LEAH
by J.M. Reep
First published © 1996
Revised Edition © 2009
ISBN 978-0-557-03818-3
Cover image: Girl Reading Book by Laura Loe
ONE
LEAH NELLS sat silently in the passenger seat of the car while Mrs. Nells navigated through the sleepy suburban neighborhood. With one hand on the steering wheel and a list of addresses in the other, Mrs. Nells checked the addresses against the numbers on the houses of the shady street, searching for one house in particular. This morning, mother and daughter were on a tour of local garage sales, and as their second hour of driving and shopping came to an end, Leah already felt exhausted. She wished she were back home in her bedroom, but with only one chapter left before she finished the geography book that her mother bought for her, along with several other books, at the start of the summer vacation, Leah was almost out of reading material and needed to go on this shopping trip.
She had already found four new books to read this morning. While her mother looked for the next house on her list, Leah looked at the spines of her new books and read the titles silently to herself: The Little Book of Earthquakes and Volcanoes, The Biomechanics of Insect Flight, Attracting Birds to Your Backyard, and The Social Construction of the Ocean. All of the books were hundreds of pages long. Some had pictures; others hardly had any at all. The bird book had the most pictures, and Leah was beginning to regret choosing it. Still, it was over 300 pages long, and it had only cost her mother forty cents. Leah decided she would read it first just to get it out of the way. She had found all of these books at the first garage sale that she and her mother had visited. Since that first garage sale, though, she hadn't had any luck finding books that appealed to her.
When they finally reached their destination--the next address on her mother's list--Mrs. Nells parked the car against the curb two houses down the street from the garage sale. Leah started to feel nervous. She could see a lot of people crowded on the driveway and in the garage. Book shopping was one of the very few things that could draw Leah out of her house on a Saturday morning, but she didn't like the crowds that she encountered. Mingling with so many strangers, and fearing the possibility that she might run into someone she knew--someone from school, was agony for her.
"Wow, this looks like the biggest garage sale we've seen all morning," Mrs. Nells said, excited. "I bet you'll find a book here." Leah didn't share her mother's enthusiasm. No book could compensate for the torture she was about to experience.
Still, she didn't say anything as she and her mother left the car and walked towards the house. Mrs. Nells rarely bought anything for herself at these garage sales--the only money she had spent this morning was for Leah's new books--but she did enjoy browsing. "You never know what you might find," Leah once heard her remark to Mr. Nells who sometimes teased them both for shopping at garage sales. Leah followed timidly behind her mother, her eyes searching the small crowd ahead of her to see if there were any faces that she recognized. There weren't; in fact, she could only see one other child--a small boy, six or seven years of age, holding a plastic toy gun in his hand and launching surprise attacks against imaginary foes in the front yard of the house. Leah pretended not to notice him, and rallying as much courage as she could, she followed her mother inside the garage and began looking for books.
She found some, but they weren't anything that interested her. Most were once-read romance novels, with a few horror novels thrown in for good measure. Unwilling to believe that a garage sale of this size wouldn't have any of the books that she liked to read, she spent a moment browsing the other tables making sure she hadn't missed anything. The other tables were littered with clothing that was long out of style, old kitchen appliances that just barely still worked, and little knick-knacks of all sorts. There were no more books, so Leah stood right outside the garage and waited for her mother to finish browsing. A sale this large meant her mother might take a while, so Leah resigned herself to a long wait and turned her head, and her attention, to the sky as she stood on the driveway.
It was a sunny August day. The air was hot but breezy. The beach would be open on a day like this. The start of school was a little more than a week away, and Leah imagined that many of her classmates were at the beach, with hundreds of other people, enjoying what remained of their summer vacation. Leah was probably the only one spending her Saturday visiting garage sales. As bad as this experience was, at least she wasn't at the beach. She had been there before, and she knew how stressful it could be.
Leah's mind wandered, and she nearly forgot where she was. She didn't notice when an old woman, with a vase in her hand, approached from the right and asked, "Are you working here?" Leah snapped back into reality and before she could even begin to think of how to respond, the old woman motioned towards one of the tables in the garage and explained, "I found this vase on the table over there, but it doesn't have a price on it. Do you know how much it is?"
Leah struggled to reply, but all she could offer was an expression of confusion and alarm on her face. The old woman seemed to understand, though. "Oh, I guess you don't know," she said. "I'm sorry, I thought perhaps you lived here." The old woman turned and walked away.
Leah decided to move farther from the house so that no one else would be tempted to speak to her, but as she turned towards the street she was suddenly startled when the little boy with the toy gun jumped out from behind the hedge and attacked. Having vanquished all of his invisible enemies, he was moving on to those with more substance. He aimed his gun at Leah and pulled the trigger twice. The gun made a rattling sound, but apparently that wasn't the sound the boy wanted to hear so he sputtered, "Thd-thd-thd-thd-krhhh!" and exclaimed, "I shot you! You're dead!"
Leah didn't know what to do. She'd almost rather be locked in conversation with the old woman than be stuck trying to convince this boy she was still very much alive and not interested in playing his game. Fortunately, before Leah could think of something to say to get away from him, she was rescued by the boy's mother who came up from behind Leah and intervened. She grabbed the toy gun and said sharply to her son, "Give me that! This doesn't belong to you! And stop bothering people!"
