Pick the lock, p.15
Pick the Lock, page 15
Homeroom
I’m still not scared as I approach the office to pick up my helper. They were explicit in the letter. “You must have your helper with you at all times.” Vernon got a kick out of that.
“Sounds like you won’t be allowed to wander off there either,” he said.
He has no idea how much better this place already is compared to Vernon’s Pandemic Prison School. First thing: There are schoolchildren in it. Second: There are teachers in it. Fact: I am probably about to have my ass kicked by every single class I walk into. Also fact: I’m still not scared.
“Are you Jane?” someone says the second I walk into the office. She’s behind me, sitting in one of the chairs.
“Guilty as charged.” I turn around and make a small bow.
“Hi!” she says, getting up and waving. Her grin is enormous. She doesn’t say anything else.
“Hi,” I say.
She hands me my schedule, which I already have a copy of in my bag, and says, “Let’s go to homeroom.”
As we walk through the halls, she tells me tricks on how to remember where I am. Each hall is associated with a color. Our trip to homeroom is Blue → Yellow → White. We land in a classroom decorated with grammar posters. One is dedicated entirely to literary insults.
My helper says, “Do you have a school map?”
“What’s your name?” I ask. I pull my school map out of my bag.
“Addi,” she says. “Shit. Sorry I didn’t tell you that before. I was nervous.”
“So—first class is biology,” I say.
“Right. Can you see how to get there from here?” She points to my map with a shaky finger.
“Wait,” I say. “Why are you nervous?”
The teacher walks in then. She’s about thirty and wearing what looks to be a sort of jumpsuit. Like the kind car mechanics wear, just more fashionable.
I want to look at my map and answer Addi’s question about how to get to biology, but I’m getting a vibe from this teacher. I can’t take my eyes off her. I do, and I look around the room. She has a Pride flag and other flags that I don’t recognize around the room. She also has a bunch of posters with rainbow sayings on them. The usual ones you see about how love is love and no human is illegal, and one that says Diverse, Inclusive, Accepting, Welcoming, Safe Space for Everyone along the rainbow.
My favorite so far, though, is a framed one. It looks like it was handmade. It says, You Are Not a Burden over and over again, and the background is pink, light blue, and white.
“She only got permission to put that back up last week,” Addi whispers, pointing to the safe-space rainbow.
“It’s great.”
“She’s the GSA advisor.”
I nod and have a vague idea what she’s saying, but I was last in school as an eleven-year-old fifth grader. Back then it was mostly about trying to get on the playground first for recess.
The teacher walks over to my desk and I smile.
She shakes my hand. “It’s nice to meet you, Jane. I’m Miss Wilde, she/her, and I’m glad you’re here.” She looks to Addi. “Did you show Jane to the nearest restrooms and other places like that?”
“Not yet,” Addi answers. “She has a study hall during Flex so I’ll show her around then.”
“Okay. But, Jane, in case you need to know, the nearest girls’ restroom is the next door to the left as you walk out this door. There’s an all-gender bathroom about ten feet beyond that.”
“Thanks,” I say.
“No problem.” She puts her fist sideways on her heart and taps it twice, just like Mother used to do. Marta does it, too.
“She’s a huge fan,” Addi whispers.
And now I understand. It’s not me making Addi nervous. It’s my mom.
As I stand silently for the Pledge of Allegiance and sit through the morning announcements, I realize that I am Mina Placenta’s daughter, and here, unlike in my house, this is actually a good thing. I am out in the world now where there is a network of Placenta fans that will help me find my way. Addi is one of them. Miss Wilde is another.
Introduction
Miss Wilde raises her hand in the front of the classroom when the announcements end. The room goes quiet after a burst of talking.
“Before you all go on with your days, I want you to welcome a new student.” She looks at me and raises her eyebrows. I turn around and wave in a few directions, but don’t say anything. “This is Jane Cook. Jane, introduce yourself and tell us where you’ve been and what you like.”
I stand. “I’m Jane and I’ve been homeschooled since the pandemic. I knew some of you in elementary school. I left in fifth grade.” I start to sit down.
“Do you have any hobbies?” someone asks.
I stand again. “I like jigsaw puzzles.” This is not a lie, but it’s a curious answer. I haven’t done a jigsaw puzzle since I was nine.
“Do you play music?” Miss Wilde asks.
I nod. “I used to. But now I’m writing an opera. A punk opera.”
“A composer!” Miss Wilde says.
“Just lyrics,” I say. “Not the music.”
She gives me a look like she’s impressed. “A librettist!”
Then the bell rings and Addi hands me my book bag.
When kids walk past me on their way out the door, they say nice things. Welcome to Valley, Nice to meet you, Have a nice day, If you need any help, let me know…Holy shit, Jane, where the fuck have you been?
That’s Gretchen Brown. She hugs me.
“Dude! It’s so good to see you,” I answer.
She sees my schedule in my hand and snatches it. Addi gasps and we both look at her like she should calm down.
“You have bio? Why do you have bio?” Gretchen asks.
