Read Online The Opposite of Everyone: A Novel by Joshilyn Jackson - Free Book Online
Authors: Joshilyn Jackson
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either. At eleven, I am breastless and storky-legged, doughy in the middle. I have a huge outbreak of stress pimples on my forehead.
My second week there, a couple of seventh-grade white girls trap me in the bathroom.
“What are you, anyways?” the first one asks me. I don’t answer. I look down, wait for them to get bored and go away. “Are you black?”
The other answers for me. “She doesn’t seem that black.”
I try to step sideways for the exit, and they jostle me back. They use their shoulders. When I try to bolt sideways, the first one catches me and shoves me, her hands sinking in my squashy belly.
“I know one thing, she’s a Fatty-Fatty Ass-Fat,” she tells her friend.
Her friend repeats it, laughing. “Fatty-Fatty Ass-Fat! That’s what we can call her.”
The push and the injustice leave me breathless. These girls own the third-best lunch table, and one of them has a boyfriend. The meanest wears a pair of real Guess jeans, and she has pretty hair and hardly any ass at all, just a narrow slice where her slim legs meet.
They step in closer, crowding me into the corner by the stalls. The meanest had an egg for breakfast, hours ago; I can smell the salt and rot of it behind her teeth.
I feel something—someone—new, rising to my surface. It is not a Paula I have been before, but I find it inside me anyway, both new and already mine.
I’ve been a lot of things, but until Asheville, I’ve been them all in tandem with my mother. We’ve been tambourine players and yoga teachers and Ren Faire workers. We were vegans with Eddie, then spent the next winter squatting in Tick’s deer blind. We’ve read palms and tarot on the street near Anthony’s tiny New Orleans apartment. At the Asheville hippie school, away from her, I was somehow all those incarnations—an amalgamated girl who felt like me.
This is different.
“Are you some kind of ching-chong thing?” the meanest says, making more red rise up beneath my copper skin.
In fight or flight, Kai has always chosen for us, and my mother is made out of wings.
I don’t think that I am like her—not in this way. My ears are cocked inward to hear a rushing sound like churning water, a violent, foamy washing away to something bedrock and essential.
“Let me by,” I tell the meanest. I’ve decided it’s the last thing I will tell her.
When she says, “Not until you tell us what you are,” and shoves me back against the stall, my hand is already a fist. I rear it back and punch it toward her belly, and it feels good. I like when it connects. I like to see her fold and puke onto her shoes. I like the way her friend’s face blanches right before she runs to get a teacher.
These two girls are white honor students who’ve been in this county since first grade. I am new, and racially confusing, and I didn’t do well on the Monday fractions quiz. I’m the one who gets suspended.
Now I lie in my stinking, bug-sprayed bed, thrashing and snotting, and I’m not sure where the fight-y girl has gone. I’m not even sure that she was more than panic and adrenaline. I weep and kick like a ruined infant until Kai comes and pulls my head into her lap. She runs her fingers gentle through my hair.
My body stays in a stiff curl, unyielding. “I hate it here.” It’s not the first time I’ve said this. My face is slick from weeping.
“You can’t get into fights,” Kai says.
I didn’t mean to. They started it and pushed at me and pushed me. I only punched a girl who deeply needed punching. “I hate that school.”
Kai keeps petting my hair with soothe-y fingers. “You haven’t given it much of a chance. Dwayne did some things to get you in, babe. It’s what you said you wanted.”
“I hate it there,” I say. “And they hate me.”
I’m on that whole clique’s radar, now. Next week, I’ll have fifty watery-eyed rednecks blinking their pink-rimmed lids at me, waiting for a chance to smash me into paste. Maybe I’ll be that fight-y
My second week there, a couple of seventh-grade white girls trap me in the bathroom.
“What are you, anyways?” the first one asks me. I don’t answer. I look down, wait for them to get bored and go away. “Are you black?”
The other answers for me. “She doesn’t seem that black.”
I try to step sideways for the exit, and they jostle me back. They use their shoulders. When I try to bolt sideways, the first one catches me and shoves me, her hands sinking in my squashy belly.
“I know one thing, she’s a Fatty-Fatty Ass-Fat,” she tells her friend.
Her friend repeats it, laughing. “Fatty-Fatty Ass-Fat! That’s what we can call her.”
The push and the injustice leave me breathless. These girls own the third-best lunch table, and one of them has a boyfriend. The meanest wears a pair of real Guess jeans, and she has pretty hair and hardly any ass at all, just a narrow slice where her slim legs meet.
They step in closer, crowding me into the corner by the stalls. The meanest had an egg for breakfast, hours ago; I can smell the salt and rot of it behind her teeth.
I feel something—someone—new, rising to my surface. It is not a Paula I have been before, but I find it inside me anyway, both new and already mine.
I’ve been a lot of things, but until Asheville, I’ve been them all in tandem with my mother. We’ve been tambourine players and yoga teachers and Ren Faire workers. We were vegans with Eddie, then spent the next winter squatting in Tick’s deer blind. We’ve read palms and tarot on the street near Anthony’s tiny New Orleans apartment. At the Asheville hippie school, away from her, I was somehow all those incarnations—an amalgamated girl who felt like me.
This is different.
“Are you some kind of ching-chong thing?” the meanest says, making more red rise up beneath my copper skin.
In fight or flight, Kai has always chosen for us, and my mother is made out of wings.
I don’t think that I am like her—not in this way. My ears are cocked inward to hear a rushing sound like churning water, a violent, foamy washing away to something bedrock and essential.
“Let me by,” I tell the meanest. I’ve decided it’s the last thing I will tell her.
When she says, “Not until you tell us what you are,” and shoves me back against the stall, my hand is already a fist. I rear it back and punch it toward her belly, and it feels good. I like when it connects. I like to see her fold and puke onto her shoes. I like the way her friend’s face blanches right before she runs to get a teacher.
These two girls are white honor students who’ve been in this county since first grade. I am new, and racially confusing, and I didn’t do well on the Monday fractions quiz. I’m the one who gets suspended.
Now I lie in my stinking, bug-sprayed bed, thrashing and snotting, and I’m not sure where the fight-y girl has gone. I’m not even sure that she was more than panic and adrenaline. I weep and kick like a ruined infant until Kai comes and pulls my head into her lap. She runs her fingers gentle through my hair.
My body stays in a stiff curl, unyielding. “I hate it here.” It’s not the first time I’ve said this. My face is slick from weeping.
“You can’t get into fights,” Kai says.
I didn’t mean to. They started it and pushed at me and pushed me. I only punched a girl who deeply needed punching. “I hate that school.”
Kai keeps petting my hair with soothe-y fingers. “You haven’t given it much of a chance. Dwayne did some things to get you in, babe. It’s what you said you wanted.”
“I hate it there,” I say. “And they hate me.”
I’m on that whole clique’s radar, now. Next week, I’ll have fifty watery-eyed rednecks blinking their pink-rimmed lids at me, waiting for a chance to smash me into paste. Maybe I’ll be that fight-y
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