IF QUAKER SCHOOL was eight years of Obama*, high school was four years of Trump.
It was a downgrade. Like, a massively horrible, how-the-heck-did-we-get-from-that-to-THAT? downgrade where you're smacking yourself and saying, "Really?" And so we enter The Dark Ages of this book. But was all of it so horrible? Let us find out.
*****
Unlike many participation trophy-filled rituals, my middle school graduation was actually a big deal. (Honest!) This was because many of us had been at the Quaker school for years, we were a closer-knit class, and moving on to high schools to leave this life behind was pretty monumental. I think it was about that more than it was about achievement.
It was only eight short years ago that I was the shy kindergartner playing Don't Scrape the Stop Sign and building forts with Holly and Emma. Already I was learning algebra and had a solid best friend. I didn't even remember a different school experience, and that was about to change forever.
The last week of school was always exciting. We got our yearbooks on Field Day as usual, but instead of merely looking through it as I was apt to do, I tried harder to get some good autographs and filled the inside pages with well-wishes.
Yearbooks at the Quaker school weren't that great. They were on the cheap side, though I didn't notice at the timeâI was just excited to see the photos of my classmates and me. It was also interesting to see people who were on your bus or the names of previously faceless kids called in the carpool line. They weren't as thick as the ones my sister got from her public elementary school and mostly served as a testament to the graduating eighth-grade class, who also happened to make up the yearbook staff. There were class pictures, faculty pictures, group photos of sports teams, eighth-grade baby pictures, club group photos, and maybe a collage or two, and a "goodbye" page for any leaving long-term faculty. The eighth-graders each got half a page to share quotes and special moments or fun facts, decorated as they chose. There was also a dedication and a letter from the head of school, and that was about it.
Everything changed when we were the eighth graders. I had been looking at eighth-grade profiles for years admiring the "big kids" with their inside jokes and "never let me forget" moments. I also got to be in the coveted title picture of "Nine Year Survivors" who had been at the school since kindergarten.
But I could look through it later. I had autographs to collect.
So on that day's traditional Field Day extra recess, as we said goodbye forever to the tire swing and the hill where we'd talk and eat lunch on nice days with the joy of still getting recess as young teenagers, I ran around collecting well-wishes. We had a wonderful graduation dance as well, where we danced to Vitamin C's "Friends Forever."
On graduation night, we dressed up in suits and white gowns. Christine and I showed up in the very same dress, of all the dresses one could possibly buy at the time, and I had gotten my hair curled that afternoon.
That evening we sat in the Quaker high school meeting house for the very last time, sharing small stories we wrote of our time there and gathering in one last silent meeting with our families while the rain pounded onto the roof above, washing away all the fancy bar mitzvah parties and Halloween parades and homework sheets with comics on the back and friendships that would more than likely dissolve after that summer when it no longer became convenient to see one another.
We would still have a pool party the next day, as we always did on the last day of school in middle school, but a few students couldn't make that. It was weird going to the party the following day only to realize that I'd never, ever see Jake again. Jake, who I played basketball with in first grade and who Christine liked once and who kicked my stool in art class and who was always good for a laugh. Just gone.
This was it.
Ben sang a Coldplay song that he played on the piano that night, and I felt things I'd never felt before--- love, meaning, and sadness all in one, on top of the feeling that change was coming. The scariest part for me, at the time, was leaving him, which we'd do after the class pool party tomorrowâthe last time our whole class would all be together. The last words Ben would physically speak to me would be "stop taking pictures of me, you stalker" as I snapped photos of the party goings-on, as teachers ran around throwing kids into the pool and girls giggled and gossiped in the hot tub.
As I left the party, though, I did notice them look at me with...an expression that wasn't hate. I memorized that gaze. I'd never see him again.
For another two weeks.
Kelly was getting some version of a junior black belt and whilst Emily and my dad were on an Adventure Princess campout, Mom and I were going to watch performances and watch the ceremony. I wasn't happy to realize that we'd have to stand outside in line for an hour waiting for the show to begin while the kids rehearsed or did whatever they did to get ready, only to be rewarded with two and a half hours of karate demonstrations.
