The Weird Kid

I can tell you her name, Tina, and that she was anemic, with long dull red hair. Think Sissy Spacek in Carrie, but hollower-looking. Dressed country-western in the grunge era, blouses tucked into her Wranglers.

We sat next to each other during the first church service of our Freshman year at boarding school. I was anxious to make friends and had learned it was the shy kind of girl who might respond to me. Tina was nice to me. She was awkward, obsessed with movies, couldn't speak over a reedy whisper, and laughed, like a nervous tic, at absolutely everything I said. We fit together fairly well. I was her only friend until she dropped out Junior year.

But it was this one conversation, a whole year after we first met. The one where she confided in me that she was only ever nice to me because she wanted to meet my roommate, Veronica Vahn. Veronica got up at 5am to set her hot rollers, every day. She was attractive, but frightened and uncomfortable when other teens wouldn't let her be in charge of them. She left school four years later without a single friend, though she had managed to become engaged to the Dean of Boys by then. I think he let her be in charge.

Reading my shock and disappointment, Tina reached out an arm to comfort me.
"But it doesn't matter now! Now that I know you, it doesn't matter that you're fat, or that your hair is messy. At first, I found myself...repelled, by you. But now you're the best friend I've ever had!"

Repelled. I have never forgotten that word. That was the word. I was repellent to her, that first day, when she smiled at me.

I didn't get mad at her, forthrightly. I just went to do laundry, and slammed things while I did it. I was blindsided by the honesty. Not often do you get to know what someone is really thinking, and when you know it, well, it is nobody's fault.

So I finished my laundry, and then I lost thirty pounds and began to use a curling iron and hairspray. One point alloted to all the dicks of the world who say they make fun of fatties to help them change. It didn't last, of course. Nervous breakdown and all that, it will pack on the pounds and cause you to ignore your beauty routines.

Sean says he can't stand to hear me talk bad about myself. But this stuff, it gets in your head and helps you define yourself. Repellent. If it had just been the mean Junior High boys who said it, maybe I could compartmentalize better. Repellent. But this was one of the nice people, the ones who don't say what they think right off. Repellent.

My problem is, I see no reason to believe everyone isn't still thinking it. I'm better at ignoring it. Maybe.