First days of school are always made out to be this momentous occasion full of school-spirited montages. In reality, it goes on like any other day, only the parking lot is generally more of a disaster as the sophomores who now have parking spots try to navigate it for the first time. I usually parked Norma as far on the outskirts of the lot to avoid the mess. I looped my book bag over my shoulders and headed inside, barely dodging a driver who was racing to get a close spot. I yelped, jumping back, and waited for the person to come out of the car so I could give them an earful.
“Did you even see me there? You almost hit me!” I yelled.
“Oh my God, I’m so sorry,” said a very familiar voice. As he climbed out of his car, his look of panic turned into a frown.
“Since when do you go here?” I asked George.
He slung his bag across one shoulder and started to walk toward the front door. I barely kept up with him, my short legs working double just to keep up with his long stride.
“I transferred this year,” he said.
“Why would you transfer for your senior year?” I asked.
“Junior,” he replied.
“That explains the driving,” I replied.
He shot me a sideways glance before shaking his head in the same fashion as he had dropping me off at my house yesterday. We started down the hallway, and I smiled at a few people as we walked by. They all looked quizzically at George as he passed. We made it almost down to the cafeteria, near where my locker was, before we ran into Grace.
“Hey, you two! What a fun surprise,” Grace said, enveloping me in a hug. She pulled George into a hug, too, and he awkwardly patted her back.
“Can you actually show me where the office is?” George asked Grace.
“I could have shown you,” I said.
“I’m perfectly fine without your help,” he repeated back at me. The words that I’d spat out at him in my moment of panic stung when they were thrown back in my face. Grace’s mouth fell open, and she looked between us for a few seconds.
“Fine. Have a super first day,” I said. I turned on my heel and started to walk the opposite way down the hallway, away from my locker, with no destination in mind. The stinging of tears and the lump in my throat started to creep up, and I looked everywhere for the nearest bathroom. I refused to be the girl crying in the hallway on the first day of school.
The girls’ restroom at the end of the hall came into view, and I started to speed-walk in that direction. But, the universe had a fun way of interrupting me when I was on a mission.
“Savannah!” I heard from the doorway of a classroom. I turned around slowly to take in a waving Mrs. Brandt, who cradled a cup of coffee in her hands. At least some things stayed consistent from year to year. She waved me over to talk to her, and I cursed internally.
“I see you’re not signed up for newspaper this year. You’re going to leave me hanging without one of my best reporters?” she asked.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Brandt,” I said. Genuinely, it was a tough decision to not take newspaper this year. It was between newspaper and AP chem, which I needed to get into the engineering program at Indiana State. Ever since Ashley decided that she was going to Indiana State, I found out the requirements for getting into my program and was doing everything in my power to make that happen. “I couldn’t fit it into my schedule this semester.”
“Who’s your counselor?” she asked, leading me inside to her desk. She scrounged around through two overstuffed drawers and on through a filing cabinet until she found a scrap of paper to write on.
“Mr. Reed,” I said.
She scribbled a few notes down on the slip of paper before handing it to me. “Go talk to Mr. Reed and see if you can start an independent study for newspaper. I can meet with you after school to collaborate on story ideas. I understand if you have too much on your plate. Just think about it. I hate to see you give up something that you’re so great at.”
As I went to grab the paper, Mrs. Brandt really looked me in the eyes for the first time in her frenzy. Her face immediately turned to concern.
“Is everything all right?” she asked. “I’m sorry if I overwhelmed you.”
“No, no, it’s not you,” I said, wiping under my eyes to catch some spillover tears. The warning bell rang, signaling that I had five minutes to make it to my first class of my senior year. Students started to roll into Mrs. Brandt’s classroom, and I took this as my cue to leave. “I’d better get to class. I’ll talk to Mr. Reed.”
“Ah—okay, talk to you soon,” she shouted after me as I dodged my way through a sea of students. I moved through them like an emotionless zombie, my usual resolve during difficult or painful days taking hold. I never cried in front of people who weren’t Ashley. It was like not having her as an emotional buffer was opening the floodgates to all emotional interactions with people. I was not a fan of this change, to say the least.
I spotted Grace, alone this time, on the other side of the hallway. Her eyes widened when she saw me, and we rushed to reach each other.
“I see you and George have already started World War Three,” she said.
“I might have accidentally started it. But to be fair, he did almost run me over in the parking lot this morning,” I replied.
“Because he was mad at you?” she asked.
