On the plane
11:14 a.m., August 10
[Note: This all began in May, so I’ll have to start there. This wouldn’t make any sense otherwise. Not that I plan to let anyone read this—ever—but if the tabloid parade of former Disney stars has taught us anything, it’s that stuff we mean to keep private can be our express ticket to internet infamy. And I can’t afford Miley’s PR team.]
“But aren’t there pirates in the Caribbean?” Shelby asked.
Shelby has been my best friend since fourth grade, but she’s not too concerned with the issues of our day. Which is not to say she’s dumb—this girl can balance chemical equations in her head faster than Mr. Murphy can write them out on the Smart Board—but current events aren’t her thing. She won’t even watch The Daily Show with me anymore because she could never tell when Trevor Noah was kidding. She would raise her hand in Civics and be all, “Well I happen to know that Mitch McConnell drinks puppy blood,” and then Sister Ann would give her detention. (I don’t know whose idea it was to let a nun teach Civics. As a rule, nuns aren’t much for free and open debate.)
Anyway, the closest thing to news Shelby watches now is Daily Pop on E!, so I wasn’t surprised by her question.
“There are no pirates,” I answered.
Shelby wasn’t convinced. “I know I just saw something about pirates on TV.”
“That was Pirates of the Caribbean.” We’d watched the movie at Shelby’s house because, thanks to my parents, we remain the only family on the planet without Disney+. Shelby’s parents are actually present, so they don’t have to ban perfectly unobjectionable media platforms to feel like they’re doing a good job. Although her mom can be a little weird about refined sugar.
“Oh, ri-ight,” she breathed, “with Orlando.” Her eyes glazed over and she was gone, off to Shelbyland, where circa 2003 Orlando Bloom was urging her to lay all her love on him on a Mediterranean beach. This Mamma Mia sequence is Shelby’s favorite fantasy, and other than the frequent recasting of the Dominic Cooper part, it hasn’t changed since she first adopted it in seventh grade. She’s been humming the song nonstop for, like, four years.
In this case, though, I thought Shelby might have miscast Orlando. He seems too dignified for that big, flipper-clad musical dance number.
I guess Shelby had that problem, too, because Orlando barely had time to belt out the first verse before she blinked and asked, “And you’re sure no pirates? Because that would be awesome.”
“Pretty sure,” I said. Although, she was right; that would be awesome.
Not real pirates, obviously, because real pirates were terrifically bad people. But Shelby and I binged Once Upon a Time last summer and, you know, I could really get behind a swashbuckling Killian Jones or two. Oh, and maybe an Errol Flynn. I watched an Errol Flynn movie with my grandma once and was much impressed. Errol swashbuckled at least as well as Hook and didn’t blame all his problems on a disembodied hand.
“Well, even without the pirates,” Shelby said, “I still don’t get why you’re so upset about this. I think moving to the British Virgin Islands for a year sounds cool.”
I stared. “How can you say that?”
She rolled her eyes. “Stop being so fear-of-changey for a second and think about it. It’s the Caribbean. Clear, blue water. Warm weather year-round. Palm trees. Frosty drinks. Not to mention the hot island boys.”
I snorted. “Great, then I’ll have Annapolis boys and island boys ignoring me.”
“Not true.” Shelby wagged her finger. “You get to start fresh with the island boys. They haven’t known you since forever. You’ll be new and exciting. I mean, who knows what you could do without all this baggage.”
“Hey,” I said, stung, “I’ve done plenty.”
Pfft. Baggage. I’ve been working since the first day of ninth grade to scrabble out a niche for us at school, and it hasn’t been easy. The rigidness of the social hierarchy at Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrows rivals that of the Catholic Church—and those crusties have been working on their flowchart for over two thousand years. You might, in fact, call OLPS “cliquish.” And there is nothing—nothing!—more fraught in such an environment than an extracliqueular existence.
Sure, Shelby and I have each other, but two measly people cannot populate a lunch table. So the successful completion of my sophomore year at Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrows—and by “successful” I mean “didn’t have to embrace social reject status and join Music Ministry”—had only been accomplished through painstaking strategy on my part. And I do mean painstaking. The odds had not been in my favor.
First of all, I am almost two years younger than everyone else in my grade. (Early August birthday + addiction to educational apps = permanent alienation from peers.) After Sister Brigid, the principal of the Lower School, made me skip third grade, I finally learned to lay off the ABCya! But the fact remains, I will be a fifteen-year-old junior for the entirety of the upcoming school year. And I’m not the kind of fifteen-year-old who can pass for sixteen, either. Seriously, I’m lucky to pass for twelve. I’m five-foot-one, skinny, and my hair is the same strawberry blonde it’s always been, which is a nice color for a five-year-old, but ten years later? I look like an overgrown American Girl doll. Plus, unlike most girls my age, I have not shared in the benefits of the whole hormones-in-the-chicken phenomenon, because my mom will only buy organic.
Another obstacle to my assimilation has been the very thing I admire most about Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrows, namely its high level of organization. Students are always accounted for, lunch breaks are staggered, hallways are monitored—it’s the Swiss watch of schools. But all this structure effectively rules out the time-honored method for avoiding social scrutiny: hiding out in the library. And if you can’t hide and you can’t fit in, it’s only a matter of time before you find yourself playing keyboard accompaniment to “Our God Is an Awesome God” during Friday mass.
