First Day of School
By: Amy Dillon
When I was very young I always imagined high school as a place with big buildings and freedom, a place where I could leave behind the cooties of junior high. The truth was, however, I really didn’t know what to expect. What lay ahead for me at Truman High was a mystery. Nights before the first day of school I would sit in front of the television, watching re runs of family feud, only paying attention during the final parts when the families would occasionally win twenty thousand dollars. The other half of me was trying to figure out how I would survive high school without my best friend, Laura, who had just moved from our comfortable suburb of Southington to the state of Maine, thanks to her father’s job in the military. The day before orientation I called her from my parents’ rec room so that we could talk about random things, like the weather, or the re runs of our favorite sitcoms that had played on TBS that afternoon. As we talked I watched the moon, etching out the pale crescent framed by the bleak stars. The stars seemed closer than Laura, who was starting school the next day also. Laura told me not to worry, to just be myself. Besides Laura, everyone else from my junior high was going to the closer, more expensive school. I was alone.
The morning of the first day of school the sky was a vast array of purples and pinks. My uncle once told me that “this meant that tomorrow was going to be a better day.” I thought about this as I opened my window a crack to hear the cicadas singing. Did this mean that tomorrow would be a better day? What about today? Also I read somewhere that the sky turns pink and purple because of pollution. I scanned my schedule for the fifth time. I stuffed my books, a notebook, and some pens and pencils into my Jansport backpack before I put my feet into my pink sneakers and tied my shoelaces. I grabbed my keys and was about to shut the front door on my way to the bus stop when I realized that I had forgotten my sketch book. I took it with me everywhere. It was my pet. It was my treasure. It was my means of explaining myself to a world that existed and scared me, because now I was alone. After looking in my desk drawers and my closet and not finding anything I became frustrated. I pushed my bangs out of my face and began to breath heavy when I saw something peeking out from under my bed.
“There you are,” I said. I brushed the dust off of its cover, a picture of some butterflies that I had drawn on it while sitting in Laura’s gazebo. I checked the bright red digits of the oven clock before I walked out of the sleeping house. 6:04AM, it read. I would have plenty of time to sketch on the bus. I grabbed the rusting rails of the front porch and shuffled my way down towards the sidewalk when I saw my brother, Dan, and our Alaskan Husky, Bruno, returning from their morning walk. Bruno sprinted up the stairs and began to lick my hands.
“It’s only six o’clock,” my brother Dan said as he tried to put Bruno back on the leash, “What time does school start?”
“Seven forty-five. I have to take the bus,” I said.
“Well, have a good time, kiddo,” he said as he disheveled my hair with is spare hand, “And try to not fall in my shadow too much.”
This was the thing that I was also worried about. Dan went to the same school, and graduated with honors, and he was the captain of the football team, and his team won the state championship. The lowest point of walking through the halls during the open house was when I saw his picture and the trophies that surrounded it. His picture made him look older. The look in his eyes made it look like he knew everything; where he was going, that he could fulfill everyone’s expectations of him. The tour guides took so much pride when showing off the display case that she even mentioned his name, while beaming something like a star. A star that beamed only because the rest of the tour guides did so, knowing that my brother, Dan, was a really smart, athletic guy. I would have to live up to these expectations for four years.
The bus driver was a woman in her forties that seemed like she wasn’t much of a talker. She only grunted when I walked up the steps. The ride to school was like riding in the back of a pickup. I slouched down in my seat, at the front of the big yellow school bus with the windows cracked open, and I put my knees up to the seat ahead of me. I sat at the front of the bus because I wanted to see who would board it. The first person that came aboard was one that looked like she was eight years old. She wore her hair in pigtails and was dressed in a t-shirt and jeans, though her step was anything but typical. As she walked down the aisle she had a smile plastered on her face, like a doll’s. She kept her head up and she skipped methodically to the end of the bus. She was carrying a duffel bag, so I assumed she was in some kind of sport. Next there was a boy that seemed more mature for his age. He had bright blue eyes and dimples and a crooked nose. He wore khakis and a sweater. He walked like he had everyone’s eyes on him. He also had a duffel bag and was carrying a football with is left hand.
After the first few people walked on board I got drowsy. Not because the people weren’t interesting; they were. Everyone seemed to have their own quirk, their own special characteristic that made them stand out from the stereotypical teenager. After the bus passed the second or third major intersection, I came up with an idea. Something to hide me from solitude’s ugly face. I would devote the rest of my sketch book to drawing the people and stuff of my high school. All I needed was the concept of originality to guide me. I could sketch the eight-year girl well just by being guided through the swish of her ponytails. I could draw the khakis and sweater boy by highlighting the crook in his nose and the dents in his face. The idea of being alone was what scared me, but the characters I could create in my sketch book could be what keep me busy.