“No! On accident. But I might have given him some crap for it,” I said.
“Of course you did,” she said, rolling her eyes and smirking. We walked together to our first-period class. “Remind me again why I agreed to eight thirty calc?”
“Because this is the only one that fit into my schedule and you wanted to have full access to my notes,” I said. I linked my arm with hers. “And because you love me.”
“This is really testing my love right now,” she said.
“So Mrs. Brandt wants me to do an independent study for the paper,” I said, sliding into a desk in our calculus room. Grace’s eyes went wide and she clapped excitedly.
“Tell me you’re going to do it. We can work on a big investigative story like we’ve talked about for years! Come on, you’ll be the best partner ever because you already appreciate all my character quirks. Please, Savvy, please do this!” she said.
“I’ll think about it,” I said, playing around with the sheet of paper that Mrs. Brandt had given me. The warning bell rang, and more of our classmates filled in the chairs around us. Our teacher, Mr. Kavach, went to the front of the room and started rattling off attendance and the nerdy school-loving part of my brain got excited.
Even with my morning brain, calculus came easy to me. It gave me a chance to use everything I’d learned before, all the ideas from algebra and geometry that I’d taken the time to memorize, and build upon them. It let me solve things in a perfect world, where the only things that mattered lived on the page. I could decide how to get to the answer. I had the freedom to find my own path. Also, Mr. Kavach was pretty cool, which helped.
Grace scribbled down notes idly next to me, which were probably more like doodles. She knew that I took great calc notes and we would study together eventually. The class drew to a close, and Grace packed up her things quickly.
“I’ve got to go meet Ben out by his locker, but I’m honestly begging you to do the independent study with me. You’re such a great writer, Sav, the paper needs some hard-hitting reporters this semester,” she said.
Ben was Grace’s newly minted boyfriend. They worked at Famous Footwear together over the summer, and a relationship blossomed among the surrounding sneakers and Ugg boots. I was still a little weary of Grace dating a jock, but he seemed nice enough from the few times that I’d met him.
“I’ll seriously think about it,” I said.
“You better!” she said, blowing me a kiss as she walked down the hallway. “See you at lunch!”
* * *
After school I picked up a happy Fiyero from the groomer, his fur looking clean for the first time in weeks. I guess that’s the risk you take adopting a white puffball of a dog. He’s pristine for a few hours before he rolls in something he shouldn’t. Fiyero frowned at me as I buckled him into his harness in the back seat and then I imagine had thoughts of panic when he realized I was driving. Animals are very attuned to imminent danger.
Norma pulled through once again and delivered us home with only minor psychological trauma, mostly on Fiyero’s part. I apologized to him profusely for almost knocking him over after a particularly sharp right turn. He dashed out of the car once I opened the door and jumped into the arms of my mother, who was home from work. She already had her too-tight bike pants and sports bra on. It was an effort to show off her transformation to the neighbors, like they all didn’t notice her new body already.
“How was your first day?” she asked as Fiyero licked a giant, slobbery kiss onto the side of her face.
“It was fine,” I said. “Is it possible for senioritis to already be kicking in?”
“Oh, come on, you love school!” she said. “You’re so smart, Savannah Lynn. Don’t let the concept of a senior slack year throw you off from your trajectory.”
“Don’t worry about me, Mom,” I said. Normally, I’d add something like “You haven’t much in the past,” but Ashley’s advice on picking my battles rose to mind. If we were going to make our cohabitation without Ashley work, I’d have to work on the whole “processing what I was going to say before blurting it out” thing.
We walked through the door and Fiyero immediately went to his container of treats, as if he deserved a treat for surviving the car ride with me. I couldn’t really argue with his logic. He sat patiently as I grabbed one of the smelly bones from the smelly container and set it down in front of him. I was about to head upstairs and start on my homework (after one deserved episode of Buffy, of course), when Mom called my name.
“Savannah, come back down here for a second,” she said.
Nothing good ever started with that sentence.
“As you know, it’s almost been six months since my time on Shake the Weight,” she said when I reached the foot of the stairs. “They are getting ready to film their check-in special and want to come by the house next week to get some footage. It will be mostly of me doing things in my everyday life. They might ask to interview you about how things have changed. You know, just basic things.”
“Are you having Ashley come home for it?” I asked.
“Oh, no, sweetie. She needs to adjust to her schedule at school. Coming back only two weeks in would mess up the routine she’s establishing. You wouldn’t want to set her back, would you?” she asked.
