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Show difficulty that caused me time and again to check in with Steven Slater at school. But there was also the fact that we owned an Intellevision rather than an Atari, played Tron rather than Space Invaders, the matter of Chinese jacks and how few I had, as well as how poorly I played Chinese jump rope, plus the absence of a Trapper Keeper in the school backpack my father bought me in Korea, my knock-off Member's Only jacket (also from Korea), the lack of variety in my Dove shorts collection, and, potentially most damning of all, the knowledge that at the age of twelve I still loved to play Barbies. My hair, too, fell stringy and unshaped, so tangled and hanging in my face that once Stacy's mother, I suppose to make some kind of point about grooming, made me undress my twelve-year-old body and put me in her shower so that she could wash my hair and then comb it. Everything about me seemed inadequate. Walking into the school cafeteria on the first day at a new school, I looked for the one girl reading by herself, the one all alone, the one with long red hair that flowedHke lava down her back, a fantasy novel concealing her bologna sandwich. I would ask to join her, armed with my own novel, the latest Anne McAffrey maybe, and the two of us would read through lunch, never speaking, never lifting our heads from the page, but less alone in the sea of teenagers. Those who were already on the outside wouldn't hurt me, wouldn't call me poodle head or four eyes, wouldn't mock the corduroy pants I had to cuff at the bottom because my mom bought them two sizes too large so that I could grow into them. Pictures of me from this age inevitably show me with my hands across my body, my fingers in my mouth, watching from the side. So when someone like Stacy invited me into her life, I was grateful. Most of the time, I was content to go unnoticed and unpicked. I expected it. I would be the last 140 |