Across the room, Laura Woodsong sat at a table with Shannon McCoy and some other squeaky-clean Mormon kids. Laura raised her hand and flapped it at Cheryl, who in turn pretended not to see that undignified way of communicating. Cheryl pretended not to see the way Laura quit waving then got a look of disappointment and then smiled it away. Not cool.
Home Ec class shouldn'tve been after lunch when they weren't hungry. Apparently this was a really popular class with the Mormon chicks. Cheryl already knew quite a bit about cooking and she was good at it. She spent the hour fending off boredom as the teacher droned on about all the supposedly fascinating things about measuring solids and liquids. And then Cheryl's head began nodding and she started falling asleep, until finally her hand slipped from under her face and her head slammed down on the desk. Everybody laughed, and Cheryl could no longer hide her feelings.
She stood up from her desk, groggy and yet pissed off, and she said,
"Y'all don't have to be treating me this way. You all act like a bunch of cows. Anybody different from you makes you chew your cud harder and waddle away. You can all just go ahead and laugh all you want. I'm not really here anyway. None of you matters to me."
She successfully swallowed back tears as she went and sat on the far end of the room. After class the teacher tried to come and talk to Cheryl but it was too late. Santaquin high school was dead to her now unless something changed-fast.
After school Cheryl went into her room, turned on her Roberta Flack record and while "Killing Me Softly" and the singer's rich, caramel tones soothed her, still Cheryl couldn't hold back her tears. How did it all come to this, when everything had been so perfect in Ogden?
Last 4th of July there had been a huge party in the Brownes' back yard, in their custom home high up on the benches on the east side of Ogden Valley, with a balconey overlooking a beautiful view of the town, especially after sunset when the lights looked like a blanket of stars. Laura's mom, her dad's second wife, always threw great parties and this independence day was no exception. Dad's business clients and their wives were all standing around having sodas or martinis, when all of a sudden Cheryl's half-brother, Clint, had come into the backyard and served her father with legal papers, right there in front of everybody. Her dad had stuffed them in his back pocket but it was too late--the party thereafter had a pall over it.
The kids in the far end of the yard had started a small fire in the fire pit. They all noticed the diminishment of fun and they speculated over what had happened after Clint Browne showed up.
Home Ec class shouldn'tve been after lunch when they weren't hungry. Apparently this was a really popular class with the Mormon chicks. Cheryl already knew quite a bit about cooking and she was good at it. She spent the hour fending off boredom as the teacher droned on about all the supposedly fascinating things about measuring solids and liquids. And then Cheryl's head began nodding and she started falling asleep, until finally her hand slipped from under her face and her head slammed down on the desk. Everybody laughed, and Cheryl could no longer hide her feelings.
She stood up from her desk, groggy and yet pissed off, and she said,
"Y'all don't have to be treating me this way. You all act like a bunch of cows. Anybody different from you makes you chew your cud harder and waddle away. You can all just go ahead and laugh all you want. I'm not really here anyway. None of you matters to me."
She successfully swallowed back tears as she went and sat on the far end of the room. After class the teacher tried to come and talk to Cheryl but it was too late. Santaquin high school was dead to her now unless something changed-fast.
After school Cheryl went into her room, turned on her Roberta Flack record and while "Killing Me Softly" and the singer's rich, caramel tones soothed her, still Cheryl couldn't hold back her tears. How did it all come to this, when everything had been so perfect in Ogden?
Last 4th of July there had been a huge party in the Brownes' back yard, in their custom home high up on the benches on the east side of Ogden Valley, with a balconey overlooking a beautiful view of the town, especially after sunset when the lights looked like a blanket of stars. Laura's mom, her dad's second wife, always threw great parties and this independence day was no exception. Dad's business clients and their wives were all standing around having sodas or martinis, when all of a sudden Cheryl's half-brother, Clint, had come into the backyard and served her father with legal papers, right there in front of everybody. Her dad had stuffed them in his back pocket but it was too late--the party thereafter had a pall over it.
The kids in the far end of the yard had started a small fire in the fire pit. They all noticed the diminishment of fun and they speculated over what had happened after Clint Browne showed up.
