THREE
See?
Okay, so there I was. In Greenville. The last strains of “Funkytown” fading into the sunny day. Either my audience was not loving what was happening or they were the quietest audience in the history of audiences. Or both.
I was getting up from my epic splits, brushing the bits of gravel off my palms, thinking.
I had two choices: One, keep going. Like, the show must go on (a theater saying that people used to say way back in the 1900s and also a song by the epic band Queen). Two, act like the three-part disco roller performance was actually a one part, take my bow, and roll off into the sunset.
If you’re caught up, it’s not going to surprise you to hear that I took option one.
Heck yeah, I did! Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive” came on (recorded in 1978 and originally released as a B-side if you can believe it). That’s like the most powerful gay song (not sung by a gay person) in the world!
I blew a kiss to the crowd, did a jump turn, pumped twice, and flew into a sit spin. I came out of that, waved to the crowd, and went right back into a series of hurricane kicks that I then transitioned into a heel toe spin, because I love spinning; the world flew into a stream of light and dark when suddenly. . .
The music cut out.
So fast it was like someone pulled the rug out from under me, like, literally. Before I could catch myself, my left skate skidded out from beneath me, then my right, and I landed hard on my butt.
The butt, the softest but hardest landing of them all.
I don’t know if you’ve ever landed on your butt on roller skates. It is discombobulating. First, I was dizzy, with this weird whooshing sound that took over all the space inside my brain, then the whooshing was replaced by another sound. . .laughter.
Not happy fun laughter, the laughter of joy and joining, the laughter of beach balls and lollipops. No. Unhappy laughter, which only comes at someone else’s expense. As my butt throbbed, I looked up and spotted the source of the chortles.
It was a group of kids, but I saw the boy first, tall with spiky brown hair. He was wearing a green soccer jersey and shorts. A girl with bright, but I think natural, red hair tied into pigtails, dressed entirely in baby pink, was balanced on his shoulders.
I blinked.
They were ripping my disco balls off the lampposts!
“HEY!” I scrambled to my feet, or tried to, but it is hard to scramble to your feet in roller skates, which is the only uncool thing about them.
A wave of heat rose up through my jumpsuit and turned my neck into a ring of fire. “HEY!”
The boy with spiky brown hair grinned a big toothy grin, as the girl on his shoulders wrenched the disco ball free and held it over her head, triumphant.
“HEY!” she screeched back, waving the ball like a broken flag, “YOU GOT A PERMIT FOR THIS TRASH?”
“HA-HA-HA-HA-HA!” The boy’s face was turning red.
But the laughter wasn’t just coming from him.
I swiveled as best I could and spotted the other pair, at another lamppost closer to the fountain. This pair had one shorter boy with curly hair, also in a soccer jersey, who was almost eclipsed by the girl on his shoulders, who was long like spaghetti with equally long blond hair. She had ripped two of my disco balls free and was holding them in her hands like deflated cheerleader pom-poms.
“CUT IT OUT!” I finally got to my feet. “THOSE ARE MINE!”
“HO-HO!” the curly-haired boy laughed as he bent forward and the girl vaulted off.
As I (finally) got my skates under me, all four kids were off like a shot. Laughing and waving my disco balls in the air as they ran.
“STOP!” I screamed, catching the eye of the girl with long blond hair.
She slowed down, just a little, like there was suddenly something in my voice worth paying attention to. Maybe because my voice had reached the pitch of a fire engine.
“THOSE! ARE! MINE!” I howled.
The girl’s eyes went wide. She glanced down at the now unrecognizable lumps of disco art in her hands.
“TOSS IT!” the boy with spiky hair hollered back. “GILLY! TOSS THEM!”
The redheaded girl with the pigtails cupped her hands over her mouth. “COME ON, GILLY!”
The tall blond looked at me again with watery blue eyes, and then she heaved my disco balls into the fountain and sprinted off.
“YOU ASSHOLES!” I hollered.
And then suddenly everyone in the square stopped and looked at me. Possibly because I screamed assholes. My face had its own pulse as I slunk down, slamming my butt on the fountain’s edge, producing a flash of pain that ripped through my lower half as I unstrung my laces.
“Hey.”
This is the moment when I first met Berry. Or right before.
“WHAT?” I roared.
Like yeah, I kind of instantly reacted with yelling, because I was trying not to break my lace with my rage fingers and listening to the gurgling of the fountain.
But then I looked up.
The first thing I noticed, which calmed me in a way that I cannot explain, was that the person who was standing in front of me, who was probably my age, had hair that was all different colors of green. Like moss and fluorescent and forest and pine green. They had more hair than most people I had ever met. It was curly, like spiral-curls curly, its mass only barely tamed by a white headband that matched their white coveralls.
