Belly Up Read online

  “Serendipity Rodriguez,” I said. “I think I’m supposed to see Mrs. Wong.”

  The secretary gave me a long assessing look before she picked up her phone. She was far more pleasant to Mrs. Wong than she was to me, continuing to ignore me both during and after the call. Fortunately, I wasn’t waiting with Cerberus long, as Mrs. Wong exited her office with a sheet of paper in her hand.

  “Hi, Sara. Good to see you again,” she said.

  “Hey. Hi.” I stood up as she offered me the paper.

  “I think this covers what we talked about at your first meeting for class assignments. We were able to get you into all your selections. Your homeroom is on the second floor, Room 212. I’ll show you.”

  “It’s fine,” I said, because I was pretty sure I could find it if the rooms were numbered, but she ignored me, exiting the office and pushing through the busy throngs of kids excited to see one another. Some people turned their heads to look at me—Stonington was bigger than my old high school, but that wasn’t saying a whole lot. I had a whopping fifty-five kids in my grade at Auburndale. Here, it was more like two hundred per grade, but that wasn’t so big that new blood wouldn’t stick out like a sore thumb.

  I did my best to ignore the scrutiny, instead trying to acquaint myself with my surroundings. Everything at Stonington looked newer than Auburndale, from the lockers to the desks to the bookshelves in the classrooms and the computers in the lab.

  “Is this place new?” I asked.

  Mrs. Wong nodded, her smart heels still managing to click on the hard floor despite the din of the burgeoning school day. “Mmm-hmm. Three years old. The football field and track are actually built where the old school used to be.”

  That explained it.

  A floor up and halfway across the building from where we’d started, Mrs. Wong stopped outside of a classroom and gestured me in. Everyone inside, including the teacher at the back of the room with a thick brown mustache and glasses, turned to look at me. The chatter quieted down.

  “Mr. Ciullo, this is our new student. Do you prefer Sara or Serendipity?” Mrs. Wong asked, her hand on the small of my back gently but firmly pushing me forward. My boots shuffled over the floor, my eyes skimmed the sea of faces in front of me, most overwhelmingly white, because that’s just how the burbs do in New England, I guess.

  Great. I’m diversity-pamphlet material two schools in a row now.

  Fun.

  “Sara,” I said.

  “Okay, everyone. This is Sara Rodriguez, newly transferred in. Be a helper, show her around.” Mrs. Wong leaned in close to me. “Questions, always feel free to stop by. We’ll be checking in regularly, but my door’s always open.”

  “Thanks, Mrs. Wong.”

  “Hello, Sara!” Came a booming male voice from the back. I followed it to the source. He had black hair slicked back into a ponytail that was just long enough to brush his shirt collar. He was big—both tall and wide—with a fair amount of extra weight and a hell of a great smile. He was also darker than the other kids. I hadn’t picked up on it on my first glance, but he would be accompanying me on my fateful journey onto the diversity pamphlet. He was brownish with deep chocolate eyes.

  “That’s enough, Leaf,” Mr. Ciullo said. “Sara, come on in. Have a seat. I’ll do roll call at the bell.”

  “Come sit next to me!” the kid named Leaf called out. “I’m friendly.”

  “Yeah, too friendly,” a redhead in the second row said.

  “You just love me too much, Bethy.” Leaf grinned.

  So much smile on one mouth.

  But I did sit next to him in spite of Bethy Whatever’s burn, and there’s a simple reason why. He was the other “ethnic” kid. He might not realize I was in the category yet, though my last name was a huge clue, but we were different than the people around us, and being near someone who might get what that felt like was a comfort. It was a safety-in-numbers thing that white kids would probably never understand.

  If your last name is Miller, no one asks you if you’re Mexican with their lip curled, completely ignoring every other Spanish-speaking country existing in the process. If you’re an Anderson, no one “jokes” about you being legal. And if you’re a Smith? No one assumes your single-parent mother is on welfare until you prove otherwise. Of course, once they learn she’s the Swedish parent, the narrative shifts completely, particularly when they discover my Hispanic father isn’t around anymore.

  “Typical,” they’d say.

  Hello, racism, my old friend. I’ve come to talk with you again.