The first thing everyone in my class had to do was take their yearbook picture in the library. People waiting in line formed crowds, some nonchalantly talking to each other, some shouting with an energy tapped from some unknown source. Every so often someone would walk into the library to shout someone’s name from across the room, so that that person would drop everything, and they’d run towards each other like magnets and embrace each other as if they were long lost friends. This isn’t my scene, I thought to myself as I looked ahead to see how many people were ahead of me in line. There were seven, two boys and five girls. I stood, waiting patiently, my hands in my back pockets, my bangs to the side of my face. I took my ticket out of my wallet so that I could have it ready to give to the photographer. The ticket read Julia Renny, student #4580932. My wallet was small enough to put in my back pocket of my jeans, so after contemplating how it would look, I stuffed it in. That’s when the khakis and sweater guy from the bus walked up to me.
“Is it alright if I cut?” he said to me in a half-whisper.
After scanning the room for half a second and taking a big gulp, I said, “Sure.”
We stood there silently with what seemed like the weight of the world on my shoulders. The whole time while I felt my eyes bulge down at the confetti carpet I kept thinking how the blue specks matched perfectly with the blue of his eyes. After a few more people had their pictures taken, I collected the courage to look up to him, and when my eyes matched his, his were already looking into mine.
“You shouldn’t put your wallet in your back pocket, you know,” he said with a hint of teasing sarcasm in his tone.
“Why not?” I asked.
“It could fall out,” he said, “Or someone could steal it.”
He grinned at me before the photographer told him to sit on a folding chair before the camera. When he smiled his two dimples showed on the side of his face. That and his nose’s imperfectness gave me a mental snapshot, something I couldn’t wait to sketch. I didn’t even know his name but I felt like I could tell you anything about him.
Once the photographer took my picture I walked out of the big doors of the library into the halls of the school. The ceiling lights hung over me like monkeys, and each locker was set up next to each other, row after row after row. It was one of the most impersonal constructions I had ever seen. I was assigned locker 1365, a locker next to a locker next to a locker. I already felt lost. The lockers were painted navy blue and I had to try to open my combination lock twice before getting it open. I placed my books on the bottom, and an unripe peach on the shelf that I hoped I would remember to eat. Also I put up a picture of Laura and me. We were five years old, in her back yard, chasing fireflies on a summer night. Her mother is a photographer, so she took the perfect night time picture of us, with just the right flash and shutter speed. I have drawn her backyard so many times I could sketch it in my sleep; the old wooden gazebo, the water fountain, the decaying bird bath. Now the only time I could get a glimpse of her face when I had to get my books for class. It was like my locker was my mark between the past and present.
Walking to homeroom was one of the most disorderly experiences of my life. I had never seen so many people, kids, out of control, running back and forth from one locker to the other, shouting at each other, throwing things from one staircase to the next. People of all different backgrounds, nationalities, looks, meandered from one dense hallway to the other. I had never seen such a collage of people, and honestly, it was exciting to be an element of such a work of art. A few classrooms before my homeroom, I saw the collection of my brothers’ pictures on the wall. The picture and the trophies surrounding it gleamed, like someone had just polished them all. As I passed the picture I put my hand in the air and let out a deep sigh. God help me, I thought as my homeroom door came into view.
The arch of the doorway made a rectangle that framed me to the rest of the sitting class; me, Julia Renny: girl, freshman, loner. Of course you couldn’t tell this by looking at me right way, and I tried to keep it that way as I found my place at the back of the classroom, near an unkempt bookshelf with Spanish textbooks stacked on the top shelf. To my left was a redheaded girl that used big hand motions and whose eyes would light up when she talked. The boy across from her with black hair had small intense eyes and he was slouching in the back of his seat. I started to listen in on their conversation from as distant a point of view as possible.
“…It should be a great turn out,” the red-headed girl said with a rush of emotion. “It’s our first year trying it out, but already a lot of people are going to be at the first meeting. You should go.”
“I don’t know, I’m not that great at chess, the boy said. “My grandfather taught me how to play last year, but it just doesn’t interest me. I want to try out for lacrosse in the spring.”
