Rock Bottom Girl

by Lucy Score

Fun seemed important and music. The music montages were when everyone got along.

“I’m not dressed to run,” he said, waving a hand over his pink checkered polo and pressed golf shorts. “Should’ve thought of that before you displayed the manners of an entitled toddler. Go forth and run, Floppy.” “Floppy?” He didn’t find it funny, but the rest of the class did. “You heard the lady,” Floyd said, clapping his hands. “Hit the court, kid. Blue line. No cutsies.” I rolled my eyes at the “Ooooooh!” that arose as Floppy kicked off his flipflops and sullenly jogged to the edge of the court.

Funny!!!! Teacher oops?

There was something nauseating about a hundred bodies simultaneously going through puberty in one room that already smelled like hot dogs and milk. I

“So far so good,” I said. “You look like a deer in headlights,” Bill offered. “I feel like a deer that’s been hit by a school bus,” I confessed. “It’ll be fine. Just make sure they know you see them.” Okay, that was new advice. “See them?” “Your attention is the best and worst thing you can give them. Either they need to know someone out there sees them. Or they need to know they’re being constantly monitored so they shouldn’t stuff that freshman in their locker.” “Were you the freshman in the locker?” “Sure was,” he said cheerfully. “I was the ‘waiting to be seen’ one.” Bill stuck his hands in his pockets and eyed a table of what must have been mostly basketball players. There wasn’t a student under six feet tall. “You graduated from here, right?” “Yeah. A thousand years ago.” “Think of this as a do-over,” he suggested. “Remember everything that you hated about high school and see if you can do anything about it from this side of things.”

I wasn’t a touchy-feely kind of person. But something had me reaching out and putting my hand on his shoulder. “Bill, that’s the best advice I’ve gotten since I came back.”

Ah, that industrial cleaner smell on the first day of school. Everything was clean, sanitized, and the air quality was high. There was a buzz in the building. Kids excited to catch up with friends. Teachers anxious for a regular paycheck. It would be all downhill from here.

The teaching of history was, traditionally, one of the most boring things ever invented. We white-washed our country’s doings, painted a bunch of white dudes as heroes, and swept everyone else’s good deeds under the rug of gender and race.

“You know that Thomas ‘All Men Are Created Equal’ Jefferson fathered six children with his slave, Sally Hemmings. But did you know that before President George Washington fought the British, he fought for the British? How about that he was in love with his best friend’s wife? Did you know that Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who launched the women’s rights movement, said some really racist crap?” I dumped the phone bin back on the desk I rarely sat at. “We’re going to learn real history this semester. If you know what really happened, who the real heroes are, then you can go be better Americans. Because maybe we’re not the greatest country in the world. But we’ve still got potential. Our strength comes from our diversity, our willingness to change, to fight inequality, to explode scientific advancement.”

This little exercise did more than get the students excited about history. It showed me who had friends. Who was left out. Who was willing to get creative and put some effort into the assignment.

“They’re basically animals, you know? Without us, they’d be not showering and wandering around naked just licking things. We’re goddamn superheroes.”

She brightened, and I looked around for the cartoon deer and birds that should have flocked to her. “Great! Follow me!” Andrea’s office was a cramped but cozy space with two armchairs in front of a desk that held an ancient computer and a chrysanthemum in a pot painted by some toddler artist. She immediately earned my trust by kicking off her heels at the door and slipping her feet into comfy slippers. “Do you try to get to know all the new faculty?” I asked, unpacking my lunch—a chopped Niçoise salad with lemon vinaigrette. After Tuesday night’s frozen fish sticks, I’d begged my parents to let me take over the grocery shopping and meal prep. For dinner, we were having marinated chicken breasts that were currently cooking away in the Crock-Pot Mom had never used and a new green bean recipe I’d found while I should have been studying soccer drills. “I do,” she said, pulling a foil-wrapped sandwich from her lunch bag. “And your mom is one of my good friends.” I paused, mixing the hard-boiled egg and tuna into the lettuce. I smelled a setup. “And my mom asked you to talk to me,” I guessed. Andrea smiled, and I blinked when she didn’t burst into a song. “Maybe. She’s been concerned about you for quite some time.” “Why ever would that be? Because I showed up on her doorstep unemployed, single, and homeless?” I took a big bite of salad. It tasted bitter on my tongue. “Actually, she was worried before that.” “When I was gainfully employed and in a steady, monogamous relationship?...

Yup!

She looked dejected, tired. Like someone who had been knocked down one too many times. I wanted to fix it. To work the kinks out of those slumped shoulders, tell her everything would work out. “What are you doing here?” she asked.

“Because sometimes it’s more about the journey.”

She comes after you because there’s no consequences. You don’t freak out on her. You don’t defend yourself. You just wilt like a pretty little flower.”