  White people, even well-meaning people that I legitimately liked, said some pretty heinous crap to me sometimes upon hearing my last name, and I was about as pale as paper. It wasn’t such a long shot to think that the brown-skinned kid had it sixty times worse than I did.

  “Hi,” he said, leaning over his desk to offer his bear paw for a shake. I gave it. “I’m Leaf, like a leaf on the wind.”

  “Oh, like Firefly?”

  “Firefly. That’s a TV show, I take it?”

  “Yeah. It’s about space cowboys. Been off the air awhile. My mom likes it.” I shifted in my seat, self-conscious that my grand opener at my new school was something super dorky.

  “Ah. I should try it out, maybe. No, my birth name, Patrin, means leaf. Well, leaf trail, in Romani, but gadze screw it up and call me Patrick so I go by Leaf to make it easy.”

  “...what’s a—”

  “Non-Romani. I’m Stonington’s resident Rom. Gypsy, but don’t use that word. It’s a slur.”

  “Oh, hey. Uhh. Cool.” I hadn’t known the thing about the G-word, but I burned it to memory so I wouldn’t use it again. “Well, I’m probably their resident Hispanic so—”

  “Probably! This school is pure milk. Pretty nice milk, though, so there’s that.”

  Some other kids turned around to say hi to me then. A girl named Hannah with blue stripes in her long golden hair. A guy named Ryan who looked like a jock with glasses. Danielle, who had super short brown curls and big hoop earrings. I introduced myself to all of them, but any real chitchat was cut off when the bell rang and Mr. Ciullo took attendance. He seemed like a nice enough guy, cracking some pretty awful dad jokes as he checked us all off and gave us first-day instructions. These essentially boiled down to get to class on time, don’t be a dick and remember that any and all cell phones spotted out during class would be confiscated until the end of class per school policy. They could, however, be used to take pictures of boards and homework assignments at the end of class, but had to be put away at the beginning of the next class. They were also allowed in the halls between classes and at lunch.

  They were really explicit on the phone thing. Almost as explicit as they were on the fact that Friday we’d have what-to-do-in-case-of-a-school-shooter practice during our first two periods. They didn’t mention shooters, instead saying “standard safety procedures” but this was not my first time on the high-school-panic-button bus.

  Beware white dudes with guns, rehearsal at seven thirty.

  The bell rang and I headed off for my first class, Advanced Placement English, hoping I’d read enough of The Grapes of Wrath on my skim to be able to talk about it. They’d assigned it and The Great Gatsby as summer reading for the AP curriculum, but unlike other kids who’d had months to get through the slog of old-timey words, I’d had less than a week. Gatsby had been easy enough, but I was so depressed a third of the way into Grapes, I’d done myself the service of reading online talking points and watching the movie with Henry Fonda.

  This had been before the great baby blowout, so Mormor had been more than happy to be my copilot on the viewing. Too bad she’d talked through the whole thing, so my only takeaways were something-something-Rosasharn and everything sucks forever because Dust Bowl.

  These thoughts plagued me as I got lost in the hallway on my way to my first class
. I was spinning in a circle, frustrated I couldn’t figure out the layout when everything was so plainly numbered, when Leaf came gallantly to my rescue.

  “Where to, Serendipity?” He said my name like he was making music, exaggerating the syllables and playing with sound. It made me smile despite my usual knee-jerk reaction to correct him that it was Sara.

  “Uhhh, Mrs. Weller’s class? 233?”

  “This way, down around the corner,” he said, plucking at my backpack strap and leading me down the hall.

  “Thanks. Appreciate it. Being the new kid sucks.”

  He smirked. “No problem. You read the books?”

  “Arnold’s boo—OH! Yeah. Sort of? I read Gatsby and sorta got through Grapes, but I tapped out because I had less than a week.”

  “You might be able to wiggle out of it on account of new kid,” he said. “But if not, Weller’s going to drop an essay on our heads right off the bat, guaranteed. She’s kind of a hard-ass that way. It’s not bad if you know the trick.” Leaf paused in the hall and leaned down to whisper into my ear. I didn’t exactly shiver, but I did rub at my arm like I was itchy all over. “Hypothesis sentence, list three reasons why you believe the hypothesis. Three paragraphs explaining each reason, closing paragraph. Five paragraphs total, formulaic, you’ll get an A. Promise.”