“I’m not that great at it either, but it’s just for fun,” the girl said. “Plus, it’s only a school club. It isn’t meant to be anything serious. It’s not like I’m asking you to be the next Dan Renny.”
At that comment they laughed, and turned forward in their seats as someone started shouting from the front of the room.
“Attention, class!” said a tall girl who had braided brown hair, freckles, and a bright orange and blue hooded sweatshirt. She shouted as she waved her hands in the air like a police officer stopping traffic.
“Listen up! School elections are in a few weeks, voting takes place in the gymnasium during lunch, and I’m running for freshman treasurer-so- vote for me- also,”
“When is the first Future Farmer of America’s club meeting?” someone asked obnoxiously from the back of the room. I turned to see who was talking to get a glimpse of a boy with the eraser of a pencil in his mouth, sitting comfortably with his feet stuck out under the desk in front of his.
The girl at the front of the room flipped through some papers as people around the obnoxious boy laughed quietly. Before the girl could say anything, a shrill bell filled the room, and people jumped from their seats to get to class. I was the last one out of the classroom. My first class was Algebra. Math was something I was good at, because there was always an answer to every problem. 2+2? 4. In 2x=2 what is the value of x? 1. The answer that I needed now that I couldn’t get a grasp of was what I was doing here. At this school. In this hallway. Next to my brother’s picture. As I passed the picture on my way to class I pretended that it was some type of poison, that looking at it, even thinking of it, would send me spiraling out into space. This was the only way I could keep my identity a secret. Before his picture and trophies were completely gone from the corner of my eye, the khakis-and-sweater guy walked up next to me, with his hands in his pockets.
“You look a lot like him,” he said.
“Who?” I asked.
“Dan Renny. Except you’re a girl.”
“Oh,” I said.
“And you’re beautiful,” he said.
I could feel my face flushing. There was pressure in my chest and it was hard to breath. But I had to say something.
“He’s my brother. I’m Julia.” I said. “Renny.”
“I’m Kyle, Kyle Jordan,” he said as he swayed to the side in that classic guy aw-shucks kind of way. “What class do you have now?”
“Algebra. What about you?”
“Gym. Hey, do you want to watch me at my football practice today, after school?” he asked just as we were about to turn our separate ways.
“I have to take the bus, but I guess I could take the activities one,”
“Great! I’ll see you there,” he said.
I was only able to stay awake through about half of my Algebra class. After that, I dozed off with my head in my hand, a comfortable sleep that comes right before a dream. I dreamt that I was in Laura’s backyard, and we were sitting in her gazebo. I was drawing in my sketch book while she was sitting watching the rainfall. Suddenly it began to thunder and lightning. Lightning bolts stretched across the sky like arrows. Laura got up and grabbed my hand. I felt that going out in the storm would be a dangerous thing to do but it was the type of dream where I knew I was dreaming, so I let Laura guide me to the center of her backyard. When we got there, however, it wasn’t her backyard’s grass anymore. It was a field that went on in all directions for as far as I could see. It was like some kind of abstract painting where splashes of brown, yellow and red were painted carefully so that the person looking at the art would think he or she was looking at some magnificent field with rich prairie grasses swaying in the breeze. Laura and I lay down on the ground, our tops of our heads touching, with our arms and legs spread out like snow angels.
“Just close your eyes,” Laura said to me. I had no idea why I should have done so or what was going to happen, but I did what she said for a few seconds, until curiosity got the best of me. I opened my eyes to see the sky spiraling. It looked like all the stars above me were spinning, rotating, so fast that I felt like I was going to throw up. The brightness of everything got closer and closer to me until something woke me up.
“JULIA!” the teacher shouted from behind the podium at the front of the room.
“I’m up,” I mumbled as I sat up in my chair.
I wished I could go back to my dream while the people around me laughed quietly at my awkward situation. My Algebra teacher scribbled some equation on the chalkboard before the bell rang and filled the classroom of hungry freshman. I unnoticeably walked to the cafeteria. The cafeteria was huge, filled with Fanta vending machines and Monday chicken nugget specials. Not knowing anyone was intimidating, but I was only a freshman. I had a long, promising life ahead of me, and all of the relationships that it would entail didn’t depend on my freshman year lunch. Besides, I had my sketchbook. I took it out of my backpack and put it on the grey cafeteria table. I ran my hand over the suede binding and twisted the leather strap around in my fingers as I looked through the crowd to see what, or who, I should draw first. What I wanted to depict was originality. Who could bring life to my sketch book? First I saw some teachers sitting at the back of the cafeteria, eating from Tupper wear and typing things on their laptops. I decided that instead I wanted to draw something with energy. Suddenly some boys wearing baggy jeans and Air Jordan’s cruised in from the front of the cafeteria. I had seen this type of thing so much already at my junior high. Then I saw it. A mural glistening at the center of the cafeteria. “TRUMAN HIGH STALLIONS” read the letters etched at the bottom of the copper fresco. The stallion’s hair glistened under the florescent lights of the cafeteria. Its front hooves were raised in gallop as its tail swished with some imaginary wind. I had to draw this.