But our family supported performances of all kinds. They attended my piano "recital" when I was four. They attended every single preschool Christmas show, every school play, every looonnnggg concert (thank you, public middle school jazz band), and every dance recital that we were in. Now it was time for the karate portion.
These events involved every karate branch in the county. I knew Ben did karate, but I brushed off the idea of running into them. However, I've found that fleeting thoughts that I brush off are the ones that are ultimately correct.
One time when I was getting picked up from school, Ben's ride was a few cars before mine. As it pulled away, I quickly memorized the license plate. You know, so I might recognize it out and about. Useful skills. Well, that paid off. You can only imagine my shock when I saw their car pull into the lot for the karate event. They were the most recent person to pull in, and sheer terror overtook me as I saw nobody else coming to stand in line.
I knew his mom knew who I was. Eeeek! There wouldn't be any questions at all. I pondered going to sit with some old people under a tree in the shade a ways back, but I'd still have to get back in line eventually.
But she ended up never joining the line, for some reason. Perhaps she saw me, or simply went in through a different way. I never found out.
We finally got into the auditorium and joined my grandparents. Grandma was thrilled when she heard Ben was there, but we'd have to wait for confirmation to make sure he really was in the show.
And got it we did when the curtains opened. There they were. They did a dance routine with the rest of their group to "Sandstorm," and appeared again later to dance to "Crank Dat Soulja Boy." At another point, they appeared as "stage crew" members to help provide boards that another group was breaking. After that, it was time for the ceremony itself.
Most unfortunately, I was never able to find Ben afterwards. I left the event with a massive sense of letdown, to put it simply. Perhaps his mother did see me standing in line, and they departed early.
I haven't seen Ben since. When they left the stage after performing, I literally thought that they might be exiting my life as they exited through the door. Sadly for my former self, I was basically right. There were no other guys in my life for a long time.
But the key word here is never "seen" them again.
***
I wasn't great at math in middle school. It was my worst subject. I did okay with the note-taking part of class, and could follow along, but the tests were a different story for whatever reason. This seemed to convince my parents that I obviously could not handle any part of school at all.
I wanted to go to public school, or the Quaker high school (that idea came later), like many other classmates. But no. I got the privilege, decided by my parents, to go to a boarding school out of state in New England. We'll call it Felton Academy.
I've told you earlier that adults hated whenever I played alone. Okay, sure, I was a bit shy in my younger years. But did being shy equate to having real problems? Some people seemed to think so. But I always had people to get along with. I can't remember a time when I didn't have friends even with my brief "between friends" period. Many, though not all, of my friends have been neurotypical, as far as I'm aware, and we all got along like peanut butter and jelly. I also can't remember ever having a major fight with a friend, even though there were times when we may have disagreed on something.
(Although I really should have shared my Hershey Kisses with Haley that one day on the blacktop that day when I refused because I "earned" them. I'm sorry, Haley. Forgive me.)
In fact, it was what got me to Quaker school in the first place: the idea that a small environment would be ideal. So off to school I went....four hours from home. I disagreed with that choice.
Felton was a small campus in a woodsy-suburban area of the state, though the campus itself was far from lush, wooded, and fancy. There was a dorm building (the largest of them), two classroom buildings, a dining hall, a nurse's office, an A-frame library, and an old barn converted into a very makeshift theater down the way. I lived on the first floor of the dorm building, where we all had single rooms.
Then, the community. Some students were more mature. Some students didn't know how to take care of themselves, threw tantrums when they didn't get their way, and gosh only knows what else. Many evening floor meetings were spent talking about social skills, like How To Have A Conversation (which, quite frankly, many of us were capable of doing pretty well). We wrote down questions on note cards to send to the guys, sent them to their floor, and waited for a response. Many of them were about our monthly periods, like whether or not they *actually* synced. I guess this was supposed to mimic a conversation somehow, or at least to ease us into the idea, despite the fact that these kids seemed fine with having conversations every day. Sometimes, we also got worksheets passed out to us with facial cues and "hints" on them. This seemed like a weird way to make friends!
Then there were the classes themselves, consisting of anywhere between three to seven kids. Humanities was actually kind of okay. I finally learned about what it meant to be liberal vs. conservative against the backdrop of the Obama vs. McCain election. My classmates acted out there, though, and we didn't tend to get much done. One day in particular was spent with one girl laying on the floor and refusing to move, talk, or get up. Staff was called in. I don't recall how it was resolved. Presumably she got up, and is still not laying there today.