  That sounded infinitely more pleasant than what I’d expected. I’d have said so but I was still quasi-distracted by his warm breath.

  Maybe this is the second trimester Horny Horny Hippo thing.

  “Cool, thanks. You’ve had Weller before?” I managed.

  “Yep. Freshman Honors English, AP English Junior and now senior year. She likes organization in papers more than anything else. Style over substance, baby. Every time.”

  “...you just called me baby.”

  “I did, didn’t I? Did you like it?” He winked at me and held out his hand to direct me into a classroom tucked around the corner. On one hand, I kinda liked it. Leaf was cute and friendly and big all over, which was a plus ’cause I liked big guys.

  On the other hand?

  I am knocked up with a stranger’s baby.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Weller was crafty. After a short introduction and dropping a fourteen-pound syllabus on our desks, she passed a hat around the class and made us pick either a red or a blue paper out of it. I got red. She then announced that the people with red papers were writing about Gatsby, the people with blue papers were writing about Grapes, and yes, there was a first day in-class essay.

  I glanced over at Leaf.

  He winked at me again.

  I shook my head and got scribbling, grateful that I’d survived round one of Weller. I took Leaf’s advice on formatting the paper, too, though I didn’t need it as much. I hadn’t exactly jumped for joy reading it, and the pool bit was a real downer, but I understood it fine and designed my entire paper around the last line of the novel, mostly because it was my favorite.

  That was the only class I had with Leaf. After that was Contemporary American Issues, followed by Health, which was hysterical, because one of the lines on the syllabus was absolutely about safe sex, STDs and pregnancy. That was going to get awkward as hell fast, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to subject myself to being an in-class demonstration-slash-moral tale. I made a mental note to bring it up to Mrs. Wong as soon as possible.

  Three classes down and it was lunchtime, which was good, because the starving Hoover factor was in effect. I could and would eat anything, except eggs because they were still gross to me, and I loaded up my tray with a turkey sandwich, Tater Tots, a side salad, an apple, milk and cookies. The chips were a little overboard but I had no regrets. I was living my best life.

  I was sitting by myself as new kids were relegated to do until someone took pity on them when Leaf called my name.

  “Seeeeeeerendipity. Come here!”

  Big voice filling a big room. One of the teachers whirled around and barked at him to sit down, but Leaf ignored her, standing up to wave me over. “Come here.”

  It was nice to not have to be off on Newbie-School-Kid Island by myself, so I picked up my tray and crossed the room. Leaf sat with two girls, one tall, reed-thin, with short red hair and gray eyes. She had freckles all over, a Fraggle Rock T-shirt beneath her plaid button-down and dime-sized red plug earrings in her ears.

  The T-shirt was an insta-win with me for obvious reasons.

  The other girl was shorter and rounder, more apple-shaped than I was, her hair done up in artful curls, her makeup and particularly her eyeliner perfectly applied. She wore a red-and-white-floral dress with a white shrug over top. Her hair was dyed black, but she pulled it off well, and her lips were fire-engine red. She had pretty light brown eyes with lashes for days, and a pair of black cat-eye glasses.

  She was also, apparently, involved with the tall skinny redhead. Because the redhead pulled her in for a quick kiss on the top of her head, both of their eyes skirting over to the lunch monitor because I’m guessing that was an illicit cafeteria move.

  Leaf motioned me to the bench across from him and grinned.

  “Serendipity Rodriguez, meet my friends, Morgan and Erin.”

  “Hey. Trans-queer girl,” Morgan said in greeting, eyeballing me warily. “So if that’s not your deal—”

  “Biracial, possibly bisexual but I’m not totally sure yet, girl-with-baggage,” I said in return. “So if that’s not your deal...”

  It must have satisfied Morgan as she sat up straighter in her seat and dropped a smile. “I like to get it out there so I don’t waste time on assholes.”

  “Fair,” I said. “I have a pretty strict asshole-free policy myself.”

  The other girl, Erin, gave herself a once-over in her compact mirror before going at her lunch. “Hey, I’m Erin. Sorry Morgan lacks chill.”