The woman took the gun and returned it to the nearest table. The boy ran after her, crying and begging her to buy the gun for him. Meanwhile, Leah had had enough of this awful garage sale, so she walked back to her mother's car.
She found the doors locked, so she sat down on the curb and waited. A few minutes passed and Leah spent them in a comfortable silence, her eyes glancing around at the cars parked in the street; the tall oak trees that loomed above them, shading them from the sun; and beyond the trees, the other houses. She realized that people lived in those houses--they were probably there even now. She thought she was alone, but as was usually the case, she was surrounded by people. Bashfully, her eyes drifted slowly downwards until she was staring at the pavement under her feet. There, she saw an ant, black and tiny, exploring the ground and searching for food. Leah watched it crawl past the bits of gravel, which to its perspective, must have looked like enormous boulders. She wondered if the hot asphalt ever burned its tiny feet, and she wondered if the ant was even aware of her. The poor creature's only purpose was to find food for the rest of the colony, and as far as it was concerned, Leah was probably nothing more than a feature of its landscape, like a mountain that had always been there, or a cloud drifting past--enormous but barely worth noticing. And Leah realized that if she had not sat down here at this curb, she would never have been aware of the tiny life so close to her feet. Leah knew from books she had read in the past that the ant was searching for food in the form of crumbs or leaves or other dead bugs. Looking around, Leah didn't see anything that the ant might eat, but the ant continued searching, as it did everyday, struggling on alone.
Leah heard footsteps approaching from behind. She turned around and saw her mother, with a smile on her face but empty-handed as usual. Mrs. Nells watched as Leah stood up and waited for her mother to unlock the car doors.
"There were a lot of books in there--didn't you see anything that you liked?" Mrs. Nells asked as they got into the car.
Leah shook her head no and fastened her seatbelt.
"Well, we've got one more stop left," Mrs. Nells remarked, looking at the list of addresses she had compiled from the newspaper earlier that morning. She didn't always know where the streets were, and often she had to ask Leah to pull an old map of the city out of the glove compartment to find out where they were going--and even then their search could be difficult. This morning, they had spent as much time driving around the city as they had spent at the garage sales themselves.
But Mrs. Nells recognized the name of the last street on her list, so their trip didn't take long. When they arrived, they found a much smaller garage sale than any of the others they had visited that morning. There were two tables set up on the driveway of the house, and only a few customers were browsing. The small size of the garage sale was discouraging to Leah who wondered if it was even worth the trouble to get out of the car. Surely, there wouldn't be any books here that she'd want. But Mrs. Nells decided to look. She turned off the car and got out, and Leah followed her.
As they walked up the driveway, they passed the owner of the house: a sleepy-looking middle-aged woman sitting in a lawn chair on the driveway who quietly and indifferently examined her newest customers as they approached. Mrs. Nells said hello, but the woman just nodded her head. Leah tried to avoid eye contact.
To her surprise, Leah did find some books, and they weren't the worthless novels that she saw at the last garage sale. She was surprised to find one book that was just what she was looking for. It was an old textbook dating from the 1970s titled Astronomy, the Evolving Universe. There were some charts and pictures in the book, but Leah didn't understand most of them. The book looked like a good buy. She presented it to her mother, who was browsing through a rack of old clothes. Leah tapped her mother on the arm to get her attention and then showed her the title of the book.
Mrs. Nells looked at the title, and she looked at the price. She said, "Only fifty cents? OK. Do you want anything else?"
Leah shook her head no.
"All right." Mrs. Nells reached into her purse and found two quarters. She handed them to her daughter and said, "You go ahead and buy it. I'll wait for you in the car."
Mrs. Nells was gone before Leah had a chance to react. When she finally realized that her mother expected her to buy the book herself, she almost panicked. As she watched her mother walk away, she wondered what she should do. Leah looked at the woman sitting in the lawn chair. The woman was staring dully into space, obviously wishing she were elsewhere. Leah wished she were somewhere else, too. Why didn't her mother buy the book herself just as she had bought all the other books that morning? Leah wanted the book, but when she looked again at the woman in the lawn chair, she changed her mind. With one last glance at the astronomy book, she set it down on the table where she found it and started walking away. As she passed the woman in the lawn chair, Leah saw her suddenly come to life and ask, "Did you find anything you wanted?" Leah just shook her head no and hurried back to the car.
Mrs. Nells had already unlocked the doors when she saw her daughter, empty-handed, on her way back. Mrs. Nells wasn't surprised by what happened, but she was certainly disappointed. When they were both inside the car, she held out her palm without saying a word, and Leah returned the two quarters to her. Leah could sense her mother's disappointment as Mrs. Nells placed the two quarters back in her purse.
The engine was started, but the car didn't move. Mother and daughter sat uncomfortably in their seats, staring straight ahead. At last, Mrs. Nells broke the awful silence: "It's the easiest thing in the world, Leah. You hand the woman the money, she thanks you, you take your book and go on your way. You are fourteen years old--you're about to start high school in less than two weeks for goodness' sake--yet you can't even buy a book at a garage sale like any other girl your age. I can't understand what's wrong with you!"