Anyway. I did get to take an acting elective and a cooking one, which was fun save for the boys who wouldn't behave or follow directions. Science was just kind of random, going through topics the teacher would decide---we weren't even in the same grades. I was once praised for getting a 75% on a Simpsons genetics worksheet. Yay? Individual and Community was even more random. One class was spent learning how to visualize; another was spent making collages for our classmates.
We also got scored on our "transition" to school. I got low scores despite me actually doing pretty well. Or so I thought. The reason was this: I forgot to pack a pillow on my first night. I made do with a decorative pillow and a sweater. But once the teachers got wind of this, I was forever known as the girl who wouldn't speak up for herself despite me sometimes speaking up for myself.
And boys? Forget about it. There was one boy who I thought was cute, but it didn't go anywhere and he wasn't even that cute, really. I guess I was just looking for someone to help distract from Ben. Later on, I was super excited at the Halloween party, when rumor had it a boy from Cooking class wanted to dance with me. For some reason my brain translated this into "he liked me." A girl corrected this for me right off the bat. Oops. Another girl recommended I talk to a new student named Tyler, and he seemed okay, but he was too obsessed with airplanes. I never did end up getting to know him.
I did have one fond memory of my time there. We had morning meetings most weekdays, and every time it was someone's birthday, they received a greeting. Not a school-sponsored one. Katherine would stand up and sing, "This is your birthday song; it isn't very long. Hey!" She clapped along to the beat. I was sort of sorry I'd never get one.
All this because math wasn't my strong point!
Let me put it this way: regardless if you had an official diagnosis, if you were doing really well with your largely neurotypical classmates and decent in your classes without help (save for math), and you were able to participate fully in things like theater camp and concerts with other neurotypical people, and had solid friendships with them, would you go to a school that specifically catered to kids with autism, and get something good out of it? Probably not.
Don't get me wrong: many of these students were nice. But in some cases, it often felt like I was their babysitter or older sister rather than their bestie. It was awkward. The ones who I could connect with more were in too deep with other friends already, although I did get to know some of them. It just wasn't compatible for anyone. I needed other friends, too.
Meanwhile, maintaining previous friendships was hard. Christine and I stayed in touch through a few emails, but not many. I heard that she liked a new guy already, named Jack, but I didn't learn any more about him. I also briefly emailed some friends from summer camp. But we were getting involved with new social lives, too.
It wasn't just school that I missed, however. The daily routine at home looked far more interesting and inviting now, rather than staying in a blech dorm room. I missed getting off the bus to play Mario Party DS and eat chocolate ice cream with peanut butter sauce. I even missed my little sister Emily watching her favorite shows. Max and Ruby was a recent favorite, as was anything on a PBS program called Sprout. Host Nina and her puppet friend Star entertained the audience in between shows, whether it was Kipper or Angelina Ballerina or Dora the Explorer. Another favorite? The Wiggles. Our parents had dragged us all to a concert once, but the wholesomeness was something that many people, adults included, eventually came to appreciate.
Wow. Would I really exchange boarding school for the Wiggles? Apparently I would.
Felton actually didn't last very long. Even my parents realized it was wrong, and I've been informed that Grandma "may have cried a little." Before that, the academic director had also basically come out to me and said, "This curriculum isn't challenging enough for you."
Maybe the school worked for some students. But it wasn't for me. It was beyond belief: my parents were wrong and I was right.
***
So that January I started at a new school in New Jersey. We'll call it Parkington.
It sat in farm country, amongst golf courses and farm fields and a lot of nothing in that particular area. I thought that might be fun. There weren't a lot of animals---mostly there was hay---but you could occasionally hear a cow. Good ol' down-to-earth farm country. That didn't seem so bad.
Maybe. At first, I liked being there simply because it wasn't Felton. Everywhere I looked, girls were excited about seeing each other and rushing out to greet one another.
Still, making friends that semester wasn't easy. I should have noticed the red flags in the beginning, when I was first touring the school. When I sat in on an English class during my visit, nobody seemed to be smiling. The teacher sometimes wondered aloud why they weren't motivated to complete their work.
