— Chapters appear as excerpts only. —
— Full chapters will appear in the printed published book. —
The day that Mr. Munford handed out the forms for our option selections for grade nine was very exciting for me. I could see a new beginning on the horizon. I would be taking some new and exciting courses that I couldn’t study before. I would have many new teachers, and I would make new friends. I would now start to plan my own future.
I had always done well at school and teachers always praised me for my work. I was extremely motivated to learn as much as I could. I always enjoyed being at school rather than anywhere else, which was easy to understand considering my lonely and dismal home life. I lamented the holidays because that meant I was either at home alone, or had to share my time overseen by one cranky miserable adult and ignored by my mother.
Education was so important to me. I was certain it would give me the knowledge and skills to get a good job. The biggest motivator for me was that it could secure my independence, giving me the ability to be able to support myself and never rely on anyone else. I knew education was the key to a better life for me. There was no other hope that I could see.
When my brother Bruce was forced to move out, he left some of his belongings in his bedroom, including his copy of the Dryden High School yearbook. I spent many hours immersed in it. It was one way to occupy my long hours on the farm by myself. I was always looking for things to keep my mind active, and I found the yearbook to be very interesting. Generally, even though I was very quiet and shy and had only one friend, I was very interested in people. Perhaps partly because I was alone so much. I tried to imagine other people’s interesting lives. Mine was so boring most of the time.
I spent so much time looking at the yearbook that, if I was given a test showing a photo of any of the students, I could probably identify every kid in the school by name. The school had about 800 students. I knew which students were on each of the sports teams. I noticed that many of the students dressed like the teenagers I saw on American Bandstand. The cheerleaders looked so pretty in their matching sweaters, short skirts, white bobby socks and runners, all standing in a row in the same position. Maybe someday I could be a cheerleader.
From the candid photos, I could picture in my mind the classrooms, the hallways, the lockers, and the gym. I guessed that the students on the student council and the athletic association were highly respected, popular, and probably got very good grades. Every student in grades nine to 11 had their photo printed in the yearbook with a one-liner to say something about them. Some sayings were clever, others didn’t make much sense. I read them so often, I could probably be quizzed on that too. Soon, I would have my photo in the yearbook, Marlene Freak, just like everyone else. I hadn’t had a school photo taken since grade five.
The grade 12 photos were larger with longer write-ups specifying such things as future, hobby, pet peeve, nick name, usually seen, and last will and testament. Those students graduated after four years with a high school diploma. The Dryden Paper Company, one of the largest employers in the region, hired grade 12 graduates at a decent rate of pay, enough to buy a house and support a family. Many Dryden residents worked at the mill all their lives and eventually retired with a good pension.
If a student wanted to go to university, they had to complete one more year, a fifth year of grade 13. The grade 13s were called honour grads as they received an honour graduation diploma. They would have already received their grade 12 diploma the year before. They actually graduated from high school twice. The grade 13 photos were even larger, and their write-ups consisted of a short paragraph that mentioned their participation in high school activities and their plans for the future. At the front of the yearbook was a message from the principal, Mr. Wood, followed by photos of the teachers.
By thoroughly studying and scrutinizing Bruce’s yearbook, I learned a lot about Dryden High School before I even stepped into the building.
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All of the teachers seemed very nice. My last name didn’t seem to cause any distraction when each teacher read out the list of students to check attendance. Not as far as I could tell, anyway.
“Freak?”
I put up my hand when my name was called and I didn’t feel any embarrassment. Perhaps I was too excited to notice any comments that might have been made about having the last name Freak.
The first week was freshie week and many activities were planned around that. I was not sure what the purpose of that week was, to make the grade nines feel welcome, or to make them feel embarrassed and inferior? Grade nines were requested to make dunce hats out of cardstock and write “I am a Humble Frosh” on them. Janice told me she was going downtown after school to buy some cardstock to make a dunce hat. I asked her to buy a sheet for me too, and I would pay her. I now had money from my summer job for a few extra things. They did not sell any school supplies at the school so I had no opportunity to get a sheet of cardstock. The only store I could go to was Ed’s Grocery which was a very small place, and more like a convenience store. He carried very little merchandise besides groceries and snacks. He certainly wouldn’t have any cardstock.