The majority of the students faded into some combination of color, energy and motion as I took my place at a partially empty table to take in the work of art. I opened up to a new page, took my pencil, and let the bends and the turns of the horse’s ears and its mane guide me. I fell into the zone, just as I let my hand do all the work. I found that peace that I always find, when drawing something with energy or beauty, and I allowed myself to just take everything in that comes with inner peace, of finding that inner hum. I found my way through the mouth, the eyes, the hooves, and the swooshed tail. Time stood still for those ten precious minutes until I was done sketching.
The rest of the day went by in a blur. American History, Biology, and English were filled with assigned seats and introductions, new textbooks and teachers that all mispronounced at least two students’ of their classes’ names. The bleachers in front of the football field were nearly empty when I got there, except for three girls sitting a few feet away from me. One of the girls had long blonde hair and bright brown eyes. She had a mole on her right cheek, and she had on bright green converse sneakers. The other two girls both had short black hair. They both had Truman High track letterman varsity letterman jackets. One had green eyes, the other hazel. All three had a liveliness to them. They smiled like models. When they laughed they tilted back and leaned on one another.
The JV football team was warming up, the team members passing footballs back and forth, the coach occasionally letting out a shrill screech from his whistle. I put my feet on the bench in front of me and looked over at the scenery behind the field. The trees were evergreen, and the sky above them was orange and yellow. The colors were so deep and rich it was like someone had taken buckets of paint and thrown them in the air.
I looked towards the field again when I caught Kyle looking at me from the sidelines. He waved. I waved back, trying not to blush. The three girls sitting on the benches next to me waved at him, also, shouting, “Hi Kyle!”
“Do you know him?” I asked.
“Yeah, he’s Kyle Jordan. He’s a starter on JV. He went to our junior high.”
“I know who he is. I just met him today,” I said quietly.
After an awkward silence, the blonde haired girl walked up to the bench behind me and asked, “When was the last time you brushed your hair?
I sat bewildered. “What?” I asked.
“Your hair,” she said, “You have to take care of it.”
That morning I had ran my fingers through it and put it in a ponytail. “What?” I asked again.
The blonde haired girl took the bench beside me. She unzipped her bag and dug through it until she took the ponytail holder out of my hair and began to detangle it. She carefully combed it while the two black haired girls talked back and forth about which colleges they were thinking about applying to for next year. One wanted to go to Northwestern, the other UCLA.
“You’re new here, right?” asked the blonde haired girl. “I’m Cathy. This is Mandy,” the hazel eyed girl waved, “And this is Sarah,” and the green eyed girl smiled.
“Yeah, I’m a freshman,” I said. “I’m Julia Renny.”
I sat waiting for them to ask if me if I knew Dan, or if I was related to Dan, or if Dan was my brother, or cousin, but they didn’t mention him.
A few minutes after Cathy started to fix my hair, she handed me a small mirror. She held another mirror behind me, so that I was able to see the braid she had put my hair in.
“You’re gorgeous, darling,” she said. Sarah and Mandy looked at me and smiled in a way that made me feel older.
A few minutes later, Cathy, Mandy and Sarah strolled their way through the benches off campus. There was only about half an hour left of practice left, and then I would have to wait for the activities bus, so I took out my sketchbook. I sketched the trees and clouds behind the football field. I sketched Cathy’s green shoes. I was so in the zone that my other senses seemed to go numb. I didn’t even mind the crook in my neck I got for looking down for so long. My perceptions flowed right through me to the paper. Lastly I wanted to sketch Kyle, the Kyle I had seen for the first time in the library, smiling at me with his dimples and his crooked nose, but the activities bus pulled up.
The fact that Kyle took the activities bus home, too, managed to escape me until I saw him sitting on a seat towards the back. He held a football in his hand and was gazing out of the window.
“Hi Kyle,” I said.
“Hey, what’s up,” he said.