Leah didn't reply. She just stared out the window and felt ashamed. Her excitement over her new books was spoiled by this sudden failure to live up to what her mother expected of her. She regretted disappointing her mother once again, and she wished they had never gone on this shopping trip. Leah sat silently as they drove home. She didn't look at her mother, and her mother didn't look at her.
TWO
THE FOLLOWING Monday afternoon found Leah in her bedroom engaged in her favorite activity: reading. She lay on her bed with soft pillows propped up behind her as she read one of the books that her mother bought for her during last weekend's garage sale trip: Attracting Birds to Your Backyard. It was the book with lots of pictures in it. Leah thought she could finish it quickly, but it was proving to be a much longer book than she expected. She had already devoted several hours to reading it, but she still wasn't even a quarter of the way through.
That was all right, though. She wasn't a speed-reader and she wasn't in any hurry to finish the book. She knew that the faster she read, the sooner she would have to go shopping for more books, and as Saturday morning had proved once again, that was never a pleasant experience. Visiting strange places, meeting new people, feeling the pressure that her mother placed upon her to be sociable--none of these were things that Leah enjoyed. So as she sat on her bed, she read slowly, at her own pace, taking a break once in a while to let her imagination wander randomly from one thought to the next.
Given her choice of reading material: topics in science or economics or abstract art, one might expect Leah to be smarter than other girls her age, but that wasn't the case. Sometimes she might learn something while she read, but when that happened, it was by accident rather than by design, and many of her reading choices were a result of chance, dependent upon what books were available at a garage sale or a book fair. She was just as likely to read a book about human physiology as she was to read a book about metaphysics. Sometimes, she might even open up a volume of her parents' old encyclopedia and read at random from the Js or the Ts. But whatever Leah read, it wasn't for the sake of learning or entertainment. She read to keep herself distracted, to fill the hours that she spent in quiet isolation, whether here in her bedroom or at school.
She preferred to read non-fiction books--books that were dense, impersonal, and mostly uninteresting. She never read novels, except when assigned to read one for school, because when she read about lively characters and their exciting adventures, she couldn't help but contrast their stories with her own quiet life. Novels only reminded her of how different she was from other people. Characters in novels liked to talk, they had lots of friends, and they did things--simple things--like go shopping at a garage sale without any worries at all. Leah couldn't relate to them; their lives were not like hers. So she read books like Attracting Birds to Your Backyard because these books didn't remind her that she was weird. These books made her feel comfortable, normal. While the real birds in the trees outside might sing, the pictures of birds in her book were as silent as Leah herself.
She looked up for a moment and glanced at the clock sitting on her desk on the other side of the room. The red digital numbers told her the time was 4:43. It didn't feel like it was that late in the afternoon; the day had passed quickly. It was the middle of August, though, and every day passed quickly as the start of the new school year approached. Leah remembered that today she was exactly one week away from her first day of high school, and the very thought of where she would be in seven days caused a nervous tingle in her stomach. High school! Last Wednesday, Leah received her official schedule of classes for her freshman year online, but it wasn't so much the idea of new teachers and harder classes that worried her--although those things did worry her a little--no, what really scared her were all of the new people that she would meet. Her new high school would be so much bigger than her middle school had been, and the thought of being surrounded by so many new faces was almost too much for her nerves to handle. She took a deep breath, tried to forget what the future had in store for her, and went back to reading her book, but after a few minutes she found that she had lost interest in the birds on the page. She closed her book and set it down beside her as she sat up on her bed and looked around at the blank walls of her bedroom.
Although Leah had lived in this bedroom for most of her life, there was still an unusual emptiness about it. In terms of furniture, she had the basics. There was a bed, of course, and a bureau close to her bathroom door on the wall perpendicular to her bed. On top of the bureau was a large mirror. Leah rarely made use of it, and the fact that the mirror was a part of the bureau was the only reason why it was there at all. On the opposite side of the room from Leah's bed was her desk. She used this only for homework and studying. In the past, she had tried to read her books there, but sitting at a desk felt too formal and too uncomfortable. Her bed was a much better place to read. Now that it was summer, the only objects to be found on her desk were a lamp and her alarm clock. To the right of the desk was a door that opened to the hallway, and to the left of the desk was her closet. Against the fourth wall of the room was a bookcase that Mr. Nells bought for her a year and a half ago to store Leah's ever-growing collection of books. It was made out of wood and had four shelves. Two of the shelves were filled completely, and a third was only partially filled.
The bookcase was Leah's favorite part of her room. Sometimes, instead of reading, she would just sit on the floor and stare at the books. The bookcase might not have had much significance for anyone else who saw it, but for Leah it served as a kind of record of her life with each book representing a particular span of time. Leah kept the books arranged in the order in which she had read them so that they functioned as a sort of calendar, marking the passage of time for the last two or three years. Leah measured her life in pages instead of minutes, in chapters instead of days, and in volumes instead of months. The empty space on the third and fourth shelves of her bookcase represented the future, the unknown, the unread books that were to come. The clock on Leah's desk kept one form of time, and Leah's books kept another.
On one side of Leah's bed was a single, large window. On sunny, summer days like this, sunlight provided Leah's room with all the illumination she needed to read. The view from the window was of the front yard of her house. Since her bedroom was on the second story, she had a good view of the street and the other houses, but Leah usually didn't pay attention to what was happening outside. She was more interested in the birds in her book than those outside her window.
