Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Nancy Rue has written over 100 books for girls, is the editor of the Faithgirlz Bible, and is a popular speaker and radio guest with her expertise in tween and teen issues. She and husband, Jim, have raised a daughter of their own and now live in Tennessee.

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Limos, Lattes & My Life on the Fringe

ZONDERVAN

Chapter One

As a matter of fact, this whole story is about me practically changing into somebody else—which is why I have to show you who I was back then. The problem is, you might not like that girl I used to be. I wasn't even that crazy about me. But if you promise to stick it out, I promise to make it worth your while. It was definitely worth mine.

It all started to change that spring afternoon. Up until that day— that hour— I was used to the reactions I got when I walked down the hall at Castle Heights High.

I could always predict that the Kmart Kids—not my name for them, even when I was so critical I could filet a person with my tongue—would cut a wide path around me, like caring about grades made me an alien. Make that tall, gawky, black, and intelligent. They didn't get me, and I was really okay with that.

And it was also a safe bet that the Ruling Class would ignore me, even though I was in every honors class known to adolescence with them. Well, at least the four honors classes the school actually offered. And I knew that the African Americans— my "people" as my parents insisted on calling them—would say, "Hey, Tyler," with Crest-commercial smiles and then move on, because we really didn't have much in common beyond the color of our skin. According to them.

My actual friends—a group I referred to in my mind as the Fringe—were also predictable. From them I could expect things like, "You're looking enigmatic today, Tyler." At which point any passing Kmart Kid would scurry away as if vocabulary was a contagious disease.

I had come to expect all of that. It was like the way I ate a raspberry Pop-Tart for breakfast every day. It might not be that interesting, but at least I knew what I was getting.

But then there was that day in April, when the snow had all melted for the first time since late November and I had walked to school without a ten-pound down jacket. Like I said, that was the day it changed—the way people were looking at me, I mean. Three steps from my locker on the way to the lunchroom, I was already wondering what high school I'd been teleported to.

I hiked my black-and-white plaid messenger bag over my shoulder, stuffed with all the research I'd done the night before on Andrew Jackson for my group history project. I was thinking about what an egotistical bigot the man was and how we could possibly present that in our report, since Mr. Linkhart was from Mississippi or someplace and probably thought Jackson should be canonized as a saint. My head was totally wrapped around that when three girls in too-tight sweaters and too-skinny jeans planted themselves right in front of me. I tried to steer around them, the way they would have steered around me any other day, but they shimmied themselves into that path too and stared at me. It was like they were waiting for me to, I don't know, transform into another life form.

"What?" I said.

Apparently that was hilarious, because they spewed giggles and looked at each other and giggled again, all the way down the hall. I decided that couldn't possibly have anything to do with me, and I proceeded another five steps toward the cafeteria, where two-thirds of my group was supposedly waiting with their own bags bulging with fascinating facts about our seventh president. I was thinking they'd probably want to mooch off of my facts, as well as my lunch money, when another trio of girls slowed down to gape at me and then sidled off, tittering. I've never "tittered" in my life, but I knew even the kids who thought studying was hazardous to their health didn't collapse into that kind of hilarity without a reason, however lame it might be.

I took a detour into the girls' restroom and examined my face in one of the mirrors generations of girls had clouded with clandestine cigarette smoke. My brown eyes stared back at me as if to say, What are you looking at? Yeah, in those days, I even looked at myself that way.

I expected to see ink smeared across my cheek, or at the very least a large wart blossoming on my forehead. But I looked the same as I had that morning when I brushed my teeth. Hair cut into a close cap on what my mother referred to as a "nicely shaped head"—like that was every girl's goal—skin still the color of pancake syrup, mouth still big enough for several people, nose still the only accusing hint that all my ancestral "people" had not come from Africa. There was nothing in the mirror that all those kids in the hall hadn't seen before. Definitely nothing worth "tittering" over, unless you counted the map of red lines in the whites of my eyes from studying until midnight. Did they think I was on drugs? Were they on drugs?

"Oops," somebody said from the doorway.

I looked at her from the mirror. Alyssa Hampton, a senior. Pretty blonde girl. If you liked big teeth. Half the males in the senior class apparently did.

Another girl came in behind Alyssa, nearly plowing into her. Hayley Barr, a junior of thick ponytail fame. The two of them were normally attached right about where their jeans hugged their hips. Jeans that cost more than the entire wardrobe of those six girls in the hall. Combined.

"Hi, Tyler," Hayley said in a voice about two keys higher than her usual voice. "You going to lunch?"

She looked at Alyssa and, to their credit, they visibly stifled the laughter that was so clearly about to explode out of them.

"I usually go to lunch," I said. "Why? Are they serving botulism again today?"

They did explode then, and I knew it wasn't my humor that sent them diving into a stall. Together.

Seriously—what was making me such a source of endless amusement?

I transferred my bag to my other shoulder and hauled Andrew Jackson back out into the hall, where I set out again for the lunchroom. But when I saw my second cousin Kenny at the drinking fountain, I swerved and caught up to him before he could take off to join the other professional slackers at the Jiff-E-Mart.

"Do you have any idea why every girl in this school suddenly thinks I'm funnier than Tina Fey?" I said.

He raised his head and blinked. I could see him taking a full five seconds to recognize me, which made sense. We hadn't actually spoken since Christmas dinner.

"Who's Tina Fey?" he said.

I should have known. Whenever I did try to have a conversation with the boy, he never had any idea what I was talking about. I'd suspected for some time that he was hatched from an egg every morning.

"I don't think you're that funny," he said.

A girl materialized. Candace, Kenny's older sister. Also my second cousin.

"Come on, Kenny," she said, wrapping her fingers around his arm. "You don't want to get into this."

"Into what, Candace?" I said.

"Into nothing." With her hands on Kenny and her eyes warily on me, she dragged him away.

All right. Enough. I charged down the hall, through the looks and the snickers and the snippets of conversation, like I was traveling in a tunnel. I went straight to the table in the corner by...