My Testimony in Favor of the Abolition of Seventh Grade

Here is a memoir-type piece that I wrote for a Creative Writing class.

March 2000
This is a good day. Watching Anne of Green Gables for the bazillionth time as I’m curled up underneath a comforter on the couch is my idea of perfect happiness. There’s a fitted bed sheet under me and sitting on the coffee table is a tall glass of orange juice and Sprite on ice. The familiar fixtures of my sick days are around me, and I’m wearing pajamas. I am sublimely happy.
I could have asked for a mental health day. Then I wouldn’t have had to pretend I’m sick. My mom lets me have those every once in a while. On those precious days, she’ll take me to Baker’s Square for breakfast and let me get dressed and experience life outside of seventh grade. But today I didn’t feel like explaining to her why my mental health is nearing its tipping point. I just woke her up at 6:30 to tell her I have a sore throat and then went back to bed.
So that’s why I’m stuck playing this game of let’s-pretend-Sarah’s-actually-sick. I’m ashamed to say that I’m getting quite good at this game. I’m also good at convincing the school nurse that I need to be sent home. Mommy must wonder every day when she’s eating lunch if she’s going to need to load the three babies in the car soon to come get me. She’s probably never surprised when the nurse calls her to ask if she can pick me up. I wonder if the nurse notices how often I’m in her office. She’s probably used to dealing with students who long to be sent home sick every day. It is the world’s worst middle school, after all.
When I woke up this morning, though, I felt that exciting faint possibility of illness. I stayed in bed for a while, wondering whether to tell mom to call in for me or get up and get ready for the bus. I don’t enjoy the guilt I feel when I stay home from school, but even more than that, I hate being in school. It’s a nasty trade-off, and only the days when I have tested positive for strep are free of this guilt.
Strep throat is my best friend. Thankfully, I am immensely prone to it. I get strep whenever I come within a mile of someone carrying it. It’s probably my favorite illness in the world. I like a lot of contagious afflictions, but streptococcus is the best. In me, strep throat just causes a sore throat. I don’t really have to deal with the fever, achiness, and overall crappy feeling. I just wake up with a sharply painful throat, convince my mom to take me to Minute Clinic, invariably test positive (I know the feeling so well, I could diagnose myself at this point), and am forced to stay out of school for 24 hours. After starting my anti-biotics, the pain goes away immediately and I feel great. That’s why I always get hopeful when I feel a little twinge in my throat. I concentrate all my effort on willing that slight pain to continue on for a couple of hours so I can get a strep test. Gosh, I wish every day was a strep day for me.
Of course, today the pain in my throat isn’t quite enough to ask for a trip to Minute Clinic, so I’m just complaining about feeling icky in general. That’s enough to justify a day on the couch. When Mommy checked on me this morning, she had a hesitant look on her face, like it isn’t right to let me stay home so often. But she knows better than to ask me directly why I want to stay home so often.
Call me crazy, but I don’t want to talk about it. Not with her. My mom is my best friend in the world, the one constant in my revolving door of school-switching and grade-skipping. It’s embarrassing what I’m going through, so I’d rather not bring it up. Plus, it was her idea that they move me up another grade in school, and I’d hate to make her realize how bad of a plan that was. I’d rather deal with all this by myself. Preferably outside the walls of that dreaded middle school. If my mom and dad knew what was going on, they wouldn’t hesitate to let me stay home from school.
I suppose I’m being bullied. It’s hard for me to put it that way, but I guess that’s what it is. To put a label on it feels weird. Bullying calls to mind burly fifth-grade boys picking on nerdy third-graders on the playground. It isn’t a term we associate with preteen girls. But that one group of girls kicked me out of their lunch table. That was hard. I dealt with that okay. I just moved to the table for weird girls and tried my best to fit in and stay strong. It is Crystal Tils, though- who kicked me in the hallway outside the lunch room for no apparent reason- who makes my life hell. The administration would be quite alarmed by that kicking incident, I’m sure, but it would be stupid to get them involved. I would forever be known as the girl who got a Popular Girl in trouble. That would be awful. I think I’ll wait for another seven years before I actually speak the word bullied. It’s better to just keep it to myself and stay out of school as often as I can.