When I joined them, I learned that the freshmen had a drama problem. That kind of life never appealed to me and was pretty nonexistent at my Quaker school to begin with. In fact, I seemed to be there during a particularly difficult social period. Suspensions and expulsions were not uncommon despite the school containing anywhere between 90-110 students in a given year.
Cursing was a problem too. At first, this was exciting. I was around "tough" girls, ones who were getting older. I wasn't a child anymore. But it became so frequent that it became annoying. It also entered one ear and went out the other. When Grandpa and Grandma and I played one of our Sorry tournaments thereafter, it would be a surprise to almost anyone to hear Grandma lay down a string of three s-bombs after getting sent back to Start. However, I didn't even realize what I'd heard at first before she quickly changed the phrase to "pickle pickle pickle!"
Here are some other aspects of the nitty-gritty:
PEOPLE
The dorms looked like long colonial-style houses on the outside, with black shutters around the square windows. I initially lived in a quad. I thought living with three girls would be fun...how wrong I was! One of their friends, a girl in another dorm, was a little sugar high whenever she came to visit. This sometimes lasted late into Saturday nights. Another roommate, from Korea, liked to get up at 4 AM to do her homework with the world's brightest desk lamp. Later, the girl on the sugar high got in trouble for vandalizing and the mood in the room got very quiet. After a little over a week, I moved into a double room with a girl from Taiwan.
Still, friends came next year to make things better. My best friend would be the girl I roomed with that year, named Danielle. We bonded over all sorts of things, from the rude girl across the hall who was afraid of ladybugs to watching Disney movies. My desk happened to be covered in various doodles, and we'd spend time analyzing them. We watched Potter Puppet Pals and worked on our Xanga blogs. Even if we weren't having an especially great time there, we'd still be doing it together.
I would meet another friend of hers named Emily and room with her the year after. I'd also meet an overly eager international student later named Alexa who didn't have many boundaries but was sweet nonetheless and I was happy to hang out with her when nobody else did. We got to know each other well during my senior year, sat together on weekends, and did weekend trips together. Though not always---she was a bigger fan of the mall than I was. I also got to know Erin, a girl from the Middle East known for doing crazy accents; Connie, my Taiwanese roommate; and Sam, a girl down the hall.
For me, it was definitely quality over quantity. I had no patience for drama or games, two things that were frequent there.
ROUTINE
Besides having friends I could actually relate to, it was a different lifestyle, for sure. There weren't any social skills classes this time, fortunately, but we still had weekly floor meetings as well as weekly class meetings and all-school meetings twice a week. We had a few uniform options to choose from; the jumpers being the least popular and dubbed "potato sacks" by students. Study hall took place in an assigned location until senior year, when I got the privilege to do it anywhere I wanted. I was discouraged at the fact that I had to take Algebra 1 again---you couldn't start geometry mid-year--- but then realized it was fun to do so well in it the second time around. Because I retook that instead of geometry, I also got to take Applied Math rather than trig in my senior year. It was a much easier class with useful skills. I also did super well in it. So I will give the school some credit there.
I wasn't originally looking forward to taking foreign languages. Oral exams: yikes! But my Spanish teacher was super fun, and would ultimately become a famous trail runner and Instagram influencer telling plus-sized women that it was okay to be athletic, even if society said they shouldn't be. I ended up doing super well in that, too.
Each grade had their own special seminar. Freshmen took a course devoted to finding your personal strengths. Juniors took team building, which often took the form of going on the ropes course, one of my least favorite things to do ever. Soon, though, I was able to appreciate spending some time outside. Seniors took what was basically a college prep seminar. That was a good one---it was very relaxed, plus I enjoyed looking forward to starting college.
The worst? English. Believe it or not. At least in junior year.
One teacher and I didn't start off on the right foot. We were assigned to write six-word memoirs, where you sum up your life in only six words. It's pretty cool. Except for when we had to create them in class, write them down on paper anonymously, and send them around class for others to comment on. Mine was "Once a follower, now a leader" (maybe I wasn't a total leader yet, but I was definitely more assertive than, say, kindergarten).
