“Oh nuts!”

I bent down to pick up my dropped backback with the papers flying everywhere just as the schoolbus was rolling up. The driver honked his horn in annoyance at me as David, my younger brother, and the two neighborhood kids who were his friends smugly strode across the street without bothering to help me. “Come on, Rosemary!” David shouted.

I scooted quickly across the street as other drivers, waiting for the bus to move on, honked their horns smartly. Blowing a lock of hair out of my mouth as I dashed up the stairs, I looked for an empty seat and accidentially made eye contact with Derek Mahoney, who, startled, nodded at me quickly before going back to goofing off with his friends.

Maybe it wasn’t such a bad start to a Monday morning after all.

I managed to find a seat by myself in the middle of the bus, behind the boy who was suspected of picking his nose in public, and across the way from the weird girl who never talked to anybody. The boy was reading a magazine and the girl was looking out the window.

As the bus trundled off to the next stop on the way to our endpoint, the Thomas F. Wilson Middle School, where I was an eighth grader, I sat back and reviewed the school year so far. It was barely October, and I was not feeling positive about the year. I don’t know what happened over the summer – I had spent many happy hours at the pool club with my friends Colleen and Veronica. I had gone to the movies, and to the mall, and even had a small birthday party in June.

I was really looking forward to starting eighth grade – we’d waited two years to finally “rule the school.”

But then something bad happened. My luck was ruined. Literally. My Irish grandmother had given me a gold four-leaf clover charm on a necklace when I started sixth grade, and the charm worked. I took to rubbing it absentmindedly (or actually, purposefully when I was taking a test) and things were great for two years. I felt reasonably happy.

Then stupid David had to mess it all up. Usually I took it off before going to the pool club and left it on my dresser, but the day before we went back to school, I had left it on the kitchen counter. I came home to find that David and his dumb friends who were over had decided to experiment with what happened to certain objects when you stuck them in the garbage disposal. They put in a spoon, a stick of celery, and my lucky charm! Needless to say, only one and a half leaves of the clover were undamaged. The others were mangled. But because I loved my Grandma Molly, I wore it anyway on the first day of school.

That was when everything started to go downhill. I found out that I wasn’t placed with Colleen in the special advanced program. I still took the same classes as she did, but in addition she and the other “gifted” students had really cool extra trips and opportunities for what my mother called “enrichment.” It was more homework, but alos more fun – and more social and academic cachet. Even though most of the teachers tried to be fair, it was clear that the students in that class caught more than a little bit of a break.

Meanwhile, I was stuck in the same homeroom as usual with Veronica, which would have been fine except she suddenly got a case of “the borings,” by which I mean, she never wanted to do anything.

Take this dance coming up on Friday night for example. Other girls are all running around talking about what dresses they’re going to wear, and if they’re going to go with a boy, and which one they’d like to go with, but Veronica doesn’t feel like it. She’d rather sit around at home and, I don’t know, play dolls with her little sister. It’s quite exasperating.

As a result, I’ve been worried that Colleen is trying to ditch us. I can’t say I blame her. Veronica may be a weight to me, but my lack of anything special going for me is a I am a weight to her rise. That’s why I try to be as confident and cheerful as I can when I am around her and always limit my time with her, so as not to impose or make her lose patience with me.

In other schools, maybe it is more important to be good at sports or be a cheerleader or something, but in my school, it is a little more complicated. To be popular, you have to either be very smart, very good at sports, or very outgoing. You don’t have to be wealthy, necessarily, although that also helps. And you have to really want to be at the top of the heap, but you can’t act like you want that. That’s the key thing. And of course, as my mother is forever pointing out, you have to have self confidence.

The bus stopped abruptly, jolting me out of my reverie. I stood up and joined the line that filed off the bus and streamed into the school. I crunched through a pile of brilliant red and yellow leaves, I barely noticed what a beautiful day it was outside. David ran past me, whacking me on the shoulder. “See ya, sis!” he shouted cheerily. I wish I had his positive attitude, but then again, he was only in sixth grade and didn’t know any better.

*

I stood at my locker and unpacked my bag, hoping for a glance from Derek, whose locker was down the hallway from mine. I was on the third year of my crush on Derek and hadn’t said more than ten words to him despite the fact that we rode the same bus every day, attended the same church, and our parents were acquaintances.

If I had just struck when the iron was hot two years ago, when I suddenly realized in the middle of science class that he was my eternal love, then I might have had a chance. But over the years, other girls noticed his blue eyes, kind manner, and terrific smile, and then he was the captain of the basketball team, and that was it for me. Out of the running. Still, I had heard that he hadn’t had a date for the dance on Friday yet, and I was seriously considering throwing caution to the wind and asking him.

Colleen materialized. “Hi!” she said cheerily. “How was your weekend?”

“Oh you know, went skiing in Austria with the count,” I said breezily. “You?”

“Nothing much,” Colleen said cagily. “Studied for the pre-trip exam with Didi and the girls.” She rolled her eyes, but I wasn’t fooled. Didi and her two friends, BeBe and CieCie were the most popular girls in school. Studying with them was almost an honor. I laughed it off. “Sounds very exciting!”

Hoping to change the subject, Colleen looked around. “There he is,” she said and pointed. I grabbed her arm and pulled it down before Derek could see, but he wasn’t looking my way anyway.

“You totally should have gone after him in sixth grade,” she said. “I still can’t believe you couldn’t ever bring yourself to even say hello.”

“It’s those blue eyes,” I said. “And that smile. But now he’s captain of the basketball team and a hot ticket. Too hot for me to handle!”

