BEAUTY HIGH, GO BREAKERS!: This quintessential 1980s plastic school sign molded into the shape of an ocean wave flanks the front sidewalk of the public high school. Last renovated in 1985, the building sits downhill from the well-funded Ivy League preparatory private school, Golden Academy. (Personal photo/Josephine Saint-Martin)

Chapter 2

June

First impressions can be deceiving. Maybe I shouldn’t have kindled any excitement whatsoever about returning to Beauty, because it only took four months for my initial hope to drain, and now I’m basically functioning on low-power mode and praying my battery doesn’t die completely.

Between third and fourth period on the last day of school before summer break, I summon what’s left of my energy, make myself as small as possible, and head down the western corridor of Beauty High, music thrumming through earbuds that block out the discord of the hallways—all the lockers slamming and all the football players shouting out to their bros. The laughter and buzzy excitement about graduation parties. The freshman kid crying in the restroom. Summer plans being solidified. Drug deals being made.

I keep as far away from these people as possible. Some of them I used to know when we were kids, and some of them might be okay now, but I’m in a full-on survival mentality, and I can’t take any chances. Whenever Mom and I move somewhere new, I usually keep to myself and don’t make many friends. People aren’t disposable. It hurts when you get attached and have to leave them a few months later—something Mom doesn’t seem to understand.

But unlike in other places we’ve lived, the students at Beauty won’t leave me alone. They’ve poked and prodded me as if I’m a prize poodle who’s unwittingly stumbled into some kind of kennel club competition for Worst in Show. Since the day I registered for school here, it’s been one long series of invasive questions. Did you really live in a cheap motel for two months? Were you on food stamps? Is your mother a sex addict? Does your father really know Prince Harry? Why did your grandmother really go to Nepal to live with Sherpas? Is she involved in some kind of cult?

Leering eyes, the constant texted rumors zipping around school … sometimes just walking from one class to the next feels like I’m walking through a war zone. I might step on a land mine and lose a foot—or gain an illegitimate baby, you never know. I’m taking both my life and my flimsy reputation into my own hands every time the bell rings.

Everywhere else Mom and I lived, no one knew us. But here, people know just enough. Intimate details of our life are tossed around for entertainment. Not everything they say is true, but some of it is. And some of it hurts.