They were holding a skateboard in one hand, looking down at their paint-splattered work boots; their cheeks were blushing hard, maybe because I had just yelled at them. Also because they were super pale, and pale people, in my experience, blush like nobody else. I think it’s cool, but I get that some of the pale do not think it’s cool.
I dropped my skate. “UGH. Sorry.” I looked back into the fountain. “I just— It just— I thought you were— Sorry.”
“I saw what happened.” The person I didn’t know yet as Berry looked up with hazel eyes. “I’m sorry. But, uh, I did manage to save this one.”
In their hand was the only disco ball that hadn’t been shredded or destroyed, my one glittering paper child that had survived Greenville’s apparent disco hatred. They placed the ball in my hands like a fragile egg. “Sorry about, you know, them.”
“RIGHT? What was THAT?! Who does that?” I fumed, suddenly re-enraged. I gestured at the water fountain. “Do they even know what glitter does to a water fountain?”
“They probably don’t care.”
“Well, THAT sucks,” I seethed, carefully placing my last disco ball next to my skates and rolling up my pant legs.
As the crowd watched, I slipped one leg at a time into the fountain to dig out the pulpy messes of my other balls. “It could, like, seriously screw with the water systems, hello,” I groused, raking my fingers through the disturbingly warm water. “Who were they, anyway?”
“The big one’s Tanner.” The person I still didn’t know was Berry reached into the fountain to pull out a scrap of purple paper. “The other boy is John. The girls are Sarah and Gilly.”
“Well, they’re ALL JERKS,” I fumed, my hands full of disco pulp.
“Like, pretty much always. Anyway. I think you got all the stuff out of here. So that’s good.”
It didn’t feel especially good, which was also probably because everyone was staring at me like I was stealing wishes from the bottom of the fountain or something.
Instead of saving them! Hello!
I heaved my rolled-up but still magically soaked to the core pant legs out of the fountain. Did Greenville even have a dry cleaner who could handle sequins?
“I thought it was cool,” the person who would soon become my one Greenville friend said. “Your thing. With the tricks and stuff? Gloria Gaynor. Great track.”
A shard of light pierced my dark mood. I raised an eyebrow. “You know Gloria Gaynor?”
Not just Gloria Gaynor music but her name. Huge points.
It was just nice for a moment of feeling like I wasn’t the only one talking disco that day.
“Sure.” They grinned, showing a giant gap between two front teeth. Also, I noticed, this person had more freckles than I had ever seen on one face. Maybe it came with the hair. “My dad is kind of a vinyl fiend.”
“Well.” I held up my one surviving disco ball, my wet fingers sticking to the paper and glue. “Thanks. For grabbing this.”
“Anytime.” The person I still hadn’t introduced myself to, who hadn’t really introduced themselves to me, hence still person, shrugged. “Welcome to Greenville, I guess?”
“Thanks.”
“No problem.” With a sort of awkward salute, they spun artfully, flopped their skateboard on the ground, and with a light step, rolled away, the gravel crunching under their wheels. “See you at school on Monday!”
“Oh!” I said, because I had actually forgotten about school, because that’s how my mind works. “Yeah.”
And yes, it’s true, I had that whole exchange with my first nice person in Greenville, and I hadn’t even managed to get a name, or say mine.
I frowned, shoving my feet in my running shoes and tying up my skates.
“ANNE!” Millie strode toward me, lugging a big bag of what looked like Christmas lights. “Gimme a hand?”
“Sure,” I said as I shook as much water out of my pant leg as I could.
Millie looked at my hands. “What happened to your other. . .globes?”
“They are, were, disco balls and. . .they were the casualty of the day.”
“Oh.” Millie looked around, catching some of the locals with ice creams who were clearly straining to hear our conversation. “So. How was the performance?”
“Mixed reviews.” I took the bag from her hand.
“Right.” Millie, who has also received her fair share of mixed reviews over the years, including a man who called her a pestilence on the photography community, nodded, waited for me to say more, and when I didn’t, started walking toward the car.
For the drive home, Millie mostly let me percolate, which is what she calls a thinking silence.
A productive silence.
I don’t know if it was all that productive. Mostly I was letting the rolling green slide by the window and thinking about what it would be like to have an audience appreciate your three-act disco opera.
“Some of the best reviews are mixed,” Millie said finally as we closed in on our street. “Like mixed nuts. Right?”
“If you like Brazil nuts.”
“Wait. You don’t like Brazil nuts? Have I raised you right?” Millie gave me an exaggerated look of horror.
“Brazil nuts are disgusting,” I said, “and yes, you did.”
Millie snuck a quick glance in my direction. “Do you know what you can do to make it better next time? Your performance?”
“No,” I said. “Maybe.”