Besides her furniture, the only other items worth mentioning in the sparsely decorated room were a number of pictures Leah had drawn in her elementary and middle school art classes. These pictures were the sum of the decorations on the walls and they were tacked neatly above her desk. The pictures really weren't very good--Leah didn't consider herself an artist--but long ago, Leah's mother had put them there after convincing her daughter that they should be displayed. At the time, Leah felt proud of them, too, and she even helped her mother tack them to the wall, but increasingly, they were becoming a source of embarrassment. She had drawn the pictures so long ago, when she was just a child. Leah didn't think the pictures belonged on the wall of a fourteen-year-old girl. Still, Leah didn't remove them. Whether because of sentimentality or procrastination, the pictures remained tacked to the wall.
The pictures, though, didn't represent a phase of Leah's life when she was any happier or livelier than she was now. Leah had always been shy. Before she was even old enough to walk, she would enter fits of panic and tearful screams whenever a stranger came near. When she was older and her parents took her out in public, she would cling desperately to them, holding their hands and hiding behind her parents' legs when she was introduced to another child.
Her parents believed that Leah would eventually grow out of her shyness, that she would make friends and lead a normal life just like any other healthy little girl. But she didn't. Eventually, the fits of panic stopped, but in their place came silence. Leah almost never spoke to anyone, whether children or adults, even when they spoke to her directly. Her parents weren't sure whether her silence was due to her not knowing what to say to people or if there was some sort of refusal on Leah's part to engage the world. While other children played with one another, Leah was perfectly content to be by herself. When she played with dolls, she never spoke to them and never pretended that they were speaking to each other.
Leah's parents had hoped that school and its social environment would be the thing that would draw Leah out of her shell. When Mrs. Nells dropped her daughter off for the first day of school, Leah cried and begged her mother not to leave her, and it broke Mrs. Nells' heart, but she knew that this was a necessary step in her daughter's development. School would be good for her. But while the crying and the pleading eventually stopped, so too did Leah's dependence on her parents. As she grew older, the intimacy that a child shares with her parents was lost. Leah spoke to them less and less until finally they were like strangers. Her parents didn't understand her and she didn't understand them.
Her teachers did what they could to help Leah socialize, but with thirty other students in a class to deal with, they couldn't do much. In fact, young Leah Nells was often an oasis of silence and tranquility in a sometimes noisy and chaotic elementary school class. And while Leah was never the smartest girl in her class, her grades were good enough that she didn't warrant special attention from her teachers or her school. She was just an average student with an unusual personality.
Her classmates saw it differently, though. When a teacher asked Leah a question during class, it always took Leah by surprise because she never raised her hand to volunteer an answer. When called upon, Leah would reply with a blank stare, and she would say nothing. When her classmates spoke to her, she rarely said anything in response. This gave them the impression that she was dumb in every sense of the word, and since she seemed to want to be left alone, that's what happened.
Isolated within her own little world, Leah could still compare herself to the children around her and tell that she was different from them. She knew that she lacked the compulsion and the urge to speak that her classmates all seemed to possess. She didn't feel any need to speak to anyone, to tell them about herself, or to share her ideas and feelings. She didn't have any desire to make friends or enter into the complex web of relationships within which the rest of her classmates entangled themselves. But she knew that she was different, and she quickly learned that being different was not something to be proud of. It was a reason to feel ashamed. It was something that needed to be fixed because it meant that she was defective in some way, that she wasn't as good as the other children and could never be as successful as them. And she knew, as her parents often reminded her, that the day was coming when she would be an adult and would have to face challenges and assume responsibilities that she wasn't yet ready for.
Leah's daydreaming was interrupted by the sound of rumbling downstairs. She looked at the clock across the room and saw that the time was now 5:15. She got up from the bed and looked out the window to see her mother's car on the driveway as the driver waited for the garage door to open.
Leah wasn't sure what she should do. Often, when her parents came home from work, she would go downstairs to greet them in her own silent way. She wanted to do that today, but she was hesitant. Ever since their garage sale trip last Saturday, her mother had been testy. Last week, Leah overheard her mother complain to her father about "too much stress at work," but Leah also knew that her mother was still upset about Leah's failure at the garage sale. Failure like that always put her mother in a bad mood. Leah decided to stay in her bedroom unless her mother called her to come downstairs. When she heard Mrs. Nells enter the house, Leah stood still and listened, but her mother did not call her name. After a few minutes of waiting, Leah sat back down on her bed and continued reading. Only three pages remained in the chapter she was reading, so she read those pages and then set her book aside.
As she finished the chapter, she heard the sound of her father's car pulling into the garage. A moment later, a car door was shut and the garage door was closed. She heard Mr. Nells enter the house and she could just barely hear the muted voices of her parents as they greeted each other. Leah was still curious to know what her mother's mood was, but from her bedroom, upstairs, she couldn't hear what her parents were saying. She got up from her bed, placed her book on the top of the bookcase, and went to the door of her room. She opened it quietly and went out into the hall, standing on the landing at the top of the stairs. From here, she could listen to her parents' conversation, and right away she could hear the hostility in one of the voices. She sat down on the top step and listened.