Colleen looked around mischieviously to see if anyone was looking. “Didi said that he doesn’t have a date for the dance on Friday yet. She’s thinking of asking him – but why don’t you give it a shot?”

Just then, the bell rang. Well, Thomas F. Wilson Middle School actually doesn’t use a bell. They use a long beeeeep sound that is incredibly irritating. But at least I didn’t have to answer Colleen’s question. It was time for homeroom, and we went our separate ways.

*
When I got to Mr. Lahr’s homeroom, Veronica was already there. She looked up from her notebook and smiled. I smiled back just as I got whacked in the head with a notebook that Bob Burns had hurled across the room. “Rosemary, get out of the way!” he shouted irritably. “I was trying to hit the trashcan.” Bob and his stupid friends all laughed at me, and I sat down, red-faced, next to Veronica. “You should just ignore them,” she said. Easy for her to say. I played with my four-leaf clover, running the tips of my fingers over the bent and damaged leaves.

“Have you considered getting a new necklace?” Veronica asked for the zillionth time.

I don’t know why my rubbing the remains of my luck bothered her so much, but she really didn’t like it

“Why does it bother you so much?” I answered for the zillionth time. She never gave me a clear answer, but I liked to think that it was just the aesthetics that offeneded her. Veronica was a plain but fastidious dresser.

“Rosemary, what are you wearing to the dance on Friday?” Portia, the new girl who just started at Wilson this year, leaned over to inquire. Portia was a bit of an enigma to me. On the one hand, she was nice to everybody. On the other hand, she wasn’t too nice to anybody. It was as if she was on some kind of a diplomatic mission and was trying to figure out who the power players and decision makers were before committing to anyone. She was on the field hockey team with me and Colleen. (Veronica, who hated sports, was an unenthusiastic flutist with the band and would probably quit when we got to high school). Anyway, Portia had joined the dance committee right away, probably to scope out the scene.

I turned to Portia and smiled my friendliest smile. “My mom and I went shopping on Saturday,” I announced. “And she bought me a beautiful blue dress that I saw in a magazine.” I had loved that photo – the model was on a beach at sunset and a handsome young man with his pant legs rolled up was walking toward her. I loved the dress because it made me feel so romantic. Too bad I did not yet have a date.

“I’m wearing a black cocktail dress,” Portia announced. I was impressed. My mother said black was too sophisticated for middle school and wouldn’t even look at the offerings in the department store.

Veronica got that bored look on her face that she always did when the dance was brought up. Portia asked her, “Veronica, what about you?”

“Oh,” Veronica said vaguely. “I’m not going.” Portia looked as if Veronica had announced she was from Mars.

“What? Why not? It’s going to be great!” Portia looked as if she had been personally wounded by Veronica, who was already flipping through her notebook. So Portia turned to me and rolled her eyes. Sometimes Veronica doesn’t know what

Mr. Lahr, a gentle, somewhat doddering elderly gentleman who was also a math teacher, flailed his arms to bring the room to attention. “Boys and girls,” he called. “Boys and girls, it is time for announcements…” he trailed off as the school intercom static kicked in. I listened to the announcer, a seventh grade cut-up named Josh, and absentmindedly played with my clover. This dance thing was becoming more and more complicated by the minute, and my luck had to come back soon.

*

On my way to English class, I stumbled on the rug over by the cafeteria, where they were doing repairs. Of course I had to do it in front of Didi and her clique, all of whom saw me go flying and laughed.

“Did you have a nice trip, Rosemary?” BeBe cackled. CieCie snickered too, while Didi smirked at me. I quickly looked at the floor as my cheeks flamed. I wished I were one of those people who always had a good comeback, but as usual, I fell short. I picked up my notebooks and scuttled away, a hard feeling in the pit of my stomach.

As I slid into my seat, yet another thing went wrong. Bob Burns, the obnoxious jerk from my homeroom who had clocked me with his notebook, was waiting for me. As soon as I settled down and pulled out a pencil, Bob launched his first paperball at me. It ricocheted off my ear and landed in my lap. Bob and the other boys snickered until Miss Parker entered.

“To Kill a Mockingbird,” she announced, “Is a great piece of American literature.”

Though we were all supposed to be in the advanced English class, some of the dumber boys groaned. Miss Parker persevered. “We will read this masterpiece, and then we will watch the movie and discuss it.”

Since I already had read the book over the summer, and watched the classic movie with my dad, a Navy man who loved old films, I tuned out Miss Parker’s paean to Gregory Peck’s masterful portrayal of Atticus Finch and considered Colleen’s comments earlier that day. Was it a good idea to ask Derek to the dance? It was certainly a risky move. If he said yes, my social capital would be much replenished. But if he were to say no…well that news would get around faster than the time when Heather Nelson had the flu and threw up in a trashcan during the math exam last January. She recovered but all the time, people still asked her how she was feeling with mock sincerity. Heather, however, was a terrific volleyball player and was able to recover both her health and her reputation, although people still inquired, with mock sincerity, whether she was feeling ok.

“Rosemary?” Miss Parker was looking at me.

I blinked and let go of the twisted bit of metal that had been a clover leaf. Bob and his gang snickered. I was so embarassed that I really wished the floor would just open up and swallow me. Yet the cheap linoleum stayed put, darn it all anyway.

“Did you read the book, Rosemary?” Miss Parker asked.

“Yes,” I said, drawing myself up.

“Well, then, maybe you can describe to me the main theme of the book, then.”

*

As I collected my books together after class, I felt reasonably satisfied with my ability to recover. Certainly, Miss Parker seemed happy, holding me a few more minute