It was the first day at my new school. I was excited and nervous. I am the first in my family ever to go to a Gymnasium (a German secondary school for grades 5 through 13, preparing for university entrance). Frau Heintz, the homeroom teacher for class 5b, was calling the roll. “Andreas Ludowsky?” “Here!” a thin boy with thick curly hair whom I didn’t know answered. His name began with an L. That meant my name would be coming soon. I began to think wildly, Please don’t call me, forget me, skip my name. But it didn’t help. Frau Heintz called, “Sieglinde Steinbrecher?” “Here,” I whispered barely audibly. But she hadn’t heard me. “I said Sieglinde Steinbrecher! Where is she?” This time I spoke a bit louder. “I’m here.” I couldn’t help sounding a bit whiny. Some other kids laughed. How I wished that I had a more modern name, like Daniela or Ann-Katrin. Why was I stuck with such an old-fashioned name? But at least the worst was over. The roll call had gone better this time than in elementary school, where everybody had repeated my name over and over again and had kept saying how stupid it was. I had just leaned back when I heard a voice behind me I knew only too well. Sabine von der Heide, my worst enemy. She’d been at my old school as well. “Hey, it’s Oma. Grandmother is in our class again!” she was saying to her best friend Birgit. “We’ll have some fun with her. In fact, we can start right now!” The next thing I knew, somebody had pulled the long braid hanging down my back. I turned around, even though I knew who had done it. Sabine sat there, with her fake, sweet, innocent smile. “Why, Grannie dear, how are you? What big teeth you have!” she said. Birgit could hardly contain herself with laughing. She looked like she was going to burst. I also thought I was going to burst with anger. I had to keep it in, but I couldn’t. I could feel my face getting hot, in a moment I would scream at that stupid girl, when . . . “We’ll have some fun with her. In fact, we can start right now!” “Sabine von der Heide? I repeat, Sabine von der Heide?” Frau Heintz was still calling the roll, and now it was Sabine’s turn. She hadn’t noticed it while she’d been annoying me. She raised her hand, looking very embarrassed at having missed her name. I couldn’t help grinning a little; it felt like I had paid her back. But I knew it was going to be a hard year. Just like all the other years since first grade. That was the first time I had ever been in a class with Sabine. Already then she had noticed I was a good teasing victim. That’s also when she had started calling me Oma. As we’d gotten older, Sabine had teased me about other things as well. I wore old-fashioned clothes, not Calvin Klein jeans or Gap clothes like her. She talked a lot about boys and pop stars. That didn’t interest me at all. I preferred reading books. I was sure that all the kids at this school were snobs who had parents that were doctors or professors and earned loads of money. My mother was a supermarket cashier who barely earned enough to raise her three daughters. And I was right about the hard year. Every day at recess Sabine, Birgit and their other friends would pull my hair and tease me. They stuck their feet out when I walked by their desks so I would trip. One time, Sabine grabbed my worn leather satchel and started throwing it across the room to Birgit. Moments later it was flying around the classroom. Even kids who usually left me alone were joining in the fun. I felt miserable. There was nothing I could do but wait till the teacher came. Or until they got tired of it. If I tried to snatch my bag back, they threw it around even more. Or they laughed at me during P.E., when I couldn’t run fast enough or wasn’t able to make a basket. At home, nobody really cared that I was unhappy. My mom was too busy taking care of my little sisters. And as for my father, well he’d left us when I was only six, just before my youngest sister was born. The one time I had asked my mother for help in first grade she’d answered, while she changed the baby’s diapers, “You can’t run to me every time a little thing goes wrong at school. You’re a smart girl! Stand up for yourself! Deal with it. The others will grow up sooner or later. Then they’ll leave you alone.” I’d hoped that would happen. For four long years I’d hoped. Sometimes I’d even wished something bad would happen to me, that I would break my leg, or get really sick, so that everyone who teased me would feel sorry. Or that I’d come to school and find that everyone was friendly and would apologize for the mean things they’d done. I’d really believed things would be better at my new school. But they weren’t. Nothing ever changed. And it looked like they never would. This was how I was feeling when Alison arrived. The weather had become cold and wet. Every morning I bundled up in my old thick brown coat and braved the wind. I think it was a Friday, because I remember thinking, as I battled the stormy weather, that very soon it would be the weekend, when I could stay home, relax and finish my library book, Robinson Crusoe. I could be alone on my island before Monday and the terrors of school began again. I reached school, and pushed open the heavy door. Thankfully, I stepped inside. At least in here it was warm and
By Mailyn Fidler, Illustrated by Ashley Whitesides