The next day at lunch time, Janice showed me how to form the cardstock into a dunce hat. We proudly wore our dunce hats to all our classes, but took them off during class. I wanted to dress and be like the others. I wanted to fit in and be part of the group as much as I could, even if it meant wearing a dunce hat.
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I had three outfits to wear to school, so I made a plan for the week. I wore the flowery red and yellow blouse with the black and red plaid skirt for two days, the blue skirt and green sweater the next two days, and finally on Friday, the orange striped top with the burgundy skirt after that. Then I started over again the next week, with that same schedule. I also had a white blouse and one or two other tops too, but I would integrate them into my wardrobe later.
At the beginning of the second week, Janice took me aside in the hallway. I could tell she was serious and wanted to tell me something important. First, she said that I shouldn’t wear the same outfit two days in a row. No one did that. Next, she said that a flowery top did not match with a plaid skirt, that I should wear a solid colour top to go with a plaid skirt, or a solid colour skirt to go with the flowery top. I had no idea about these fashion rules. I appreciated her advice. If I wanted to fit in, I had to follow the social protocols. The trouble was, I didn’t have very many outfits. But I did have a white blouse to go with the plaid skirt. I asked my mother to find me some more clothes from the rummage sales, or from wherever she got them.
I admired the girls in my class. They had beautiful, thick hair, fashionably cut in the style of the day. They went to hairdressers, I had never been to one. I knew that Edith went to a hairdresser regularly, where I passed when I walked to the bus from her place on Sundays. I noticed that several of the girls had such cute, dainty feet that fit so snugly and perfectly into their stylish shoes. In comparison, I felt that my feet were big and flat, like a duck’s. One girl looked so cute in her outfit, a striped turtleneck top with matching leggings and a solid colour jumper. I shyly told her that she looked very cute. She said her parents took her quite often just across the border in the United States to buy her clothes. She liked to get something unique that the other kids wouldn’t have. Her parents owned a gas station near the school.
One day when I was in music class sitting across from a girl named Chrissy, I kept staring at her hair. It was such a stunning shade of blonde and it shone like spun gold. I wondered why it was so shiny. My hair was flat and greasy. Hers was such a beautiful colour. My hair was so drab. I wondered how I could make my hair that shiny. She glanced over at me once or twice, which I hardly noticed because I was mesmerized with her dreamy hair.
Mr. Berry, the music teacher, left the room briefly to get some music sheets and, as soon as he left, Chrissy turned to me and said quite loudly, “Quit staring at me, you stupid freak!” I was sure the whole class heard it. I was so shocked and embarrassed. I hadn’t realized that I was being impolite. I sat there quietly and kept my eyes to myself from then on, careful not to offend her again.
We were assigned our lockers in alphabetical order. We were not allowed to change them for any reason whatsoever, such as wanting to have a locker next to a best friend or buddy. My assigned locker was next to Helen’s. She was blonde and seemed at least six inches taller than me. If Game of Thrones was around at that time, I would consider Brienne of Tarth to be Helen’s doppelgänger. One day after the morning classes, I went to my locker to put my books away and get my lunch. I put my stack of books on the floor, grabbed my combination lock, and started to move the dial around to select the numbers.
Helen ambled up next to me, deliberately bumping into me which caused me to almost lose my balance. Then she yelled at me, “What are you doing here, Freak? Get out of my way before I shove you out of the way.”
I looked around, not knowing exactly what to do. Should I move aside? Was there a teacher around? No teacher in sight. I noticed several of the students had stopped opening their lockers and were now staring at us.
“Watch this!” Helen said. And with one solid kick, she sent my books sliding down the hallway to the other end. I looked at them sailing away, worried about them getting banged up. We were responsible for turning in our books at the end of the year, in the same condition we got them. A few kids almost tripped over my books, so they stopped. A bunch of kids at that end of the hallway were also now staring at us. Maybe they thought this was the start of a fight.
