We would build forts in the summer and snowmen in the winter. I used to hang out with the neighborhood boys, too, when I was a kid. Then in fifth grade, Kelly moved to Delaware, Raquel invited every girl except me to her roller-skating birthday party, and Bernadette sent me a note to let me know that she only hung out with me because her parents said she had to. When I was little my mom used to schedule my playdates with different girls: Kelly, Raquel, Bernadette. But somehow all those new kids, every one of them, immediately found out about me. We went to a middle school twice the size of our elementary school, and then we went to a high school twice the size of our middle school. She might rub off on you.” I was sitting right there. And then one day on the playground, Lizzie Reardon came over and casually said to my new friend, “Don’t spend too much time with Elise. She and I used to sit outside together during recess while the other girls played don’t-touch-the-ground tag, and we’d talk about the witches’ coven I wanted to form, because I’d read a chapter book about a witches’ coven and my dad had given me some incense that I thought we could use. A new girl moved to our town that year, from Michigan. How is it even possible to be an uncool fourth grader? Didn’t we all just string together friendship bracelets and daydream about horses and pretend to solve mysteries back then?īut somehow, even in fourth grade, they knew. And they knew what I was long before I did. I’ve gone to school with the same kids since kindergarten. That’s what I would say to my younger self if I could pinpoint the moment when I went astray. I know it is your favorite, because it looks so special, but don’t do it. If there were just one place where it first fell apart, I could dream of going back in time and finding myself and saying, “Listen, ten-year-old Elise, just don’t wear that oversize bright red sweater with the tufts of yarn sticking out of it like pom-poms. There was no other way it could have gone. Change all you want you can’t change that.
They will still see past that, see you, the girl who is still too scared, still too smart for her own good, still a beat behind, still, always, wrong.
Pierce your ears, trim your bangs, buy a new purse. What do you think it takes to reinvent yourself as an all-new person, a person who makes sense, who belongs? Do you change your clothes, your hair, your face? Go on, then. You think it’s so easy to change yourself.
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