You're a Freak

When Anne walks into the lecture hall, at first she doesn’t see him, so intent is she trying to navigate her way up the stadium seating. There's a deluge of backpacks and denim-clad legs, the room buzzing with first day jitters. In her experience, the class will remain bloated until the hopefuls- the ones with the add-on cards- will be sent away by the professor. He's the popular one (hence the overfilled hall), and she's relieved she has him and not the other one- the curmudgeonly type, set in his ways.

And then she sees him. Will Durham. On some dim level, she knew she might run into him- there's around ten or so of them from high school attending MU. Not that he'd recognize her. And yet: while her face remains impassive, her heart hammers inside her.

There he is- that slouch, that desultory expression, head propped in hand, usual uniform of plaid shirt and dark jeans.

Will, the genetic alchemy of Midwest flatness and English manor, tall with his father’s dark hair and mother’s green eyes. And his sister, Clara, brown curls and hazel eyes with flecks of orange, like small embers, and a hesitant gap-toothed smile. How Anne knows this- this intimate image of a little girl, a child she has only seen from afar, disturbs her.

She manages to squeeze herself into a seat and assume her own posturing- notebook retrieved, pen poised- to discourage the boy sitting next to her from making conversation. Will sits in the row in front of her, slightly to the left, and she watches him with an indulgence that's embarrassing. Unlike most of the girls from high school, it's not as though she has a crush on him.

The professor walks in with a boyuant step and bellows, “Welcome!" The class returns his greeting and there's a charge of excitement in the air. He's tall and loose-limbed with an easygoing manner- perfect for a class full of freshmen there to fulfill a general course.

Anne realizes that she’d prefer the dour professor, the type who'd care little for amusing students, where all she’d be required to do is take notes. There’s a relative peace from such monotony, a non-expenditure of energy.

She hated those teachers in high school, the ones who got their kicks out of impressing them, and especially (and she hates the cliche) the cool kids. She’d feel obligated to laugh with her classmates, but it came out forced, unnatural. Like Mr. Eichman, her ninth-grade science teacher, the one who called her Snow White (a play on her name, Anne Snow), who thought he was so clever, drawing attention to her pale skin and dark hair, persistent enough that kids teased her, claimed Mr. Eichman had a crush on her.

But this isn’t high school. Here she can fly under the radar, be passive, almost invisible, and perform well. College hasn’t overwhelmed her; in fact, she revels in it, a dot in this school of thousands, creating her own microcosm: dorm, roommates, the few friends she’d made. She doesn’t party, doesn’t hook up.

The professor takes roll, parsing it down to size, apologetically dismissing the rest. Then he holds up a hand. “Let's get to know each other. This will, I assume, be chaos, but let it be controlled chaos. Keep it to a dull roar.” He smiles at a girl sitting in the front row and hands her a stack of papers. “Hand these out for me, will you, my dear" and then rolls back on his heels and addresses them. “The purpose of this exercise, besides getting to know each other, is to perceive our differences, how our experiences vary...”

Anne feels a fatigue settle over her. She hates this sort of thing. Ice-breakers.

“You have...let's say, ten minutes. Now get up and move around.” A wave of bodies rise; the room is a low thrum. She watches as two girls hesitantly approach Will. They giggle and flip their hair, almost in tandem.

“Have you ever been to a foreign country?”

It’s the boy next to her. Reluctantly she faces him. “Actually, no. How about you?”

He proceeds to give her a long-winded story about how he and his buddies went on a cruise for their high school graduation, how they were only supposed to be in Jamaica for five hours but they’d gotten so wasted….blah blah. Typical freshman boy with average looks (this one less than average) who try to impress girls with tales of booze-soaked forays.

“That’s so crazy,” she says flatly.

“I’m Mike.” There’s a pause as he eyes her paper. “Are you going to write it down?”

She writes his name down, barely glancing at what category she has attributed it to, and seeing as how she makes no effort to reciprocate, he tells her, "Okay...well, see you around," and heads off to greener pastures.

She returns to staring at Will. The girls are gone, replaced with a new one. This one is clearly engaged, peppering him with questions, but she can tell the conversation is one-sided. He doesn’t glance at his own sheet, doesn’t hold a pencil, and she feels a sort of kinship with him, that they both understand its futility. More kids come her way, their papers almost full, and when they see her empty worksheet, with the exception of Mike, they don’t linger. Clearly she’s not a team player.

