"If You Wanna Be My Friend..."
If you weren’t forced to ride the public school bus as a child, your parents deserve a bouquet of flowers and a resounding ‘thank you.’
I was horrifically oblivious when I was a kid, on and off the bus, and could not pick up any sort of social cue that I was being bullied. This was, ironically, both advantageous and a death sentence. Since I had no idea I was the bully’s target, they did not receive the hurt reaction they so desperately sought, which served as a deterrent because it simply wasn’t as entertaining to select me as their victim. However, since I was none the wiser to my abysmal treatment, they knew I’d never utter a word, and thus they had free reign with zero repercussions.
So I thought that Sporty Spice, as my mother used to call her, was my bestest friend in the entire world. My mother would, and still does, assign nicknames to my various school and neighborhood friends that hinged off of one aspect of them. Unfortunately, these nicknames did not spring from the kindness of her heart. Sporty Spice did not come packaged just by herself and had an almost-complete duplicate that was attached to her hip at all times. We’ll call her Blondie, and it's important for you to know that Sporty Spice and Blondie were those BFFs in elementary school. They made sure to let everyone else know that they were BFFs, and that their bond was nothing short of unbreakable. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that they had performed some blood pact or seance to combine their souls into one. They both shared their singular personality trait: playing lacrosse. That should also clue you into the fact that both the girls’ families were loaded to the point of obscenity.
I can report that since I’m still aware of these girls, they are still BFFs, and they both went to college for lacrosse. Which is good for them, I guess!
One morning in the beginning of fifth grade, I boarded the obnoxiously loud bus, eager to greet my friends. I sat down with them, three of us crammed in that tiny seat like all the miscellaneous homework papers shoved down into the depths of my rainbow backpack. Sporty Spice was the very first to broach the subject to me.
“There’s something important we need to talk to you about, Evey.” she says.
“Very important!” Blondie stupidly echoes.
I watch as Sporty Spice tears open her impeccably organized bag, rifling through color-coordinated folders to finally find an unassuming piece of paper.
“Since [REDACTED] and I are already in AAP together一that’s the ADVANCED PLACEMENT, since you might not know that.” Sporty Spice makes sure to point out the fact that her and Blondie are in the SMART classes while I, a mere idiot and peasant, am not and am instead with the rest of the bozos in GEN-ED. I most definitely knew what AAP stood for, especially because of the fact that the year later, I was moved into the program after my school had admitted they had made “a significant mistake” (their words, not mine!) in regards to calculating my AAP placement test scores. But for now, we’ll just focus on the fact that being assumed stupid for years by other fifth graders was not beneficial to my self-esteem. Sporty Spice continues with her monologue: “So we’ve decided to make a seating calendar. It’s only fair.”
“Only fair!” Blondie makes sure to tighten her ponytail so tight that it pulls on the edges of her face, and slaps on a headband that secures her pseudo-facelift.
“A seating calendar? Why?” I ask.
“See here, we marked the days that you’re allowed to sit with us. Every month we’ll make a new one for you, so you know when not to annoy us!”
If I was more socially adept, I might’ve started crying. Sporty Spice just called me an annoyance to my face, and went as far as to schedule when I was allowed to sit with them. Allowed? Were we not all eleven years old, with zero understanding of the real world or any true responsibilities? What authority did these girls hold over me that allowed them to even think that this was a normal thing to do, or a kind thing to do to their so-called friend?
Unfortunately, none of these questions managed to float up to the surface of my mind, and in hindsight, my response was a little embarrassing.
“Sure.” I shrugged, not dwelling on the social implications of what I had agreed to, or the absurdist nature of the entire friendship.
Sporty Spice smiled, and the clone did as well. I took the piece of paper; lined and torn from one of her many aesthetic notebooks. It really was a calendar, made to mimic the day line-up of September when I was eleven. Each square was a day, and had the number in the top right corner. Names were written in the middle, detailing which days said “Evey + [REDACTED] + [REDACTED]” and which days only said “[REDACTED] + [REDACTED].” I soon began to notice that only one or two days a week included my name, and that for the majority of the month, I was not scheduled to sit with them.
Later that night, I retold the happenings of the morning to my mother, worriedly guessing that the true reason behind the calendar the girls had imposed upon me was not in pursuit of fairness, like Sporty Spice had originally claimed, but instead because they did not want to sit with me at all. My mother confirmed that thought, reassuring me that these weren’t the types of girls that I should be friends with anyway, and that their parents were all “country-club idiots.” All my life, we would drive half an hour to my grandma’s neighborhood pool, a couple of towns over, that I assumed was a country club. The Lacrosse Clones would discuss their golf courses and indoor pools and tennis courts, and I would tell them that my country club (my grandmother’s neighborhood pool) had a diving board.
The school bus was an equalizer for all of us though, as no one was spared from the vaguely sweaty scent of the seats. Like most, my mornings were spent huddled around the back of the bus, where the engine purred and sputtered and it would start freezing cold, only to finally warm up by the time you pulled into the asphalt bus lot.
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