  “I have chill! But we live in Stepford.” Morgan motioned around her. “I have a theory that they reproduce by splitting in half, like amoebas. They’re actually all the same person.”

  Leaf giggled. It wasn’t what I’d expect from a big tall guy like him, but it worked. “There’s a lot of good people,” he said. “Some are jerks, but most are good people.”

  Erin nodded. “Morgan’s just being sarcastic.”

  “Sarcasm is like breathing for me.”

  “Puns, too,” Erin warned. “She likes puns.”

  “I love puns! And I’m good at them.”

  “That’s debatable.” Erin softened the dig by sharing a french fry with Morgan. Morgan snagged it between her teeth, play-snarling at her girlfriend. “Tell her the one you told me earlier.”

  “I can’t just pun on command, you know. It’s punreasonable.”

  “...what? No,” I said, because Morgan had attacked me. Morgan had attacked me with puns and I wasn’t having it. “You didn’t.”

  “I did,” Morgan said.

  “And she’ll do it again,” Erin added.

  “That’s how Morgan does.” Leaf unpacked his lunch, opening up a freshly microwaved Tupperware dish with beef and garlic and pepper inside. It smelled so good, my fingers practically itched to steal it. He must have noticed; he tipped the dish my way to taunt me with a whiff seconds before cutting off a piece and putting it on a napkin to slide it my way. “My father’s a good cook. He loves to cook for people, too. You should come over some time. Have some good Romani food.”

  “Is that the cabbage thing he makes?” Erin practically swooned in her seat. “With the beef and rice and spices? It’s so good.”

  “Oh, wow. I remember that,” Morgan said. “Mr. Leon’s a great cook.”

  I chewed what was effectively a spicy casserole wrapped in a cabbage leaf. It was delicious, and my yummy noises must have pleased Leaf, as he grinned.

  “It’s called sarma. And yes, it’s good, but don’t tell him that or he’ll get a
big head.” Leaf chuckled. “It’s spicy. I hope it’s not too much. My grandmother taught my father to cook, and she’s full Rom. I’m a little kinder with the pepper being a diddicoy.”

  For the second time since meeting him, I had no idea what a word he said meant.

  “A diddicoy?” I asked. “And that was amazing.”

  “Biracial Romani,” he said. “My mom was French. I learned to cook from both her and Dad. I’m not at Dad’s level yet, but one day. I’m going to be a chef, I think. If you stick around, maybe I’ll make you some of my famous honey tarts.” He waggled his eyebrows at me as if the honey tarts weren’t enticement enough.

  He’s flirting me up.

  I’m letting him.

  I’ll drop the baby ball soon! But this is the first fun I’ve had since Jack and that was three months ago now. I can indulge a little bit, right?

  I felt my cheeks go hot and looked down at my lunch tray. “I actually love spicy food. There’s a Mexican place in my hometown that makes the best enchiladas. They smother them in a jalapeño sauce that’s to die for. My mom and Mormor—my grandmother—are Swedish and they cook like Swedes—lots of sweet stuff. It’s good! I like it, but I prefer the spicy stuff. Maybe it’s in my blood. Thanks, Dad, wherever you may be.” I gestured vaguely at the sky before cramming potato chips into my mouth.

  “God, we have zero good Mexican places. Where are you from?” Erin asked. “Cause I’d be all over that.”

  “Auburndale. Just a town over. We moved in with my grandmother in August. I can show you sometime.”

  Erin practically glimmered. “Nice. We’ll have to check it out.”

  Leaf pulled silverware from his lunch bag and very precisely placed them on the napkin on the table before him. There was some significance to the ritual of the thing, but I wasn’t sure what it was, and it was probably rude to ask so I kept my mouth shut. “Will you miss it? Your friends?” he asked before tucking into his food.

  “Not really? It’s so close. Like, my best friend, Devi—she’s super cool—she lives ten minutes away from my grandmother’s house and I see her all the time. I’ll miss her at lunch, but that was about the only time we got to hang out during school, anyway. I don’t think it’ll be that bad. Plus, I got away from a trash ex-boyfriend by moving, so that’s nice.”