When we got them back I found that my teacher basically wrote, "It doesn't seem like you're actually a leader yet." She clearly knew who I was, because I really wasn't as much of a leader as some others, and classmates knew it. And get this: she wasâ¯newâ¯to the school and had no evidence to even back up this claim. I still wonder to this day what led her to that conclusion and was disappointed that she used the opportunity to make an unkind judgment.
MEALS
Meals were a different affair. For weekday lunches and dinners we'd have assigned seating, which nobody was especially fond of. We had to stand up to show respect to the table teacher when they arrived (fun fact: this was considered a modern tradition at the Quaker high school in the 1890s through 1920s!) and had to ask to be excused.
When important people came to visit, we'd have "family style" lunches, where we'd be forced to wear the jumpers. One person at each table was assigned to be the clearer every day, but at family-style lunch, these responsibilities were made much larger because they'd also have to bring out the dishes (with food on them already) beforehand, along with pitchers, glasses, silverware sets, and more. Then they'd have to get dessert, and bring everything back to the kitchen after the meal.
I'm tired just reading that.
SPORTS
We got to pick our own athletics option to go to four days a week. In the early days, this was usually weights and cardio, basically working out in the gym. Pretty boring. Later on, though, I loved doing yoga. You'll hear about that later. I ended my athletic career with rec tennis, which was surprisingly enjoyable.
DETENTION
We didn't have typical detentions, either. "Saturday Mornings" consisted of getting up early to go help the teachers with tasks of their choosing. I was fortunate enough to never have gotten one, but I did do crew, which was a rotating job of working in the kitchen after dinner. Imagine getting together with a bunch of students, putting on rubber gloves, and having to work in the kitchen for half an hour washing dishes in hot water. Another part of it was wiping down the tables in the dining hall---- there was sometimes a rush for this. I was lucky to get this job on a pretty regular basis whenever I was on crew.
WEEKENDS
Well, I would have rather have been home. There would be trips, and for me, there would be time in the dorm room and more iTunes movies, and often, YouTube videos of the latest play Ben was in. The most popular trips were to the mall and movies, which were a problem for girls who wanted to go elsewhere like meâthey would take so much interest that other outings would often be canceled. Field trips also often took us to nearby NYC.
Every so often the staff thought it would be fun to create an educational theme and build mandatory activities around it. Nobody cared. People would show up to the activities they signed up for that day and try to text away under watchful teachers' eyes. Peace and Justice weekend was one of those such times.
One of the worst was during Celebrate English Weekend, when faculty called us to the dining hall on Saturday night to play a matching vocabulary game. It was exactly what it sounded like---match the definition with the word and try to get the most correct. The winner got...nothing! Oh, I'm sorry. I mean, the prize of knowing you have a great vocabulary that will maybe get you far in life. So, how did everyoneâ¯elseâ¯spend their Saturday nights?
Look, I was an English major. Even I don't want to spend weekends playing vocabulary games.
TRADITIONS
We also had some fun traditions, especially in spring. One day in May, we'd get up to see a fox sculpture on the quad, which meant field day, or Fox Day as they called it. Teachers and students would compete in a scavenger hunt and field games. Then, a Princeton University acapella group would perform (they would serenade one girl, and I would always simultaneously hope it was and wasn't me), followed by a game show experience. It was an enjoyable day.
Banquets were also always a fun time to let loose and have a nice dinner put on by one of the classes right before a break. Themes might include Blackouts, Las Vegas, Nightmare Before Christmas, Sports, or anything you could dream up. And Project Exploration was always a fun time right before spring break. Classes were suspended for three weeks and everyone took just one special, more laid-back course---usually mine was art-themed, like interior design or botanical art. I also took a mass media course, which was the most fun.
***
Looking back, it wasn't all bad...though I will still consider it one of the least happier times in my life. I loved going to yoga across the street as my athletics option during the week, and weekend trips to Borders for YA novels and strawberry drinks were fun too.
There were definitely bad days, though.
Through days of classmates' drama, boredom (I mean, we were in the middle of farmland and weekends were pretty slow), and work, I found solace in something totally different: diving into my fictional worlds. The tire swing smoothies from fifth grade? Yep, I worked on them a little bit. Just for fun. Not that I'd ever admit that to Christine. I made visual guides to the smoothie world and zines and even a story about them. It brought me back to the old days and was actually a great escape from worrying about day-to-day life.
