Amalee Read Free

spoke, she said something very interesting. I admired Hally, and I found myself wanting to impress her.
    Ellen made fun of everyone, while Hally would say one thing every once in a while, like, “Alex shouldn’t wear those pants with that sweater. She has often been a careless dresser.” She used the English language in a strange way. With her blond hair around her face, I couldn’t help thinking of her as a little intelligent fairy, not quite from the human world.
    All the teachers liked Ellen and Hally. I thought these two girls were good for me. They made me think more and learn about things like the government. They told me when my clothes matched.
    The only problem was, none of the other kids wanted to be around us.
    Actually, I guess we didn’t want to be around them, either.
    One girl was particularly annoying: Lenore Nielson. Ihad been friends with her since third grade, but I never liked her. She was bossy and basically just loud. She used to explain that I had to be her friend. Once you were a friend, she said, you had to stay loyal, even if you didn’t like your friend at all. I felt like she was threatening me, but when she’d invited me to movie after movie, sleepover after sleepover, I always said yes. What if she was right? I never wanted to be a bad friend, even to a mean friend like Lenore.
    But then things changed. When I started being friends with Ellen and Hally, I discovered that I could turn my back on Lenore just like they did, and Lenore would actually go away. I never had to say anything mean. I could just say nothing. It was such a relief! After years of hearing her boast about her grades, whine about her younger brothers, and create complicated games where I had to follow everything she said, she was gone.
    So that was my life. Ellen, Hally, and I were envied and — I realized more and more — feared. People watched us out of the corners of their eyes, and walked by quickly.
    By October, I could see that I was really changing. My brain felt sharper. I put my clothes out the night before school, and I made sure I had what I needed for class. I tried not to let any old stupid thing come out of mymouth. I tried to be more like Hally. Ellen talked a lot, but she was clever.
    I actually liked everything we were learning about, especially new words and history. I felt like I could be smart around them, and we could challenge each other. Phyllis called this kind of thing “sharpening your wits” and said it was why she liked hanging out with Mr. Spiro, the librarian.
    The strange thing was, the teachers liked Ellen and Hally, but they didn’t seem to like me as much.
    I mean, our music teacher, Ms. Bernstein, was a hippie, so she liked everyone. Mrs. Donaldson, the math teacher, didn’t really like anyone. Mr. Hankel, the science teacher, called me a “swell kid” once. But there was also Ms. Severance, the English and social studies teacher. I thought she was brilliant, but she liked Hally and Ellen much better than me, which didn’t seem fair.
    Once Hally turned to Ellen and said, “She should wear bigger earrings, to compensate for her long face.”
    Ellen said, “And she also wears that sweater, like, every day. I hope she washes it!”
    Ms. Severance wore that sweater a couple of times a week. I knew because I loved it. It was a soft mossy green with buttons that looked like shells. And she wore little earrings that sparkled when she turned toward the window. There was nothing wrong with that. I didn’t notice her long face until Hally pointed it out.
    I said nothing, and that’s when I knew I was like the other kids, too afraid to speak up.
    Finally, the day before winter vacation, I saw a note that Hally wrote to Ellen. It said, “She could use a professional haircut: a salon.” There was an arrow underneath the words. I closed my eyes and figured out that, yes, the arrow had been pointed at me.
    So I felt