{"id":2510,"date":"2014-11-21T12:14:26","date_gmt":"2014-11-21T19:14:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/annleemiller.com\/?p=2510"},"modified":"2015-06-09T08:36:04","modified_gmt":"2015-06-09T15:36:04","slug":"friendless-first-day-school","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/annleemiller.com\/2014\/11\/friendless-first-day-school\/","title":{"rendered":"Friendless on the First Day of School"},"content":{"rendered":"

[Photo by By Alex Talmon<\/a>]<\/p>\n

Mom pulled our green Plymouth Duster in front of New Smyrna Beach High School smack at the front walkway teeming with football players and cheerleaders. I could tell by the \u201ccool\u201d wafting off them in waves.<\/p>\n

\"<\/a>

Wishard of Oz<\/a> via Compfight<\/a> cc<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cNo! Not here! Drive up further.\u201d The crutches tossed across the backseat\u2014remains from a broken ankle\u2014killed any modicum of cool I\u2019d ever had.<\/p>\n

Our perfectly adequate car, the one I\u2019d learned to drive in, morphed to shoddy.<\/p>\n

Mom inched forward and my stomach knotted into a figure eight, then the whole mess quivered like life had dropped a toaster in my bathwater. I just wanted a place where I belonged. A place to be safe. That\u2019s all I\u2019d ever wanted.<\/p>\n

First day of my junior year. Welcome to New Smyrna Beach.<\/p>\n

I chewed on my lip and eyed the brick school that presided over a marshy island in the Indian River, wedged between the mainland and the beachside. My eyes followed the covered walkway that led to cement rickrack framing a stark, two-story entryway. Students snaked up the stairs and across the balcony. One hundred percent of them would probably catch my grand entrance.<\/p>\n

The faint scents of fish and something sweet like orange blossoms hung in the heavy, humid heat.<\/p>\n

Morning sun glinted daggers into my eyeballs off the car ahead of us. It drove away, past the parking lot where a group of guys gathered near their motorcycles, chains that hung from their belts glittering in the sun. In the far corner of the lot huddled a group in surf shorts and T-shirts, snowy, sea-whitened hair falling on their shoulders. I wondered if they shared a joint.<\/p>\n

What had I been thinking when I went along with Mom\u2019s uprooting our family over a jalopy of a house\u2014a house that likely would never feel like home? I hadn\u2019t made friends with any of the ten places my family lived, not even the Volkswagen bus or my sailboat namesake, the Annie Lee<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

I hadn\u2019t thought about the Stuart friends<\/a> who had sunk down in my soul when the adults in my life went MIA. Those girls became the spoonful of sugar that made the hard years go down. And when I let them, they stood firm at True North on my moral compass.<\/p>\n

I hadn\u2019t weighed whether I could make friends all over again.<\/p>\n

And certainly I hadn\u2019t considered the first day at a new school.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

New Smyrna Beach High School in 1974<\/p><\/div>\n

No, I thought about running away from my regrets\u2014kisses I should have kept to myself, Marlboros<\/a>, marijuana<\/a>, and more I didn\u2019t want to resurrect.<\/p>\n

I gritted my teeth. One thing was for sure. I\u2019d make better choices in New Smyrna Beach.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love you, sweetie.\u201d Mom tried to sooth my nerves.<\/p>\n

But I wanted to bite her head off for breathing. I muttered something that sounded like, \u201cI love you, too.\u201d<\/p>\n

I sucked in a shaky breath and slid out of the car, hopped on one foot, and retrieved my crutches.<\/p>\n

\u201cLet me help you.\u201d<\/p>\n

I gave Mom a negative jerk of my head. The only thing worse than crutching through the gauntlet of \u201cit\u201d kids would be hobbling through them with mom in tow, nurse whites rumpled from her night shift at Fish Memorial Hospital.<\/p>\n

Which fish did the hospital memorialize, anyway?<\/p>\n

I rooted my eyes to the cement walk, polished smooth by all the feet that had gone before mine\u2014not daring to glance right or left.<\/p>\n

The crutch tips grabbed and released as I swung my body in graceless arcs toward the office. Three weeks, I told myself. I only had to survive three weeks, then New Smyrna Beach High School would become my new normal. I needed to suck it up. I wasn\u2019t a newbie to first days from hell. This was my ninth school.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"shinealight<\/a>

shinealight<\/a> via Compfight<\/a> cc<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