The post-golden age of YouTube was still in full swing during this time as well, with popular videos like Potter Puppet Pals, Charlie the Unicorn, The Gummy Bear Song, and Tickle-Me-Elmos on fire...you know, quality stuff that existed just before being a YouTuber really became a thing. They were hysterical. And we were even allowed to use Facebook---which we couldn't in Connecticut.
I also read a lot. Sometimes I flipped through my old favorite books. I even reread the Harry Potter series. Other times, I read magazines. Whenever I visited my grandparents, we'd stop by the bookstore or grocery store and we'd pick up all the teen magazines I wanted: Bop, QuizFest, Tiger Beat, you name it. I loved reading the adventures of Zac and Vanessa---the young Hollywood power couple who would obviously get married and be together forever. I loved reading on the adventures of BFFs Selena and Demi.
Good, innocent times. Still, doing this stuff all weekend could get monotonous.
But I found other ways to pass the time, too.
I once made a long list with Danielle who disliked the place as much as I did. We decided to record every unethical/unfair/boring/terrible thing that happened, particularly on nights when our poorly-behaved floor leaders blasted Beyonce's "Sweet Dreams" for the gazillionth time, and ended up with quite a long Word document.
But I was clearly missing my old life. I spent most of the life I could remember there, and that was what was normal. I wrote many an email to Ben, which all went unanswered. I even missed bus rides and the antics that often occurred on the way home. What I would do sometimes, in the half-hour between the time our Internet shut off and lights out, was to take out those cheesy yearbooks. I would have loved to look back on some more memories than what I got. So, I took a pen and added personal memories from each year on blank "autographs" pages. It was a good way to wind down at the end of the day by remembering the good times...the time where Mitchell pulled up the projector screen and ended up taking a basket of popsicle sticks with it, cuing an absolute explosion in laughter...the time when Rick did an experiment to see which teacher had the biggest head....the I Love Lucy 8th grade show I didn't understand in kindergarten...tire swing smoothies...
I couldn't go back, but memories were still there. In the meantime, maybe I'd make new ones.
It did, however, inspire a story. They say to "write what you know," and though I'm not sure that's always true, it worked in this case.
***
Let me tell you about my dream world. Most of my dreams somehow take place in the same universe. They always have.
I have subconscious versions of my college, my elementary/middle school, my grandparents' old house, my grandparents' Peppercorn Bend house, amusement parks, and more. The color scheme is unique, too: think Alice in Wonderland---either the animated classic or the Johnny Depp version---and it's usually dark as well. Many of these places look the same every time. It's weird, but it's super cool, and I can remember snippets of many dreams this way.
In high school, naturally, I had dreams about my old school a lot. In every dream, I was convinced that I was actually back in middle school for good. So that got me thinking: what if I reallyâ¯didâ¯get to go back? What if I really did get to relive it all over again?
And that's what got me started on a new story.
It originally started with a prompt from a writing program I attended in a recent summer. We were asked to write down an opening sentence and then each picked one from a hat. My prompt went something like this:â¯Brielle sometimes wondered if she pushed her eyes deep enough into the sockets, if they would float through her brain and onto a new face.â¯You might think this story would begin to be about a girl who had self-esteem issues and underwent a transformation to impress her peers. It ended up telling the story of a nostalgic pre-college girl who revisits her past. That's the great thing about writing; you don't always know where it's going until you get there.
I spent some of high school on it, went on hiatus, and eventually finished it in college. I got inspired one day and sat in my dorm room for several hours, typing away, scrambling to get every idea down before I forgot it. Memory after memory appeared in my brain, and I was eager to relive them in the story I was creating in front of me. In this story, the main character finds herself back in the days she misses so much, only to discover that it's for real this time. But she has some real choices to make. Does she stay there forever, or go home and continue with her real life and the opportunities she has there? It was the first "long" short story I'd ever written, clocking in at thirty pages in Microsoft Word.
It was incredibly fun to write, too. I incorporated many things that happened in middle school...events, characters, everything really, and mixed it with some made-up events as well.
With a little writing, high school would be survivable. And no matter what, Parkington couldn't be worse than Felton.
But I still would have to spend the next four years there.
*Well, it was technically nine years, but eight works for the allegory, and it's close enough.