“Well, work on that,” Millie said, spinning the wheel as we rounded the corner. “And don’t forget to wish Lucy good luck,” she added as we pulled into the driveway. “It’s her big day tomorrow.”
Millie calls Lucy the traveling educator, because Lucy has taught pretty much everything you can imagine a person teaching in pretty much everywhere a person could teach in the United States. A lot of us moving around has been my mom trying to get different experiences teaching in different places for different schools. She was a substitute teacher for years. Then she worked for this company that trains teachers in what my mom calls “community skills.” Then she taught English and geography in Petaluma, California. Then she applied to be a vice principal.
And now we’re here. Greenville, where Lucy will be the new vice principal at Greenville High.
In almost every movie where a character is a vice principal, that person is the least cool person in the movie. The vice principal is usually the person who hates their job and takes it out on others.
Lucy is the opposite of that, by the way. And yet, being a vice principal is Lucy’s dream job. Lucy really really likes teaching and teachers and school. She wants to be a vice principal so she can help people have a better time at their school. Like, if Lucy was in charge, and she sometimes is, all our vacations would be learning experiences.
So this whole Greenville thing was a really big deal.
Which is why the night before the first day of school Lucy was holed up in her office. I brought her a plate of leftover fried rice and tofu lumps. Inside, the room that was going to be her office was a traffic jam of boxes. Surrounded by stacks of paper, Lucy had three elastics in her hair—I think because she kept forgetting she’d put her hair up already. When she’s not working, Lucy wears school sweatshirts from the schools that she’s taught in. She has a lot of sweatshirts with badly drawn school mascots on them. The one she was wearing that night was supposed to be a hawk, but it looked like an angry owl. I think it was from a school in Ohio.
“Oh,” Lucy said. She glanced up from a pile, looking a little owly herself. “Hey! How was your show?”
Lucy calls them s hows.
“My performance. . .was fine,” I said, moving a stack of papers to put the plate on.
“OH!” Lucy lurched forward, reaching for the papers I was holding. “Those are— Sorry, sweetie. I need those. Give them here. Thanks.”
I handed her the stack. “Sorry.”
“Just trying to get everything together.” Lucy surveyed the many other stacks that I imagined also couldn’t be moved. “So much paperwork! I just—” She shoved a few piles over and pointed at a pile of books. “Just put the plate here is fine, sweetie. Thank you.”
I rested the plate of reheated food I was pretty sure she was going to forget to eat on a folder of educational standards she probably was going to read, and leaned against the doorway. “So, are you ready? Do you have your outfit? For school?”
“Oh.” Lucy pulled a hair elastic off her wrist. “Oh yes, that’s right. Ha-ha. Clothes. Yes I’ll find something. Do you? Have your outfit?”
“Obviously,” I said. “I have a few options. I’ll review them tonight. Consider all the angles. Debate possible body modifications. Piercings. You know? To pull the whole thing together.”
“Good good.” Lucy’s eyes darted back to her laptop, which was pinging like an alarm clock. “That’s great.”
She wasn’t listening, of course. Lucy is very anti-piercing for reasons I don’t completely understand.
“You’ll be great.” I sighed. “Tomorrow, I mean. And this year, you’ll be great at this.”
Like I said, Lucy is the person who has given me pretty much everything that means anything in my life, including disco (also her fave) and roller skating. I once asked Lucy to show me how to sew, and she learned so she could teach me. I wasn’t going to give her something else to worry about. Like the fact that my first meet-and-greet with Greenville had gone. . .poorly. I mentally slipped it under the tall stack of things we could talk about later.
“ ’Night!”
“ ’Night, Anne! Oh! Can you take Monty for her walk?”
Easier said than done. Apparently Monty wasn’t all that fond of the sound of the “country,” including the crickets. (What did she think they were? I wondered). As soon as I opened the door and the first cricket cricketed she plastered herself to the ground and started whining.
“Okay, so walking is out?”
A low squeal escaped from Monty’s snout.
“Fine.”
I wrapped my arms around her middle and pulled our now angry golden area rug out the door so I could walk her onto the front porch, where she pinned herself against my side.
“This is exposure therapy, Monty,” I said, looking around, noting that she wasn’t going to the bathroom, which couldn’t be a good thing.
I put my hand on her head, and she pinned her big brown eyes on me.
I do not want to be here, those eyes said.
“I hear you,” I said. “I mean, obviously we can’t do anything about being in Greenville, but it’s nice just for a moment to not have to pretend to be happy about it.”
In what I took as agreement, Monty shoved her wet nose under my thigh, which probably smelled like Greenville fountain water, the perfume of copper and disapproval.
“At least tomorrow’s another day,” I offered.
I mean, come on, I hadn’t even gotten to school yet.