"--but Scott said he wasn't sure," Mrs. Nells said bitterly. "All he knew was that they weren't pleased with it. It really makes me mad. Scott and I worked hard on that report for two months, but just because the numbers weren't what the idiots in the boardroom wanted, we get the blame. 'Kill the messenger'--isn't that the expression? You know, if they don't fire me, I'll probably quit."
"Well," Mr. Nells said sympathetically, "if they fire you, it will be their loss. If those people don't have the courage to face the reality of their situation, then maybe you shouldn't be working for them--but I don't think they'll fire you."
"I know, but it just makes me so mad!" Mrs. Nells said. "And you know what else? Remember last month when I told you they gave a five percent raise to all the senior executives?"
"Yeah."
"Well, according to our figures, the company couldn't afford those raises to so many people. But of course nobody wants their raise yanked away from them, so they're planning to solve the problem by eliminating a few low-level positions. They're gonna fire hardworking people--the very people who are keeping the company in business--just so they can make a few more thousands of dollars a year. It's insane!"
"Well, you'll be safe," Mr. Nells said, trying his best to comfort his wife. "If they fire you, they'll be firing the only person in the company with any common sense. That's a valuable commodity nowadays."
"Not in that company," Mrs. Nells grumbled.
There was a momentary silence; then Mrs. Nells said something that Leah couldn't quite make out. Mr. Nells replied, "Why don't you go lie down and let me and Leah fix dinner. Where is she anyway?" He called out, "Leah!"
At the mention of her name, Leah stood up and started to go downstairs, but she stopped when her mother said, "No, I'm OK. Cooking helps me take my mind off things, and that's what I need right now. And leave Leah in her room. I don't want to see her right now."
"Why not?"
"I'm still upset with her."
Leah sat back down on the stairs.
"Because of what happened on Saturday?" Mr. Nells asked.
"Partly. I know it's not the first time she's behaved like that, and it sure won't be the last time, but I just hate it when she's so difficult in public. I can't help but wonder what other people must think. Like I told her, she's fourteen already, but she still doesn't even have the courage to buy a book unless I'm standing right there holding her hand."
"She'll learn. It'll take time, but she'll learn. She just needs some help."
"Well," Mrs. Nells said with conviction, "I don't know who's gonna help her, but it's not gonna be me! I've had it with her. If she wants to hide in her bedroom forever, then that's fine with me. We've done all we can for her--it's up to her now."
Leah stared at her hands as they rested on her knees. She had heard her parents say things like this before--sometimes they even said them to her face, but that didn't lessen the feelings of shame that she felt. She felt bad that she wasn't more like them. They had both grown up perfectly normal in every respect. They always knew what to say and they never had any trouble talking to people. Neither of them had ever experienced shyness for themselves, so Leah imagined that she must be a source of great frustration and confusion for them. Leah felt bad that she couldn't live up to their expectations and just be normal like everyone else.
Mr. and Mrs. Nells soon changed the subject to something less upsetting. Since neither was likely to call Leah downstairs until dinner was served, she stood up and returned to her bedroom as quietly as she had left it. She sat back down on her bed and stared at the wall across from her. She thought about what she might do to relieve some of the shame that her parents felt. The most obvious answer was to overcome her shyness, talk more, and make friends--but how?
As she thought about it, she lay down on her side and watched the clock across the room on her desk. Minute by minute in the quiet, almost empty room, she watched the numbers change.
THREE
THE FINAL days before the first day of school passed quickly, and each day found Leah even more anxious than the last. She was worried because she was always nervous about the first day of school, but she was also worried because she believed that high school would be an awful experience for her, if only because the other option--that it would be wonderful--seemed so unlikely. Late Sunday night, before the start of school, Leah lay in her bed, restless, as her imagination terrorized her with all sorts of crazy scenarios. Suppose she were to get lost, or lose her schedule of classes? What if the room number of one of her classes was switched, but no one notified her and she found herself in the wrong class? Would the teachers be friendly or mean? And what about the other students? Her ninth grade class would be almost three times the size of her eighth grade class, which meant she would be surrounded by unfamiliar faces everywhere she looked. What would her new classmates be like? Would she make a friend? Anything was possible, but everything still seemed frightening.
She didn't sleep well, and when her alarm clock went off at six in the morning--two hours before the start of her first class, Leah was already awake and sitting on the edge of her bed in her darkened bedroom, trying to summon all her strength and courage. She would need it to face this day. She wondered if any of her classmates had suffered through the same sleepless night that she had.
Not wanting to waste any time, and too nervous to sit still anyway, Leah stood up from the bed and began her morning routine. She spent a lot more time than usual getting dressed and ready to leave because she wanted to look nice on the first day of school and make a good impression. She didn't always care about looking pretty, but today was a special day. At 7:15, when she left her bedroom, all traces of sleepiness had vanished and she was wide awake, but a sick, nervous feeling in the pit of her stomach accompanied her as she opened her bedroom door. Before she went downstairs, she noticed the door to her parents' bedroom was still closed and there didn't seem to be any signs of life coming from the other side. Leah wondered if her parents were awake yet, and she worried that they weren't. Her father had agreed to drive her to school this morning so it was crucial that he, at least, be awake. Leah quietly approached the bedroom door, and she put an ear against it and listened. She could hear the sound of water running which meant that there was someone in her parents' bathroom using the shower, most likely her father, for he was always the first to leave the house in the morning. Breathing a sigh of relief that her parents were awake and getting ready for work, Leah turned and went downstairs.