Idly she sits there, continuing to watch him, and that’s when it happens: she’s caught.

It happens so quickly. Will turns around and locks eyes with her.

Quickly she looks away. And yet she can’t pretend her eyes were roving, that they were harmlessly flitting over him. No. She was in full staring mode. She feigns great interest in her blank paper. Did he recognize her? Impossible. Even though they went to the same high school, she can't recall a conversation between them, not even a greeting; and among the girls at school, conversations with Will Durham were golden, meted out in whispery circles.

Truth be told, Anne rather dislikes him. While, as a whole, his family was known to be snobs, she wouldn't hold that against him. In fact, the real reason is rather petty. She was in seventh grade when Will moved in. It didn’t take long for the popular kids to welcome him into their circle; prostrate themselves, really, his looks and accent such a novelty. In her eyes, he was just another student, an impenetrable member of the school’s elite, nobody to concern herself with. That is, until the ninth grade, when her disinterest turned to disdain. Back then, she was a freshman under entirely different circumstances: lost in the shuffle of football games and preening cheerleaders, she felt the dichotomy of being exposed...and yet invisible.

She had clung to Kristen, her childhood friend, every morning a fist of anxiety in her chest that would only unclench itself when Kristen finally arrived; and only then could she relax, lean against her locker and watch the students walk by, relieved she was no longer of the friendless. When Kristen was absent, oh the torment! It became apparent that she needed to increase her number of friends, if only for the before-school-time-fillers, assemblies, and the all-important lunch hour.

She set out to do this systematically. Step one: speak up in class. Raise her hand and pitch her voice to a decibel that an audience, such as her class, could hear; that she portray herself not as a know-it-all, but one who had answers; one who could divulge them in a cavalier manner, to suggest, ultimately, that she was normal.

And yet her voice failed her. With all eyes on her, it took on a braying quality, and her teacher would feel sorry for her, and she would slowly turned red, her neck spreading with angry splotches, sweat drenching the underarms of her t-shirt. The teacher would attempt to soften this humiliation by nodding enthusiastically, at times even praising her. After a few weeks, she abandoned this approach.

Step two: speak to her classmates. This would be easier, she surmised, as she did better in smaller settings, without the pressure of twenty-five sets of eyes staring at her. In this she was moderately successful, finding it easy to talk to the school rejects (who really were nice) and gradually moving up to encompass the average girl (they were always girls).

On the day her grudge towards Will began, it was a warm spring afternoon, and perhaps she was experiencing the same stupor that overcomes all students when summer’s near. Certainly Mrs. Chase, her favorite English teacher, wasn’t immune. Normally Anne adored her because she insisted on quiet reading time at the end of every class. After spending her day constantly on guard, every interaction measured and dissected, the silence was a balm; her book, an escape. The class would groan, and Mrs. Chase would reprimand those who didn’t bring their books, quench the giggles, and Anne would feel a deep affection for her. On this day, however, she decided to “treat” them.

It was likely Mrs. Chase didn’t have the energy, experiencing the same malaise as the rest of them, but for whatever reason, she told them they could read or do their homework, or (and this was clincher) talk quietly.

Anne felt betrayed. She took out her book, which she’d been inhaling, but now she couldn’t concentrate. Glumly she looked around. Everyone was talking, even the rejects. Happily she would have talked to them, but she was sandwiched between the popular kids: across from her was Leah Woods, in front of her Bryce Worley, and catty-corner, Will Durham. As usual, they were ignoring her, not registering her presence, Leah giggling to Bryce, trying desperately to get Will's attention.

It wasn’t that Anne minded being ignored, and usually she preferred it, but on this day, something tugged at her, compelled her to speak. Perhaps it was her dignity, or perhaps the shame of being invisible, but whatever it was, she ransacked her brain for possible topics. She leaned across the aisle and said to Leah, “Do you remember what the homework is?”

Leah looked at her with surprise. Anne had never spoken to her before, and certainly not about something as benign as homework. Of course Anne knew the homework assignment, was persnickety about such things, but she waited patiently for an answer.

Reluctantly, Leah poked Bryce with her foot. “What’s the homework for tonight?”

Bryce put his arms over his head until his shoulder joints cracked. (He was always doing this- snapping his joints, popping his jaw, gripping his desk and turning his body to face her, staring at her wordlessly, stupidly, as his back went crrrrrack.)