I gimped into the office and retrieved my newly minted schedule. The receptionist ran around her desk and opened the door for me.<\/p>\n

\u201cThanks.\u201d I smiled a wobbly smile I should have given Mom.<\/p>\n

I glanced down at my neon orange jeans and one Kelly green Converse. Maybe I could have chosen something less conspicuous. I blew out a puff of air. It didn\u2019t matter. I\u2019d been here five minutes and everybody had already seen me.<\/p>\n

I settled into a seat behind an IBM Selectric for my first period typing class.<\/p>\n

Dust motes floated in the sunshine coming through the windows and I breathed in the scent of Wite-Out and oil.<\/p>\n

A caffeinated, blonde version of Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz swished into the seat across from me in a flowered dress. \u201cHi I\u2019m Jackie Herold.\u201d She introduced seven other girls and invited me to the beach on Saturday before the bell rang to start class.<\/p>\n

Forty-one years later, we still dive into BFF whenever we can.<\/p>\n

\"<\/a>

M I T C H \u018e L L<\/a> via Compfight<\/a> cc<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

After Typing, I stood at the foot of the stairs, eying the students streaming up the right side and down the left. I clenched my books between my elbow and a crutch. Grass grew faster than I could climb stairs. My mind thumbed through my classes\u2014second and fifth periods would be on the second floor. That meant four trips a day up and down the steps on crutches for the remaining month I\u2019d be wearing a cast. Figured.<\/p>\n

A guy stopped. Pale curls sprung from where he\u2019d tried to comb them flat. Warm blue eyes smiled at me. \u201cCarry your books?\u201d<\/p>\n

I shoved my Spanish text and notebook into his arms before he got the words completely out. \u201cThanks!\u201d<\/p>\n

He laughed and told me his name was David Lossing, a lowly sophomore.<\/p>\n

The sea of students parted around us while I hoisted myself up one step. \u201cYou don\u2019t have to wait for me. Just leave the books at the top of the stairs.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAre you kidding, and miss a legit reason to be late for class?\u201d<\/p>\n

The rest of the day, in fact the rest of the month, boys carried my books and even a few girls.<\/p>\n

Linda Reader, a teacher barely ten years my senior, James Knox, John Scrivano, Kyle Avery, and the rest of the creative writing class took me in\u2014just another right-brained book nerd\u2014like I\u2019d been born in New Smyrna Beach. My people.<\/p>\n

\"RS<\/a>

RS 1990<\/a> via Compfight<\/a> cc<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

At three p.m. I clomped to Mom\u2019s Duster\u2014parked in the exact spot where I\u2019d left her.<\/p>\n

I shot the smile I should have given her this morning over the back seat as I tossed in my crutches.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow did it go?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cGreat!\u201d Sweaty and exhausted, I rubbed my sore biceps.<\/p>\n

Mom putted the mile home while I spilled every detail of the best first day of school. Ever.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t have to make friends. They found me.<\/p>\n

My junior and senior years unspooled while this leafy, water-fingered town nestled down in me\u2014not as a new normal\u2014but as the place I\u2019d always call home.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

If you’d like to leave a comment below, share where you found home.<\/p>\n

\n

To get my blogs in your e-mail, just type your address in the empty box on the right and click the \u201cSubscribe\u201d button beneath the box.<\/em><\/strong><\/h4>\n

Check out my New Smyrna Beach novels by clicking on the covers.<\/p>\n

\"Avra's<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \"Tattered<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \"Kicking<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0 \"The<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Photo by By Alex Talmon] Mom pulled our green Plymouth Duster in front of New Smyrna Beach High School smack at the front walkway teeming with football players and cheerleaders. I could tell by the \u201ccool\u201d wafting off them in waves. \u201cNo! Not here! Drive up further.\u201d The crutches tossed across the backseat\u2014remains from a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2511,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[2,66,322],"tags":[167,136,169,168,166],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\nFriendless on the First Day of School - Ann Lee Miller<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/annleemiller.com\/2014\/11\/friendless-first-day-school\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Friendless on the First Day of School - Ann Lee Miller\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"[Photo by By Alex Talmon] Mom pulled our green Plymouth Duster in front of New Smyrna Beach High School smack at the front walkway teeming with football players and cheerleaders. 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