She didn’t fit — not anywhere.  Not with the nerds, though she got straight A’s like they did, wore glasses…like they did, and could beat them at chess.  She didn’t fit.  Not with the sports, booze, ’n sex crowd, at all.  Certainly not with the druggies.  She didn’t fit in anywhere. She was The Loner — alone and lonely.

After awhile, she got used to it.  She made her own standards…and her own clothes — high fashioned stuff, patterned after the latest in Vogue, InStyle and Cosmopolitan, learning to cut the patterns herself when she couldn’t find them offered at the fabric store.  She used geometry to do it, then a sewing machine that her mother donated to her projects.  That got her praise from adults who wanted to know where she’d bought such classy clothes; it got her ridicule from her peers.  And eggs — thrown and smeared.  They ruined more than a few of her favorite outfits.

She tried skipping when things got too bad.  She wasn’t five steps down the block before the boys’ counselor saw her, him pulling up in his fancy car to tersely bark, “Get in.”

TO BE CONTINUED…someday.

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