“Chapter twenty and the worksheet.”

“Don’t tell me,” Leah said. “Tell her.”

“Who?”

“Her,” and she pointed to Anne. He turned around and looked startled to see that she was maintaining eye contact with him.

“Chapter twenty. And the workbook page.” He enunciated this slowly, as though she didn’t speak English.

“Thank you,” she replied tersely. Not only was Bryce a jerk, he was a smart jerk, The National Honor Society, naturally, being a point of honor for him. During this encounter, Will was reading. He was the one who was reading.

Bryce leaned across the aisle and said to Will, “Hey man, you got gum?”

“Yeah,” Will said, leaning over to unzip his backpack. He fished it out and held it out to Bryce, and as a matter of course, Leah put out her hand with a petulant expression.

Anne blurted without thinking, “Can I have a piece?” She sounded so earnest, so pitiful, but she held her course, staring directly at Will, resisting the impulse to lower her eyes, to pretend her voice was an aberration, a harmless tic. What she wasn’t expecting, however, was to be ignored.

He didn’t just deny her a stick of silver-wrapped Extra, he zipped the gum back into his pouch without a word. This small act of rejection felt like a slap, and as though on cue, her face mottled and her eyes stung. Bryce’s gaze slid over her, a smirk on his face, and Leah stared at her while sticking the piece of gum into her mouth. Will continued to read.

In the grand scheme of things, this wasn’t earth-shattering. Humiliating, yes, but while she could detest Bryce and Leah, she couldn’t hate them- they’d always been obnoxious. It was Will Durham, however, who received the heat of her wrath. She’d held him to a higher standard, she supposed, had him elevated in her mind for never playing into the high school game. As far as she knew, he didn’t party with the gluttonous abandon of his peers; didn’t harangue the outcasts or strut the halls after school, holding athletic gear as a symbol of his prowess. But even then, that sort of heat couldn’t sustain itself. Over time it became a blur of dislike, stuck against her, but small enough to ignore.

And then one day, out of nowhere it seemed, a gale of such intense force toppled the Durhams, fell them in one swoop; and out of the wreckage came many things: disbelief, suspicion, pity. Pity is what Anne took. She pitied them, and with this emotion, she found relief in her anger, even though it was purely self-indulgence.

The professor calls everyone back to their seats. “How many of you have more than four siblings? Who’s traveled to a foreign country? Let’s hear it….”

It’s the sort of free-for-all that makes Anne uncomfortable, but ensconced as she is by bodies, she’s only mildly concerned she’ll be required to contribute. They try to out-do each other, their voices clambering over each other, all the while the professor beams. Eventually he tells them to pull out their books, and it’s only when he passes out the syllabus- that crisp white paper, the dates and assignments so succinct and precise- that she finally relaxes.

When the bell rings, she waits until most of the room is clear (she’s the same with movie theatres and other crowded venues, not liking to be jostled, the press of bodies). She carefully makes her way down the steps, perusing her schedule, thinking about how she'll need to walk across campus to get to her next class, which is followed by aerobics, and then home for the day. She looks forward to this, the solitude of her dorm before the dinner rush.

“Didn’t you go to Walker?”

She glances up in surprise. It’s Will Durham, leaning against the wall in a casual manner.

“Yes,” she says, mildly alarmed.

“I thought so.”

She doesn’t know how to respond. Suddenly she’s terrified he might walk with her, if only because they’d be headed in the same direction; and so without thinking, she takes off down the hall, feeling rushed and self-conscious. She’s so jangled by this- this simple question- she forgets where the history building is and walks aimlessly around the campus, sitting on the steps by the commissary, berating herself that after all these years, she’s so easily disarmed. When she finally finds her class, the professor has just finished calling out names.

“Name?” he says to her, brows furrowed over the roll.

“Snow,” she says. “Anne Snow.”

The professor looks up. She feels stupid, can feel the color rising. Who does she think she is? James Bond?

“Fitting name for this time of year,” he says blandly, marking a check on his sheet.

She smiles just as blandly and finds a seat near the back.

She’s angry. Angry at Will Durham for finding her on this campus, this high-ranked school, where for the past five months, she has pleasantly lived. “Didn’t you go to Walker?” he asked. “I thought so,” he replied.

"You’re that weird girl. The girl who never talked. Don’t stare at me in class. You’re a freak."

She smiles to herself. Anne Snow. A Freak.

It suits her.