She went straight to the kitchen, which was quite dark, even though, outside, the sun had been up for almost an hour. Leah flipped the light switch and was blinded for an instant by the flood of light. Her stomach was still queasy, but she decided she should to try to eat something before she left for school. She poured a small glass of milk and carried it to the kitchen table. She sat down and enjoyed the stillness and silence of the kitchen as she took a few cautious sips from her glass. She knew there wouldn't be very many moments of peace like this for her today, so she had to seize them when she could. After a moment, she glanced at the clock on the wall on the other side of the kitchen. The time was 7:22; the first school bell rang at eight o'clock sharp. Leah tried to ease her sense of urgency and anxiety by imagining how silly this would all seem later that afternoon when the first day of school was over and she could finally relax. Certainly that time would come, but it seemed so far away. There were so many dreadful events to endure before then. Today was going to feel like the longest day of the year.
She turned her attention away from the clock and inspected her pile of belongings that she had stacked on the kitchen table last night before she went to bed. At the base of the stack was her three ring notebook, brand new and purple. Inside of it were five subject dividers, plenty of notebook paper, and a plastic zipper pouch which contained two pens and two sharpened pencils. Also inside the notebook was her all-important class schedule and a map of her new school. A few days ago, she used a pencil to lightly shade the squares on the map that represented her classrooms.
Sitting on top of the notebook was one of the books Mrs. Nells had bought for her daughter at the garage sales the week before. It was titled The Little Book of Earthquakes and Volcanoes, and it was just that--a little book, not even 200 pages, that would be easy for her to carry on her first day of school, but it was still long enough that it would provide several days' worth of reading. Leah didn't know whether she would find time to read her book today since she didn't know how busy her classes would be, but knowing that the book would be with her was a comfort. It represented a link to her home: a reminder of the security of her bedroom--something familiar in an unfamiliar place. For now, though, the book sat idle on top of her notebook.
The top layer of the pyramid consisted of a small purse. Her mother had bought it for her two years ago when Leah noticed the other girls in her middle school class had started bringing their own purses to school. Leah wanted to fit in, so she got one too. It remained in good condition, but that was because Leah had little use for it. Its only contents were some loose change, a small mirror that her mother had given her, a small hair brush, some pens and pencils, a library card from her middle school that had never been used, and a few other personal necessities.
She remembered that she needed to fix herself a lunch to take to school, but before she could get started on that task, she heard the sound of someone coming down the stairs. She hoped it would be her father, but she realized he couldn't possibly be ready to leave yet. Instead, it was her mother. Mrs. Nells strolled into the kitchen still wearing her morning robe, but she was clearly wide awake, as though it were the middle of the day. She took one look at her anxious daughter sitting at the table and said with a smile, "You sure look nervous."
Leah wondered if her nervousness was really that obvious. Sometimes her parents would assume that she was anxious or scared about something when that wasn't necessarily the case. Most of the time, at home, she was at ease with herself. It was only when she faced the prospect of going out and meeting new people that she really became anxious. When she felt this way, she did her best to conceal her feelings, but this morning Mrs. Nells could read Leah's emotions clearly. Mrs. Nells didn't blame her for feeling nervous, though. She could still remember her own first day of high school and how nervous she had been, but she had been excited, too--and ready to start the next phase of her life.
During those times when Leah felt really nervous, like now, she was a little more willing than usual to communicate with her parents. After forcing down two gulps of milk, she said to her mother, "I need to leave by 7:40." Although school didn't begin until eight, Leah wanted to arrive early so she could get used to her new campus before the first bell rang.
Mrs. Nells nodded and replied, "I know. Your father hasn't forgotten--he'll drive you to school. He's upstairs getting dressed right now."
Leah looked at the clock on the kitchen wall. The time was 7:25. She usually trusted her father, but this morning, she needed everything to go perfectly. She didn't know what she'd do if she were tardy. How could she walk into her first class with all of her new classmates already there, watching her, laughing at her as she arrived late? The very idea made Leah feel like she was going to throw up.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Nells put two slices of bread in the toaster and then left the kitchen to go back upstairs and take her turn in the shower. Before she left, however, she said, "Don't worry, Leah. You're gonna have fun today." When her mother was gone, Leah sat and stared at the toaster, wondering if what her mother said was true, and again her mind tormented her with vivid images of all the things that could possibly go wrong today. A moment later, two slices of toast popped up, cooling quickly, and waiting to be grabbed by hungry fingers. Mrs. Nells would eat them later, when she returned downstairs before she left for work.