No one likes middle school. It’s incredibly hard to relate to other awkward kids in your own awkward stage. Everyone’s fighting with all their might to be a Popular Kid, and I hate to admit that is all I want as well. But my over-maturity and articulacy make it hard for me to interact with them. Did Mom and Dad really think my social problems would be solved by dropping me in with the older kids? This problem is going to take a long time to sort out. It’s just so much effort to try and make friends with these kids who are so resistant to letting a fifth-grader join their circle. And who can blame them? I ruin their credibility. Better just to stay out of school as much as I can until these silly middle schoolers outgrow their need for popularity.
Mommy was a nurse before she was a stay-at-home mom, so she loves taking care of sick kids. I’m getting better and better at playing ill. When I don’t wear eye make-up, my eyes look like there’s too much skin for them, they’re so puffy. I have convenient purple rings under my eyes also, and one of them droops lazily if I’m not wearing eye liner. So basically, I can exaggerate the heaviness of my eyes and look like I have a never-ending cold virus. She always looks concerned when I come downstairs like this.
“You look pekid,” is how she puts it. I’ve never heard anyone else use that term. I don’t even know how to spell it, to be honest.
Otherwise, I don’t really need smoke-and-mirrors to convince Mommy to call in for me. Ferris Bueller took way too many precautions, in my opinion. So much effort! The only person I really need to put on a show for is Daddy. Shoot, he might be coming home soon, come to think of it. I turn off the TV and VCR, grab my pillow, and head upstairs, making my steps heavy and labored. I cough a little for emphasis. I close my bedroom door behind me and jump into bed. My father is incredibly intimidating. He loves to tell me how he never missed a day of school in his whole life and that’s how he became a surgeon. Well, congratulations. Way to make me feel guilty about avoiding the horrible reality of my school life.
For now, I must wait in bed until I hear his distinctive footsteps coming up the stairs. He will stop at the top of them and crack open my door. He will feel my forehead and give me a disapproving look.
I see dying people every day at work who would love to be able to go to school, his look will accuse. But he’ll really say, “Not feeling well? You look okay to me.”
“I’m feeling better,” I’ll shrug.
“Okay…” he will say as he leaves.
I will sigh with guilt and relief. He does this every time I stay home sick. If I were a normal kid, I would sleep through my sick days, but I’m an insomniac and I’m hardly ever truly ill anyways, so I can never sleep through the day. The fact that I’m highly alert during my days off doesn’t help my charade. I’ll have to read in bed until Daddy comes home. But I just finished reading the four Harry Potter books for the first time. What’s worth reading after that?
My rule for myself is that I’m not allowed to reflect on my bad attendance record. These thoughts are supposed to stay tucked away beyond my consciousness. I have to tell myself that the only reason I’m home sick today is because I don’t feel well and I don’t want to get all the other kids sick. I’ve never let myself take a closer look before. If Mommy doesn’t question it, I don’t question it. It’s better to keep my introspection limited at this point in my life. Terrible things are revealed when you take a closer look.
I am eleven and a half years old. My life was quite normal until this year. Last year, I was a fourth-grader at a private elementary school and I was well-liked by my many friends. I was chronically bored in school, though, so a child psychologist tested my intelligence and maturity and announced that I would fit in better in the tenth grade. It goes without saying that I wasn’t going to move up six grades in school, so I moved up one grade and switched to a public middle school. At the same time, my parents decided to go back to Russia and adopt two more babies, in addition to the one Russian they already had, Colin, and the domestically adopted Natalie. My parents were in and out of the United States all year and ultimately ended up with Anna and Alex. So I am now the oldest of five children. Halfway through sixth grade, they tested me again and I was still off the charts. They moved me up another grade over winter break without really asking my opinion in the matter. So basically, it’s been a hectic year.
And I am distressed. I don’t think I’m ready to use the word depressed. I think I’ll wait another couple of years to use that term. I’ve always been somewhat sullen and obsessed with escapism. You could say those are two signs of depression, but I’d rather not deal with that diagnosis just yet. My mom, aunt, and grandma are all very open about their battle with depression. I feel like they’ve been waiting for me to join them in pill-popping semi-happiness. In a couple of years, I probably will. For now, I shall just avoid school to the best of my ability. I mean, it’s not like skipping a day here and there will make a difference in my education in the long-run. Let’s face it: I skipped two whole years of school and I didn’t miss a thing. So this begs a closer look. Is middle school even necessary?
May 2008
My throat hurts. Out of old habit, my heart soars with the possibility of a positive strep test.