“Definitely not,” I replied. My gut lurched. Having to go on camera and speak positively about my mom’s transformation sounded like a nightmare. Not only did I disagree with everything the show stood for, but a smaller, more vicious part of my subconscious believed that they’d ask if I was interested in being on their teen Shake the Weight show. I couldn’t handle someone asking me that.
“You don’t seem very excited,” she said, frowning. “It will be great for our community to be featured again.”
“You know how I feel about this show, Mom,” I said.
She sucked in her cheeks before putting her hand to her forehead. “Why is it always such a battle with you to ask for your support?”
“I support you. I don’t support the show,” I said.
“I am me because of that show, don’t you get it? I was no one before it. Now I’m someone. I can finally be my true self. Isn’t that something worth celebrating?” she asked.
“You were someone to me,” I said quietly. We sat in a few beats of silence before she turned her back on me, heading into the living room.
“Can I at least ask you to fake it? Smile pretty for the cameras when they come?” she asked.
“Whatever,” I said, continuing the journey upstairs to my room. The only person who would understand and support my decision to fight back in this moment wasn’t here, but I needed to hear her voice. And I had a feeling she needed to hear mine right about now, too.
The phone rang twice before Ashley answered on the other end of the line.
“Hi, cutie,” she said when she answered.
“It’s so good to hear your voice,” I said. “How was your first day of classes? Did you make any friends? Enemies? Frenemies?”
She laughed. “My roommate moved in! She’s pretty great. And I ended up having a few classes with the girl Yael from down the hall. Only time will tell if we become frenemies.”
“I have a feeling Yael will not be a frenemy,” I said.
“Stop, we don’t even know yet if she’s interested in me,” she said.
Oh, Ashley, always the practical one, never the dreamer.
“I’m just saying, she was super cute,” I said.
“Enough about me. What about you? How was your first day?” she asked.
“I almost got run over by Grace’s cousin. I think I’ve started a feud with him. Still unclear at this point,” I said.
“See? You have enough frenemies for the both of us,” she said.
I twirled a piece of my hair around my finger so tightly that it started to turn blue. I tried to figure out the best way to break the news that Mom and I had our first big fight sans Ashley. There was no good way to start.
“So,” I started. “Shake the Weight is coming to film some check-in footage of Mom next week.”
After a long pause, “Oh,” was all she could say.
“Just when you think you’ve exorcised the demons,” I said.
“Does she want me to come back home?” she asked.
“Oh, gosh no!” I said. “You stay put. You’re still getting used to things. I have to at least give you some time to make a frenemy before you can come back for a visit.”
“You’re sure you don’t want me to come back home?” she asked.
Of course I did. I wanted more than anything for her to come back and be the sister who does all the talking on camera. I wanted her to be in the footage, with Mom and Fiyero in the background. No one would judge her for being the fat daughter who didn’t follow her mom’s advice she learned from Shake the Weight. No one would question her.
“I’m positive. I’ve got this,” I said.
“I told you you’re stronger than you think,” she said. “I’m proud of you, Sissy. Things are going to be okay with us separated, you know? It’s just something we’ll have to get used to.”
“At least for this year. And then I’ll come join you and we can be roommates and go back to normal,” I said.
She paused on the other end of the line again. “You’re sure you want to come here? You’re one of the smartest people I know—you can probably get in somewhere even better than here.”
“Of course I’m sure!” I said. “This is only temporary. As long as I know that this is only temporary, I feel much better about everything.”
“Whatever you say,” she said. I could almost imagine her shaking her head in her dorm room. I heard the sound of a door slamming, and Ashley said a quick hello to her roommate.
“Isabel is back. Can I call you tomorrow?” she asked.
“Sounds good,” I said. “Do you want to start season two of Scandal tonight? We could text throughout however many episodes as we can stay awake for?”
“You know it,” she said. “I have to support my girl Olivia Pope.”
“Good. As long as we both express our mutual love for OP over text message, then all is right with the world,” I said. “I miss your face so much already.”
“I miss your face more. Talk to you later, ’kay?”
“’Kay. Bye, Sissy,” I said. The line cut abruptly on the other end before she could echo back her typical “Bye to you, too, Sissy.” I looked at the phone in my hand for a few seconds, waiting to see if she’d call back to correct her mistake. The phone stayed silent in my hand, and I flopped onto my bed, letting out a long sigh.
Week one without Ashley: 1. Savannah: 0.