I turned around to look Helen in the face. I wanted to peer into her eyes and see the expression on her face. Maybe it would give me a clue as to what she was thinking about and why she did this. She looked at me with a big smirk on her face. She was obviously very proud of what she had just done. I wanted to try to understand her, but I couldn’t. What motivated people like that? Why would this privileged young girl treat me like this?
I took my time opening my locker. I hung the open lock on the inside of the door, and then walked slowly down the hall to pick up my scattered books, while everyone stared at me like I was a freak. I picked up the books, one by one, and brought them back to my locker, stopping a few feet away, waiting until Helen left.
Not one student said a word to me, no one offered to help me. One of the girls called to Helen, to say it’s time to get going. She closed her locker, sneered at me, and then left with this gaggle of girls. She looked back at me a couple of times and I could tell she was making some snide remarks about me.
I got my lunch bag and went for lunch. I didn’t feel bad at all about what had just happened. I was slightly confused as Helen had absolutely no reason to do this. I had not spoken to her and I did my best to stay out of her way. If she thought she could hurt me, I hoped she realized that she didn’t, and that she couldn’t. My armour was thick and impenetrable when it came to this kind of bullying. I had been punished and ridiculed so much by stupid ignorant people, and she was just another one of those.
It didn’t take me very long to see that I was neither very pretty nor very popular. When we played team games in gym class, the teacher appointed two or three captains, depending on the game. I was never appointed as a captain. Sometimes the first one appointed could choose the other captains, and they always picked their best friends. These captains took turns choosing the members of their teams. I was always the last one to be picked. It wasn’t that I was such a bad teammate. I played these sports reasonably well, but I wasn’t a star player. I shrugged this off. Most of these girls had grown up together. I was an outsider and I may never fit in with them.
I thought there was another problem that I either did not acknowledge, or perhaps just didn’t want to think too much about it. I must have stunk! I had to work in the barn every morning and there was no time to clean myself very well before school. I washed my face, brushed my teeth, combed my grungy hair, and tried to scrub any filth off my hands that I could. This was the best I could do in the little bit of time I had. Farm smells permeate everything. And when you live on a farm, you don’t notice it anymore. You get so used to it.
The first thing Edith made me do when I came into her house was have a bath. That was an indication of how much I must have stunk, but I was never quite sure how badly. Perhaps she was more sensitive to smells.
Regardless of that, I accepted my place at the bottom rungs of society. It was okay. I didn’t expect anything better than that. No matter what happened, I was still in 9A. I wanted to be in that class and I didn’t regret it. I liked all the students, even Helen who was mean to me.
High school life wasn’t turning out to be as wonderful as I thought it would be.
My teachers were generally very kind to me. My marks were generally Bs. I rarely got an A. Unlike in Eagle River and Minnitaki schools where I was at the top of my class, I was now in the middle. But I wasn’t at the bottom.
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“You can complain all you want, Marlene. I’m not changing your mark. You got what you deserved. Go sit down now.”
Mr. Hampton was a stupid fool and I did not like him anymore. He was not like Mr. Errington and Mr. Munford. They cared about me and they wanted me to do well. I did not have the same advantages or opportunities that the other students in my class had. Couldn’t he see that? Couldn’t he make an exception in this case? I had done the best I could do, and used all the resources I had available to me.
Just like Cliff, Mr. Hampton was not open to reason or logic. He might as well have said to me, just like Cliff had said many times when I asked for justification for irrational expectations: “You want a reason? Because I said so, that’s the reason.”
This was something that I would have to get used to. Adults, especially those in positions of authority, had power and control. I had none. I was at their mercy. Whatever they decided was what I had to live with. No matter what.
And rules were rules. I wasn’t expecting rules to be broken or exempted for me, just tweaked slightly for a special circumstance. A circumstance beyond my control, like not having access to books or a library. Or living 1.8 miles from the school and not a full two miles.
I wondered what Mr. Hampton would have thought of my paper had I not had the encyclopedia set at home. My D would have been an F. Maybe I should have been grateful. It could have been worse.
I always felt that I should stand up for myself and fight for my rights, even though it wasn’t likely to do me any good and I was bound to lose.
I knew that the world was never going to be totally fair.
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