“Long story,” I say.
“Are you a sophomore or a freshman?”
“Kinda in between, I think? We’ll know more in a few weeks.”
Gretchen frowns with concern. “What did they do to you?”
The three of us walk toward the science wing. White → Yellow → Green. Gretchen starts a monologue worthy of a Broadway voice-over.
“I don’t even know where to start,” she says. “You missed middle school completely and you have no idea how lucky you are. My mom got me the worst hairstyle for eighth grade I can’t even explain to you what it was like to have to walk around with that shit happening on top of the crazy eighties stuff she bought me to wear. I’d told her the eighties were in and she took it way too far. Classic my mom, you know?”
I think about the koi pond in her foyer.
“Freshman year I dated Ron Smith. Do you remember Ron? He didn’t say much when we were in elementary school. Quiet and liked to play basketball at recess. Not sure if you guys even knew each other,” she goes on. “But he loves punk so he knows all about your mom. His dad takes him to shows. Oh shit, yeah! His dad went to school with your mom! Anyway, we broke up in May of freshman year. He wanted me to do stuff I didn’t want to do and I’m no slut, you know?”
Addi says, “Make sure you notice where this right turn is. It’s easy to miss.” We glide into the green hallway.
“Don’t use that word,” I say to Gretchen. “That’s how women hurt each other.”
“Shit,” Gretchen says, nodding slowly.
We all stop walking on Addi’s cue.
“Sorry,” I say, “but you don’t have to be a slut to want to go there as a sophomore. Everybody is different. Right? No shame in you not wanting to do what some others do. And if Rob dumped you for—”
“Ron,” she corrects.
“Ron. If he dumped you for some girl who’s more willing, then he wasn’t worth your time anyway. It’s not her fault for being active. Or yours for being not as active. It’s up to Rob. Ron. Shit. Whatever his name is.”
“Damn, you’re, like, a philosopher,” Gretchen says, smiling. “High five!” She holds her hand up for a high five and I give it to her as Addi pulls me back toward the biology classroom door.
We walk in, Addi tells the bio teacher that I’m here, and he motions to some seats in the front row to his right. We sit. I brace myself. It’s January. I’m not sure how to slot into my first-ever biology class halfway through the year, but the best way is to be open-minded, I guess.
Biology / Geometry / Lunch
I have chosen an interesting day to drop cold into this biology class. It’s a lab class and I have zero idea of what they’re doing, or the words they use to describe it once I ask what they’re doing, and pretty much everything else. The teacher, Mr. Long, mentions twice that we will be doing a dissection next week. I am absolutely out of my depth, and for some reason, I find it exciting.
Next is geometry, Green → Yellow → Orange, which is doable, and then language arts, Orange → Yellow → White, where we’re starting a book called Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds next week. Then PE class, White → Red, which I don’t have to do today because I have no idea what to do in a PE course that doesn’t involve a parachute or those little scooter carts we’d push ourselves around on in elementary school.
Lunch is tragic. Red → Yellow → Blue. When I went to elementary school, I took a brown bag and ate what Marta made for me. This is totally different. Marta didn’t make me anything today because Vernon wouldn’t allow it.
I maneuver my way through the line and land at a table with strangers, staring at an apple, a plate with a “wrap” on it. I note that I only have fifteen minutes to eat once I sit down, so I pick it up and start eating. The lady said it was ham and cheese and it is, but I’m pretty sure the cheese is made out of plastic. It doesn’t taste like cheese.
“Jane!”
I look up.
Gretchen Brown waves me over to her table, pointing to a small empty space she carved out of her friend group.
The strangers at my table are debating something that has to do with school sports—I’m not even sure what sport—and haven’t noticed me at all. By the time I sit down next to Gretchen and say hello and smile, I am socially exhausted and now have only eleven minutes to eat lunch.
“You have a bit of—uh.” I don’t know her name—she’s the one who was sitting here before I stole her spot. She points to her teeth.
“Soggy wrap,” I say. Then I swish my spit around and feel a huge chunk of plastic cheese-like gunk flush from between my teeth.
“They sell bento boxes at the Wawa,” Gretchen says.
“Who eats gas station sushi?” someone asks.
I stare at the ham-and-cheese wrap and I am too hungry to not eat it. So I eat it. In big bites, while blocking out all the chatter about gas station sushi. I can’t hear myself think. In elementary school, we were chaperoned and told to keep the noise down. We didn’t have to be silent, but we had to behave. High school is the opposite. This place is mayhem.
Gretchen is talking about the V-Day dance.
“You remember KZ, right?” She points and I look and the kid looks familiar, but I can’t make out their face.
“Nice to see you again,” they say. Then they whisper their dead name and “they/them” into my ear. I look again when they pull back.
“My kickball homie!” I say.
KZ offers a very chill fist bump.
“Is Porter here, too?” I ask, and I take a huge bite out of my apple and chew. I have no idea how a school can make an apple taste bad, but they did. This apple sucks.
I put it on the plate.