The toast reminded Leah that she still needed to fix her lunch for school, so she got up from the kitchen table, walked to the counter next to the refrigerator, and opened a drawer that contained all sorts of bags, both paper and plastic ones. She pulled out a brown paper bag from a bundle of about fifty. Leah always brought her own lunch to school because she didn't like standing in a long lunch line. She opened the refrigerator door and removed a small carton of fruit punch. She placed the carton in her sack and then proceeded to make her sandwich. She spread some peanut butter between two slices of white bread and then cut the sandwich into halves. She took a small plastic bag from the drawer and put the sandwich halves into it. She placed the sandwiches, along with an apple, into the brown bag, then she folded the mouth of the bag over twice and carried it with her back to the kitchen table, placing it on top of her books next to her purse. She sat down again and waited, desperately trying to remember if there was anything else that she needed to do before she left for school. She couldn't think of anything; she was ready to go.
The time was now 7:32, and the house was silent. Somewhere upstairs, her father was still getting dressed. Leah wished he would hurry. Despite her mother's assurance, she feared that her father had forgotten about the importance of this day, and as irrational as it was, she couldn't get that fear out of her mind. Leah recalled speaking to him the night before, and she recalled his promise to drive her to school this morning--but perhaps he had forgotten overnight. What would she do then? If she left right now, she could walk to school and get there on time, but she would have to leave now. She was tempted. After this morning, she would walk to school most days, just as she had always walked to her middle school, but today she wanted her father to drive her to school, just so that she would feel safe. Worried, she continued to wait.
7:35 came and went, and as 7:40--the minute that Leah had decided she needed to leave--approached, and Mr. Nells still hadn't appeared in the kitchen, Leah began to panic. At 7:39 she heard the sound of her father coming down the stairs. She immediately stood up and gathered her pile of books, her purse, and her lunch in her trembling hands. Mr. Nells appeared in the kitchen, still looking a little sleepy. Like his wife, he noticed immediately how nervous his daughter was. He smiled and teased, "Are you ready to go?"
Leah replied by bolting out the door to the garage and climbing into her father's car. Mr. Nells followed her out of the house, opened the garage door, and took his place behind the steering wheel of his car. At 7:42, they were on their way.
Mr. Nells was 38 years old, but he looked much younger than his age suggested. There were some wrinkles on his face, but Leah only noticed them when she saw his face close up. Mr. Nells was aware that his body was slow to age, and he often joked about how he sometimes felt like an old man even if his body didn't show it. His good humor for his condition was lost on his wife, also 38, whose face was starting to show its age more profoundly than her husband's.
Mr. Nells drove with the radio turned off as he took his daughter to school. He never listened to the radio, for reasons that Leah never asked about, except when the weather was poor and he needed to hear the traffic reports. The absence of an annoying morning DJ's voice was not a problem for Leah who welcomed the silence. Her father spoke to her a little, and Leah spoke even less. Her thoughts were focused on what would happen when this ride reached its destination rather than on the journey itself.
"I hope you remember the directions to your school," Mr. Nells teased, "because I don't!" He glanced at his daughter who didn't say anything. She knew he was joking. Her high school was less than a mile away from their home--about the same distance as her middle school had been, only in the opposite direction. She had a lot of things to worry about this morning, but her father's knowledge of their neighborhood was not one of them.
"There's a lot of traffic this morning," Mr. Nells said as he steered his car northbound onto the busy avenue that led them to the school. "I guess I'm gonna have to get used to sharing the road with teenagers again." Leah looked out the passenger side window at the trees and houses and businesses slowly crawl past and then stop altogether as they came to a red light.
"Are you nervous?" Mr. Nells asked, already knowing the answer. "I can't remember if I was nervous on my first day of high school. I guess I was, but I can't remember it . . . it feels like such a long time ago. But I liked high school--I made a lot of good friends."
The light turned green and as the car started moving again, Leah caught her first glimpse of the high school just down the road. The main building loomed large and intimidating. She found it hard to believe that, in less than half an hour, she would be inside that building, attending her first class of her freshman year of high school.
The campus was very busy. Mr. Nells joined the line of cars driven by parents who were dropping their teenage children off. A few school buses were already parked in the bus depot, and Leah could see students descending from them. She couldn't imagine riding the school bus on the first day of school--or any other day. Sitting in a crowded bus with a lot of noisy, overactive teenagers, having to wait for her stop before she could get off--it must be a truly miserable experience. Older students were driving their own cars and parking in the students' lot, which was filling up fast. With so many vehicles trying to squeeze onto the campus at once, some for the first time, a pair of police officers had been assigned to the campus to help direct traffic.
As they drew closer to the school, Leah's nervousness reached its peak. Her heart beat wildly, she was out of breath, and she felt weak all over. She didn't want to go to school today! She wished she could be anywhere else other than here, right now. If only this were some terrible nightmare from which she could awaken, and find that it was still summer and she was free to spend the day however she wished! But it wasn't a dream, and she didn't wake up. The fear that she felt right now was real, and there was no escaping it.
Mr. Nells' car was now close enough to the front of the school so that Leah could get out. Already, the cars ahead and behind them had stopped, and their teenage passengers were exiting. Mr. Nells stopped too and said to his daughter with a proud smile, "Good luck today! Have fun! I know you'll do fine!" Leah barely heard him over the sound of her pounding heart and the blood singing in her ears. With a shaky hand, she opened the car door. She gathered her belongings in her arms and with every last bit of strength she could rally, she climbed out of the car. She closed the door behind her and turned to face the school. She was here.