I took the seat behind him and placed my backpack right next to me. Only a few other students were on the activities bus, and they were all in the front. The bus pulled out of the parking lot and into the street. Shades of green grass and grey sidewalks passed by, until Kyle sat up in the seat in front of me.
“So what kind of stuff do you do?” he asked. “Are you in any sports?”
“No, I’m not really good at anything,” I said, “Except drawing. And I’m not really great at that, even. I just like to draw.”
A few awkward moments passed until he asked, “Is that what you were doing up in the bleachers? Drawing something?”
“Yeah,” I said, “I keep a sketchbook.”
“Can I see it?” he asked.
“Sure,” I said. I opened my backpack, rummaged through some books and pulled it out. Kyle opened the book and browsed through each page. His eyes darted back and forth as he went through the sketches.
“These are pretty good,” he said, closing my sketchbook and handing it back to me.
“Are you in any sports besides football?” I asked.
“No,” he said, “My Dad really just wants me to play so that I can get a college scholarship.”
“That must suck,” I said. “My brother got a college scholarship because of football, but he didn’t play after college.”
“I really don’t know why I’m playing either,” he said. “I mean, I like playing football when we’re all in a huddle and I work with the guys, being a part of a team, you know? But then after I lose a game, when my Dad and the coach get mad at me, I just don’t want to play football anymore. I guess what I’m trying to say,”
Kyle paused, scratching his head and looking out the window. Then he turned back to me and looked me right in the eyes. He said, “I guess what I’m trying to say is that if you do something it has to be for yourself. Like, it seems like your parents don’t care if you don’t become the captain of the girls’ basketball team, even though your brother was the captain of the football team, and that’s cool. But with me it’s different. My parents expect a lot of me, and that leaves me to not be able to figure out what I like to do, who I want to be. Say that I want to join the chess club. What if that’s what makes me happy? What if I want to devote all of my time to playing chess? I can’t. Because my Dad wants me to be the captain of the football team someday.”
Whoa, I thought. That came out of nowhere. I didn’t know what to say, so I just watched him as he altered his gaze out the window.
“What about you,” he said, “What makes you tick?”
“I don’t know, I guess drawing,” I said.
“Why?” he asked.
“I guess because I like being the observer,” I said. “I like to take things in and express them in my own way.”
“Is that why you’re so quiet?” he asked.
“I guess. I,”
“Have you ever thrown a football before?” he asked. He picked up his football from off of his seat and held it in the middle of the two of us.
“Do you know how to hold it?” he asked.
“My brother showed my when I was younger,” I said, “You put your fingers on the laces, right?”
“Right,” he said, holding it with one hand, “like this.”
He took my hand and placed my four fingers on the laces and my thumb underneath. Then with his hand he guided mine, showing me how to throw it, without letting go of the ball.
At that point we were the only people left on the bus. I was the last one that was going to be dropped off. Kyle was still sitting over his seat, as we only looked out toward the passing cars and neighborhoods. Fifteen minutes after he had showed me how to hold the football, I couldn’t hold it in any longer. I had to ask him.
“Can I draw you?” I asked Kyle, with my sketchbook on my lap and my pencil ready in hand.
“Sure,” Kyle said. “What should I do?”
“Just sit. Comfortably,” I said.
I moved to the seat in front of him so I could get a better look. He sat, holding his football, looking out the window, his blue eyes taking in what was through the open window. My sketchbook took in his dimples, his crooked nose. I fell into the zone more than I had in a long time, partially due to the silence of the bus, partially due to the fact that what I already knew and felt about Kyle made me perceive even more beauty than things like trees and horses. My subject was complex, someone that had layers beyond lines and physical characteristics. My only regret was that I didn’t have any pastels or colored pencils to show his blue eyes.
“Ok, done,” I told Kyle. I closed my sketchbook and was about to put it in my backpack when I had an idea. I gave the sketchbook to Kyle.
“Keep it. For the next few days,” I said, “And draw something. We’ll both fill the whole thing up. And I’ll go to your practice once a week.”
“Deal,” he said. “My stop is coming up. I’ll see you tomorrow?”
“Definitely, I’ll see you tomorrow,” I said.
Kyle slung his duffle bag over his shoulder and embraced his football as he stood up. He flashed me a smile before he sprinted his way down the aisle and jogged down the steps of the bus. I watched him walk down the sidewalk. I wondered what tomorrow would be like.
When I got home I told my brother about my day. I told him that I found some new people that I could talk to. I told him that someone had told me I was beautiful. And I told him that I would need more time in the bathroom in the mornings from now on, so that I could put up my hair.