
This is Spanish 1. If you are in the wrong classroom, or if you already speak
español
and are just trying to get an easy A, get out now,” the teacher, a good-looking, young Hispanic guy says.

“For those of you who don’t know me, I am Señor Luis. I am also Coach Luis, but only on the football field. I expect everyone here, even my players, to pull their own weight. No freebies just because you can toss the pigskin.”

Some jersey-wearing students groan.

“I am going to call roll,” he continues. “Please answer with,
‘Me llamo’
and your name. That means, ‘My name is.’”

I pay attention, dreading Señor Luis getting to the Cs. Repeating in my head over and over again,
Me llamo Corrinne. Me llamo Corrinne.
I hate speaking out loud in class. And now the first time I speak at this new school, it’s not even English.

“Corrinne Corcoran,” Señor Luis calls.

Quietly, I recite,
“Me llamo Corrinne.”
And I don’t know how it happens, but a bit of a New Yawk accent slips in, so it sounds like somebody from the Sopranos imitating a Mexican.

“Donde estás?”
asks the shaggy-haired brunette guy to my right with the green eyes who would be almost attractive if he shaved that five-o’clock shadow. Plus, he’s wearing a letter jacket even though the school is like one hundred degrees with the AC blasting.

“Excuse me?” I say.

“What Bubby is trying to say,” Señor Luis says, “is where are you from? And Bubby, you say it
‘De donde eres?’
”

I sigh. “Manhattan.”

Señor Luis looks a bit startled by this news. “Welcome,” he says slowly. “Actually,
bienvenidos
. We don’t get too many big-city girls in Broken Spoke.”

And Señor Luis gives me a heartthrob smile. At my old school, he’d be T.M.F.G., Total Material For Gossip, and I’m sure some student would try to seduce him. Wait…that’s one way I could get myself kicked out of Texas, but I really don’t want to be the subject of a Lifetime movie. At least not for that.

“Kitsy Kidd,” Señor Luis calls.

In the front row, a petite girl with massive blond curls (but ones that actually look natural, unlike the rest of the girls, with their ozone-destroying habits) responds,
“Me llamo Kitsy,”
with a Texan drawl.