FOUR
LEAH didn't notice her father drive away because her senses were assaulted by all of the activity around her. There were so many students, and most of them looked a lot older than she was. She heard their cries of laughter, their shouts, and snippets of their conversations. She could smell the exhaust from the school buses, and she could feel a light breeze on her skin and the warmth of the morning sun, rising in the east, ready to begin this late August day.
A car horn honked, and Leah realized she hadn't moved a step since she left her father's car. She was still standing in the road and creating an obstacle for the cars behind her. She quickly moved to the sidewalk and started towards the front of the school, looking for a place to wait. The time was 7:54, so she had a few minutes before the first bell rang. As she reached the flagpole, she marveled at how many students were here already--so many more than had gone to her middle school. She searched the crowd for familiar faces, people whose names she knew, but so far she didn't see anyone she recognized. The area around the flagpole was very crowded, and other students had already claimed all of the concrete benches surrounding it, so she made her way towards the front doors of the main school building. It was even more crowded here. Many students were clustered together with their friends, but just as many people were standing by themselves, waiting silently. The air was filled with groans, with laughter, and with stories of summer adventures. Acquaintances and friendships were being reaffirmed, and everywhere there was a comparison of class schedules, as friends hoped to find other friends in their classes. Leah tried to navigate through the maze of people, towards some place where they weren't packed so close together; the dense crowd was beginning to make her feel claustrophobic.
Leah made her way past the auditorium and towards the phys. ed. building. Again, she found a lot of people waiting, but it was less crowded here. She found an empty spot next to the metal railing on one side of the concrete walkway and leaned against it. Here she stood, wearing her purse on her shoulder and clutching her books and her lunch bag. As her attention jumped from one thing to another, trying to absorb all of the sights and sounds around her, she was amazed that she was here, in high school. She watched her new classmates and observed that a lot of them wore backpacks, which freed their hands to gesture as they spoke or allowed their hands to hide in the pockets of their jeans. Almost no one was carrying their books and lunches in their hands like Leah was. She would try to remember to ask her mother to purchase a backpack for her when she got home from school today.
If she could have a few minutes to wait here, by herself in this crowd, her nerves might have settled down, but all too soon, she heard the first bell of the day ring. The bell startled her, and at first she thought it must be a mistake. But the crowd of students, groaning and wearing unhappy expressions on their faces, turned towards the main building and started indoors. Leah quickly pulled her class schedule out of her notebook. She had already memorized the room numbers for all of her classes and she knew that her first class was in room 212, which was upstairs and to the rear of the main building. In her nervous state of mind, though, she needed to have her schedule in her hand so she could glance at it again and again every few steps in order to confirm the number.
Last night, she had prepared for her first day by studying her map of the school. She knew the shortest route from the main doors to her first classroom, but the interior of the school itself bore little resemblance to the two-dimensional floor plan that she had memorized. To see the school for real was a very different experience, and the crowded hallways made her journey feel a lot longer than it really was. At last, she found the room, and after confirming the room number on her schedule one last time, she went inside.
The class was biology, a required course for freshman students. The room was large, and it was definitely a science classroom. In the back of the class, behind several rows of desks, were lab stations. Upon entering, Leah found a few other wide-eyed students sitting silently in desks around the room. She recognized a couple of faces as classmates from eighth grade. The familiar faces made her feel a little better, so she sat down in a desk, not too close to the front of the class but not too close to the back, either. She also noticed, once she sat down, that the teacher was nowhere to be seen. How strange would it be if all the students arrived on time, but they didn't have a teacher to teach them?
That didn't happen, though; once the bell rang and all of Leah's classmates had taken their seats, an older woman entered and introduced herself as Mrs. Safley. It was the same name that appeared on Leah's class schedule--a connection which helped Leah relax, confident that she was in the right place. Almost immediately, the PA system was turned on and she heard the voice of the school's principal welcoming everyone back for a new year. The class stood to recite the Pledge of Allegiance, and then another voice took over and began reading the day's announcements. Meanwhile, Leah looked around at her new classmates. Every desk in the room was occupied, and Leah thought it would be an impossible task to learn the names of so many new people.
When the morning announcements were finished, Mrs. Safley got down to the business of calling roll, handing out textbooks, and assigning lockers. As Leah sat at her desk staring at the heavy biology book that threatened to crush her almost-empty notebook beneath it, she was again reminded that she needed to get a backpack. She didn't want to have to carry an enormous book like this in her arms when she walked to and from school.
The hour felt like it passed quickly, probably because there was so much to do. At 9:05, the next bell rang and the class ended, and Leah set out to find her locker. The lockers for her class were grouped together, and before they had left the room, Mrs. Safley had given the class some vague directions about where they could find their lockers. Leah followed some students from her class through the crowded hallways until they made their way to their wall of lockers. Leah found hers and opened it on the first try. She placed her biology textbook, her volcanoes and earthquakes book, and her lunch in the locker and then began searching for her second class of the morning.
Her second class was algebra. In middle school, math had been one of her stronger subjects because math wasn't like social studies or English where she had to read about people and the things they did. Math was just numbers--abstract, impersonal. As Leah sat and browsed her algebra textbook, though, she noticed how strange the new equations looked, and she wondered how well she would do in this class.