Christina groans. “Seriously? You’re going with movie star?”
Jamie adds, “Yeah, and I bet most movie stars did go to college. Anyway, you can’t bet your future on something like ‘I wanna be a movie star.’”
“Okay, fine. How about being a plumber? Or like, a store manager? Your mom works the desk at Kaiser. What’s wrong with that? Why you gotta be such a hater?”
“No one’s being a hater,” Arturo says. “We’re just saying there’s more opportunities.”
“As long as white and Asian people don’t take them all,” says Christina, and for a moment, I forget to breathe.
“Hey, babe, back off,” says Arturo. “Be nice. Sana, don’t listen to her. She doesn’t mean it personally. She’s just pissed because Lowell made her get three references to work in the student store, and she only makes the Asian and white kids get one.”
I look at Jamie, who nods. “It’s true.”
“Oh. That sucks.”
“Yep,” Christina replies grimly. I can’t say that I blame Mrs. Lowell for being reluctant to hire Christina though. She doesn’t seem like she’d be very friendly to customers.
“Well, see you at practice,” I say to Jamie.
“’Bye,” say Christina, Arturo, and JJ together. Arturo and JJ turn their attention back to the group. But Christina wraps herself in Arturo’s arms and watches me leave. I can feel her eyes boring holes into my back as I walk away.
“What were you doing with those guys?” asks Reggie when I reach my friends. They’re peeking over their shoulders at Jamie and her friends.
“Yeah, since when do you hang out with the Mexican kids?” says Elaine.
“Oh. Uh, Jamie was just returning a book she borrowed from me after practice yesterday. For um, English.”
“Oh, right. She’s in a bunch of my classes. She’s cool.”
“Yeah, but her friends hate me, I think. Especially that girl, Christina.”
Hanh glances over. “Yeah, I know her. She was in my P.E. class last year. She’s a bitch.”
“She’s pissed because Lowell made her get three references to work in the school store. She says Lowell’s racist.”
“She should have to get extra references. She was tardy to P.E. all the time. Plus, I heard she got suspended in middle school for fighting,” says Hanh.
The five-minute bell rings, and we start walking to class. “You shouldn’t have to get extra references for screwing up in middle school,” Reggie protests. “And I heard that fight was about JJ, before he got tall. Like some bigger dude was picking on him.”
“Where’d you hear that?”
“I sat next to JJ’s cousin in chorus freshman year.”
“Well, I don’t care. That’s no excuse. And anyway, I told you she was tardy a lot. Like literally every day.”
“Janet works at the store, and she’s late a lot,” Elaine says. “She only had to have one reference.”
“Everyone knows Lowell totally lets kids off the hook if they suck up to her,” says Reggie. “I bet she said something about the tardies to that Christina girl and Christina wouldn’t play, and now Lowell’s punishing her for it.”
“That doesn’t seem fair, though,” says Elaine doubtfully.
Hanh shakes her head. “It doesn’t matter. If she had a lot of tardies and a bad discipline record, she should’ve sucked up to Lowell. She knows the rules. It’s her own fault if she doesn’t want to play by them. All those Mexican kids come in with this attitude like people are so racist and Asian kids are such suck-ups. Well, then, suck the fuck up! Stop complaining.”
I can’t decide who’s right. On the one hand, it’s true that school is a big game, and it’s not that hard to play along. Still. It seems like Hanh’s being pretty harsh. Because it’s also true that the game isn’t always fair.
I’m still thinking about this when we reach my locker. There’s a tiny corner of paper sticking out of the vent, and when I open the door, I see a folded note inside. I tuck it into my backpack before the girls see it. When I open it during Mr. Green’s homework review, my breath catches in my throat, and trig class melts away. It’s a handwritten copy of a poem: “My Garden—like the Beach—” by Emily Dickinson. It’s signed, “Your nerdy friend, Jamie.”
She must’ve put it there before I even saw her with her friends. Okay. Calm down. Maybe I’m reading too much into this. Maybe it’s just a reference to the sea glass and pearls in my lacquer box. Purely surface. No metaphor. Maybe she’s just saying she wants to be friends.
Or maybe it’s something else.
I spend the rest of the day pulling the poem out and reading it whenever I can. When I get home, I take the photo of Trish out of my red lacquer box, and replace it with Jamie’s note. After I do my poetry journal entry about “My Garden—like the Beach—,” I copy it, plus “I’m Nobody! Who are you?” into another, brand-new notebook. Then I scour the internet for a good poem for Jamie.
“In the Morning in Morocco” by Mary K. Stillwell is perfect. It’s about waking up in an exotic, dreamy place (Morocco) after having traveled from Omaha. In the beginning of the poem, the speaker seems to think she’s still in Omaha, just as she’s waking up. The light is coming in through the cracks of her window shade, and it’s like the dream is seeping into reality, or maybe it’s the other way around.
So. Page One of the new notebook: “I’m Nobody! Who are you?”
Page Two: “My Garden—like the Beach—”
Page Three: “In the Morning in Morocco”
I’m going to give the notebook to Jamie after practice tomorrow afternoon. I hope she likes it. I hope she makes a Page Four.
POETRY JOURNAL, HONORS AMERICAN LITERATURE
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 10
“My Garden—like the Beach—”
by Emily Dickinson
A friend of mine gave me this poem today. I’m not sure what it’s really about, or what it means. There’s some kind of comparison between a garden, the beach, the sea, and summer. Maybe having a garden and going to the beach are both associated with summer? Maybe the beach and summertime are both times/places where you can be free? The beach is wild nature and the garden is tamed nature?
The last part is my favorite: “the Pearls / She fetches—such as Me.” Maybe since pearls are a treasure, the speaker, “Me,” is also a treasure. Maybe the speaker is offering herself like a pearl, to be someone’s treasure.
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