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At the end of eighth grade, my homeroom teacher marched us into the cafeteria and handed out number two pencils. We sat at long bench tables covered in graffiti scratches and filled in circles on endless pieces of paper. Define the word "rubicon." In the diagramed sentence, which word is the verb? What is the product of 3,451 and 6,788? I glanced across the table at my best friend and we both shrugged our shoulders. We didn't realize this test would seal our fate over the next four years.
I forgot about the test that summer, and my best friend and I explored the firefly fields behind my house and rode banana seat bikes down Cold Spring Hill and picked blackberries in Mrs. Dickenson's garden until our fingers turned purple. We slept in the screen gazebo in my friend's backyard and watched the night sky for falling stars. We bought push-up popsicles at the penny candy store and sat on the Revolutionary War cannon in the middle of the town common, watching boys and daring each other to do crazy things. And somewhere during that summer my father brought home a puzzle in the shape of a cube, each side a grid work of different color, and bet me one hundred dollars I couldn't find a solution. I stuck the cube in my closet. Summer wasn't a time for thinking, and my friend and I had frogs to catch and boys to trail.
The first day of ninth grade brought a new hell to my life. Those tests were graded and the results determined which classes we could take. My best friend showed me her schedule: Latin, Pre-Algebra, Honors English, and History. I didn't show her mine. I told her I forgot my classes. But the truth was that I was ashamed. I didn't get placed in Latin and Pre-Algebra like the smart kids. I had to take French and General Math and Social Studies with the dopes and potheads. My father took one look at my books and marched me back to school. Birdie should be in the top classes, he demanded. But my principal shook his head and showed my dad the bottom line. I scored poorly on the test, in the bottom ten-percent of my class, and I belonged where I belonged.
I learned how to say Yes and No and My name is Birdie in French while my best friend learned the secret roots of modern language. I read excerpts from easy stories like Jonathon Livingston Seagull in my thick literature text while my best friend got to read books with dirty words like Catcher in the Rye. I sat through hours of long division and adding fractions while my best friend got to learn about x and y. One day I waited by the band room back door at the end of school. I waited for an hour while sitting on my saxophone case. My best friend never showed and I found out later she walked home with another smart girl.
That night I threw all my best friend's things in my closet. My autograph book with her handwritten poems, the red hair brush she left in my bathroom, the ceramic pig she brought me from a family vacation - everything tossed into a linty back corner in a fit of sadness and rage. I started closing the door but noticed the cube on the shelf above my coat, and I grabbed it and sat on my bed. Twist, twist, turn, turn, I rotated layer after layer, mixing the primary colors into a patchwork of red, blue, green, orange, yellow, and white. Six sides, each a conglomeration of nine smaller colored cubes, a big mess of a puzzle. I saw some of the older kids at school compete in timed trials, and knew that the radio station held contests for the quickest solution from disaster to perfection.
Click. Twist. Turn. Click. I stared and rotated and stared some more, but the cube mocked me, didn't line up in perfect unison color. Twist. I hate my stupid NOT best friend! Click. I hate school! Twist. I hate French! Turn. I can't do anything! I threw the cube against the wall and hit my Dukes of Hazzard poster. I cried myself to sleep, just a dumb girl with no friends who can't do anything even a stupid dumb cube puzzle, a pity party of a cry. That night I dreamed I could fly, I had golden wings, and they carried me above my