“Dude!” Porter says from right next to Gretchen. And there we all are—the four wild ones from elementary school, queens of the kickball field—together again at a table, now being circled by boys trying to get a look at me. It’s gross.
“Fresh meat,” the girl to my right says.
“Blood. Fresh blood,” Gretchen says.
“Same difference!”
I get up to clear my tray and then grab my backpack and say goodbye. Addi joins me as if she’s been watching me all this time.
As I walk away, Gretchen Brown yells, “Wait!”
I turn.
She points to three guys at the table who are smiling at me. “Which one?”
I shake my head.
“Come on!” she says, as I walk away.
I clear all the pieces of my lunch to the place they belong and shove my tray into the conveyor belt tunnel. I peek in, expecting to see the end and see a happy dishwasher, but the tunnel seems to go forever. Part of me wants to jump on the belt to find out where it takes me. All of me hopes it’s a place that is not a heteronormative nightmare like what just happened. I thought high school would be cooler about that stuff, especially after Miss Wilde’s rainbow homeroom.
Library / History / Tennis Courts
I feel almost famous by the end of the day. The fresh meat phenomenon is in full swing. At the beginning of each class, I’m briefly introduced and I can feel the eyes on me. Not just the regular eyes. The fresh meat eyes. Not fresh blood at all.
For reference: fresh meat = new target of lust or interest, and fresh blood = person who brings a new way of thinking. No one has asked me what I think about anything.
A kid in my library study hall leans into my ear when I’m deep into using the computer. “Are you going to that dance?”
I answer, “I literally started school here six hours ago.”
“I’m Marlon,” he says.
“I’m Jane.”
“Oh, I know who you are.” He smiles and laughs a little. “Everybody knows who you are.”
“Wow, Marlon. Way to be creepy to the new girl on her first day.”
“Shit, no. I didn’t mean it that way.” He backs up a whole step.
“Just giving you a hard time,” I say. I go back to the computer.
“Are you really writing an opera?” he asks.
“I am.”
“Can I be in it?” he asks.
“Sure.”
He looks at me like I’m a puzzle. “So, are you going to the dance or what?”
I look at him and drop my head to the left. “Again. I literally started school here six hours ago.”
He nods and walks away.
I go back to the library computer, where I have typed my mother’s name into the Google search bar. I scroll through the articles and other links. I open the band’s official site. Then her Wikipedia page. And apparently, she once had a Twitter account. The school computer won’t allow me on any social media, but I scroll through the Google list of @MinaPlacenta’s old tweets and they’re mostly about domestic violence, sex trafficking, and helpline numbers. Interspersed are tweets and retweets about other punk bands, her shows, and tour dates.
Her profile picture is a black and white of her onstage when she was just starting out. She barely looks like herself. She looks like me. Her header picture is the cover of Run, Jane, Run, which is an ethereal sort of shot that I can’t figure out. It looks like the ceiling of a big warehouse but spray-painted white.
“Whatcha doin’?” It’s Marlon again. “Are you on Twitter? I thought that shit was long gone.”
“I’m on Google, I think.” I shrug.
This is what I see on the screen:
@MinaPlacenta January 1, 2019 Stop believing that the only definition of a good life is one that is uncomplicated and without villains.
“What’s that mean?” I ask Marlon, pointing to the small graphic of a pushpin.
“It’s pinned,” he says. “They want to keep it on top for people to see.”
I look back at her quote. Stop believing that the only definition of a good life is one that is uncomplicated and without villains. I look at the date. January 1, 2019. Day one of The Great Ignoring. I scroll more. I find a tweet from only a month ago. From around Christmas.
@MinaPlacenta December 27, 2024 Don’t feel embarrassed for loving someone who treats you poorly. Love isn’t anything to be ashamed of. Treating others poorly is.
Marlon says, “I’d never treat you bad.”
I forgot he was here. “Of course,” I say.
“The dance,” he says. “Consider it.”
“Noted,” I answer, as he walks away.
I’m so stuck into the Rolling Stone article about Run, Jane Run, the bell rings and a little part of me jumps.
I walk to history class in a daze. Addi guides me. Orange → Yellow → White. I just learned more about my mother from the internet than I ever have from inside my house.
I don’t remember any of history class.
After history class, the final bell rings. Addi guides me back to my locker, which is also in the White hallway. I give her a high five and release her from my service.
“I can find my way to the front doors from here,” I say. “Thanks for today. You really helped me.”
“No problem. See you tomorrow!” she says with a small wave.
Milorad said he’d meet me out front, and I forgot he even gave me a phone until I’m at my locker. I find it on the bottom of my backpack and open the home screen. It lights up with texts. They are all from Milorad.
Have a great day at school!
You can do anything you put your mind to!
Don’t worry—you will feel at home there in about two weeks.
If you get lost, ask for help!
Are you having a good day?
What did you eat for lunch?
I will be outside the front doors at 3pm. ☺
When I walk outside, Milorad is not in front of the school like he promised. The whole area is filled with yellow school buses. I look at the visitor’s parking area and I don’t see the car there either.
