Chapter One:
BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!
What an awful way to wake up in the morning. There’s nothing like being snuggled deep under covers, perfectly relaxed and then a god-awful screech rips you from your slumber.
It’s amazing that the alarm clock is what woke her anyway, being the youngest of three girls. Middle and high school start times were a lot earlier than elementary, and of course it was the early 90s so big hair hadn’t completely run its course yet. Ahh… waking up to hair spray sizzling on a curling iron would have been nicer, but back to the BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! It would be years until wonderful cell phones were invented with soothing melodies to wake her up, instead of the dreaded alarm clock.
She tumbled out of bed, checked to make sure the coast was clear and stumbled across the hall to the bathroom. The bathroom to herself: a minor victory! Sisters showered, dressed, primped and heading off to school, Dad at work, Mom downstairs. Nothing left to do now but eat breakfast while watching Woody Woodpecker and get ready for school.
Oh, the first day of school. This past year the school had stopped listing next year’s teacher on the report card so you pretty much had to wait until summer was over and school started to find out what teacher you were going to have and who was going to be in your class. The last day of school used to entail calling your friend with your report card in hand, next year’s teacher listed at the top, asking them what class they were going to be in. On the last day of school she had still called one of her friends, but without being able to ask what class she would be in, asked what her grades had been instead. Her friend responded that her mom told her that her grades were nobody’s business but her own. Whoops. Okay, wanna ride bikes?
There weren’t many kids in the neighborhood where she grew up. Sure, she had friends that lived within a five block radius of the school, but none next-door or even on the same street. She was the youngest of her family by four and five years, and had missed out on the kids on the street generation. Her sisters had enjoyed the attention of boys on the street, and she got to be the baby in all the “house” games they played. Oh, and the butt of jokes, like the one time she butted into their conversation on the driveway and got her skirt flipped up. That pair of red and white checked underwear she had been wearing was forever after dubbed “the unlucky underwear.” Why didn’t she just throw them out?
But now school was back in session. This meant being popular, trendy (due to her older sisters’ fashion sense) and above all, a teacher’s pet. Oh, she would deny it, but she definitely loved and identified with her teachers. Always knowing answers, having her homework completed, and being helpful made her a teacher favorite. She absolutely used this to her advantage as well. While most of the time she was a model student, other times, her youngest child instincts kicked in, and often she kicked boys in the shin. The best response when being told on once; “Vanessa wouldn’t do that.” The look on that boy’s face was priceless. She knew she held all the cards, but didn’t overuse her power. She was never aiming to be teacher’s pet, but it always just sort of happened. Who would be her teacher this year?
It was easy to be labeled as teacher’s pet when following in the footsteps of two older sisters, also model students. And with a long, memorable last name, it was hard to even start with a clean slate. At least her sisters were easily likable; it would have been hard to dig out of a hole instead of riding high above ‘those kids.’
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