After much deliberation, Shelby and I had come up with a new approach. No existing clique would have us (okay, they would have welcomed Shelby with open claws, but she says she’s not a joiner) and we were categorically unwilling to cry defeat. (Unwilling andunable. Apart from the fact neither of us plays an instrument, Shelby doesn’t even eat the cracker.) So we’d created an entirely new class of student: we are The Fixers.
All that stuff student council is supposed to do but doesn’t? That’s what we do. We got lunch catered by Moe’s. We carved funding for the drama club out of the engorged lacrosse team budget. We got an extra two minutes between classes added to the schedule (so that now it’s theoretically possible to stop for a pee without being marked tardy).
Some question our methods, but we are not the talking heads who read morning prayer over the PA and lift up glitter glue as their false idol. We are the behind-the-scenes masterminds who bring about real change. We are a necessary evil; popular nowhere, tolerated everywhere.
“I didn’t mean it that way,” Shelby said. “I like what we’ve got going, too. But … umm …” She picked at her thumbnail, which she only does when she’s thinking something she doesn’t want to say.
“What?”
She hesitated, then looked up at the ceiling. “The thing is, I remember what it’s like to be, you know, one of the in-crowd. I like how we are now better, but at least I got to make an informed choice. You never got to try out …” she shrugged apologetically but said it anyway, “normal.”
Her eyes dropped back to my face, gauging my reaction.
I gave her a reassuring smile. I mean, really, it isn’t news to me that I’m a total freak. But I did have to correct her on one point.
“Shelby. Come on. There is no way in this universe I could pass for a normal eleventh-grader. Anywhere.”
She pursed her lips. “You could if you wanted to.”
“No. Really. I couldn’t.”
Truly, I am the worst teenager ever. It’s like everything I do is too young or too old. I don’t listen to the right music, or watch the right shows, or laugh at the right jokes. Rule-breaking makes me nervous, learning makes me happy, and the endless gossip makes me want to impale myself on a tetherball pole. (I mean, really, why am I supposed to care about whatever nugget of hate speech Nicky Boucher dropped on her cross-country teammates this week? If they had any sense, they’d all just stay away from her like I do.)
“Well,” Shelby said, “I think you could at least fake it. With a little effort, you could probably convince them that you’re normal”—she waved her hand with a flourish—“for an American.”
Well with that kind of encouragement, how could I fail?
“Just don’t tell them how old you are,” she added.
“Uh-huh,” I said. “Well, how about we focus on this stuff first and maybe save ourselves the effort of planning Operation: Not a Freak?”
“Oh.” She blinked. “Sure. What are we looking for, again?”
A reasonable question. The Maryland Law Library is not one of our usual haunts, even though it’s only a short bike ride from my house. But I had a plan.
“We’re trying to find out if I can sue for change of legal guardianship.” I flipped through the index of the Maryland State Code, Annotated, searching for the words “minor” and “custody.”
“You mean, get some guardians other than your parents?”
“Exactly. If you can believe it, it’s perfectly legal for parents to force their children to leave the country of their birth. And I don’t have time to lobby our congressman or whatever. So I’m just going to replace my parents,” I explained.
Something I’d always secretly wanted to do. On a trial basis, of course. Just to see.
“Oh,” she said. Then, “Hmm.” She picked at her nail again.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing.”
“No, really. What?”
“Well,” the Machu Peach-U nail polish she’d applied that morning in Religion was peeling under her prolonged assault, “if your parents aren’t your guardians anymore, someone else’ll have to be, right?”
“Yeah …”
“Well, I was just wondering …”
“What? Just tell me!”
She gave a little huff. “Okay, well, how are you going to get someone to be a guardian to you?”
“Oh.” A point I hadn’t considered. I thought about it for a minute. “Maybe your parents?” I suggested.
Shelby gave me a pitying look and shook her head. “Not after the thing with our attic.”
“Your room feels much more spacious with the vaulted ceiling.”
“And our Wi-Fi mesh.”
“Hmm …”
“And the thing with the Historical Socie—”
“Alright! Fine,” I snapped.
Shelby’s parents aren’t the most organized people on the planet. I, on the other hand, have a certain talent for order and optimization. Unfortunately, Mr. and Mrs. Willett have never really appreciated my efforts on their behalf. And it’s totally not my fault that they bought a house without getting the ceiling joists inspected, but whatever. Moving on.
“If they didn’t have to assume legal responsibility for me, do you think your parents would let me stay with you for the year?”
“Oh.” Shelby looked away. “Umm. Mayyyybe.”
Good enough.
If I couldn’t get the state to intercede on my behalf, I would have to turn to a higher power. Luckily, Sister Philomena was in her office.
“Oh, Caitlin Davies. I thought I might see you today. Come right in.”
Her words were polite and welcoming, but I wasn’t fooled. Sister P is a lot like a polar bear, and not just because of the snowy white habits all the nuns in her Order wear. You know going into any encounter with Sister P that she’s dangerous, but you get so distracted by her serene face and competent manner that you don’t even realize she’s snuck around behind you. Then, before you know it, she’s rolled a boulder onto your head and squashed you flat, like an unwary seal.
Scary stuff.
I actually have a lot of respect for Sister Philomena. Upper School at OLPS starts in seventh grade, so I’ve had four years to observe her methods, and she’s impressed me. She runs a tight ship. She doesn’t take it very well when other people try to improve on her systems, though. She’s kind of a control freak that way.
It was that inner control freak that I was counting on today.
Sister P’s office is pretty small—it might actually have been a closet or something at one point, ...
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