NotExpected 19

Not What We Expected by Tiffany B. Quinn If I thought that living with a pregnant woman was a challenge during Sandra’s first pregnancy, I soon found out that dealing with a couple of hundred girls going through puberty all in one place was probably worse, if not its equal. Throw in approximately the same number of boys going through their own puberty and you have a real hotbed of hormonal emotional turmoil. I don’t know how my mother had dealt with kids in this state of being for her whole career. I NEVER want to be a middle school teacher.

Chapter 19

"Do you get everything?" Sandra inquired.

"Yes, mother!" I rolled my eyes.

"Money for lunch? All your books? Schedule? Gym clothes? Tampons & pads?" She got more specific.

"Check, Check, Check, Check, and Check," I patiently responded. "And a spare pair of panties that you insisted that I bring. I even brought in a little makeup, just in case."

"You know that you’re not allowed makeup in 7th grade," She cautioned me.

"I know," I grinned, "I was just winding you up. This isn’t the first time that I’ve been to school you know."

"It is the first time that I’ve gotten to take my little girl to school," she mentioned.

"I can tell," I replied dryly, patting her on the arm, "It will be all right, mother. You’ll see."

"Don’t get smart with me, young lady," She laughed. "Don’t forget that Tom is picking you up from school today."

"I got it, Sandra," I told her as I gave her a hug and a kiss on the cheek before hopping out of her car, "I love you. Now scoot or you’ll be late for work."

Kelley, Susie, and Jenny were waiting for me outside the school. They had all ridden the bus together. For some unknown reason, we had coordinated outfits for the first day of school. It was decided that we wear similar jeans and tops, which we had purchased on a recent shopping trip together.

"Lucky girl," Susie sighed as she watched Sandra leave in her brand-new Mercedes E-class sedan, a wedding present from Tom. "That’s some car."

"Who’s lucky?" Kelley poked Susie in the ribs, "Andi or her mother?"

"Both," Susie sighed again. "That’s a much nicer ride than the bus. And she didn’t have to put up with that disgusting boy from down the street."

I heard all about the trials of yellow school bus transportation as we entered the school and almost ran into the Principal. My real mother. She was out greeting the arriving students.

"Well hello girls," She greeted us with a smile. "Are you ready for a great learning experience?"

We all rolled our eyes as we responded in unison, "Yes, Principal."

Looking at me in particular, she said, "Andi, please let me know what I can do to help you adjust. Feel free to talk to me anytime."

"Yes, Principal," I politely responded. "Thank you."

I wanted to give her a hug, but we had decided to keep our relationship quiet from the other students.

As we walked deeper into the bowels of the school in search of our lockers, Jenny asked with a touch of awe, "How cool is it that your grandmother is your Principal?"

"I’ve been through this before," I responded. "She was a gym teacher when I was here last time." The nice thing about it then, was that the fact that my mother was a teacher at the school had kept the bullies off my back, mostly.

"She even coached the cheerleaders for a while," I let Jenny know.

"Really?" she was surprised. "How come she didn't coach you?"

I gave her a look. I am pretty sure that the other girls never thought of my past. They were caught up in the here and now.

"Oh yeah," she said. "I forgot."

By pulling a few strings, we had been able to get book lockers (thanks Mom!) adjacent to each other.

As we were setting up our lockers, a group of three girls walked up to us. They were all wearing skirts that challenged the school’s restriction on short skirts, tight sweaters that showed off obviously enhanced busts, nails painted with matching polish, heeled sandals, and enough jewelry to sink a battleship. They had obviously spent hours on their hair. If you looked closely, they were wearing banned makeup, but it was subtle.

One of them snarled at Jenny, "So it’s the cheerleader wanna be. You should just give it up, loser. Nobody wants a girl like you on the squad."

"And what kind of girl is that, Amanda?" Jenny calmly replied when she turned to face Amanda.

"One who comes from a nothing family and doesn’t have any fashion sense," Amanda said aloofly while looking at all of us in disdain. "A loser."

Jenny's family, like the rest of the Posse's, was a typical upper middle class working family. They were comfortable but not wealthy. I couldn't see what Amanda was getting at.

Jenny stepped up so that she was nose to nose with Amanda, "Amanda, give it up. We will settle this during tryouts. Why don’t you sluts get to class before you’re late."

I thought that we were about to see a fight, but Amanda and her two sidekicks just stuck their noses up in the air and stalked off down the hall.

"What was that all about?" I asked.

Susie answered the question. "We’ve grown up with Amanda and her friends. They’ve always been a pain. Amanda’s parents are both lawyers and very wealthy. She seems to think that entitles her to special treatment."

Jenny snorted, "I think, Andi, that you can one up her when it comes to wealthy parents. You are down to earth and can be glad that you didn’t grow up as a spoiled rich girl. It’s too bad that Amanda is really good at cheerleading. She has been working with a private coach for the last year. There is no doubt that she will make the squad."

Susie agreed, "She may make the squad, but so will you, Jenny."

Jenny just smiled, "I think that we all will. You all have gotten pretty good over the summer."

"There’s no way that I’m trying out," I said with a degree of horror.

"You so are," Kelley grinned. "We’re best friends and we’ll be doing this together."

The first class warning bell rang.

"We’ll be talking about this at lunch," I warned my friends. "There’s no way I want to try out."

"You’ll love it," Jenny grinned at me as she left for class. "See you at lunch."

Unfortunately, we were not able to coordinate our schedules except that we all were in the same lunch period and one other class together. We did have other classes together, but not as a whole group.

My first class of the day was Language Arts. This course turned out to be one of my more ‘difficult’ subjects. Fortunately, Kelley was also in the class and she was a wiz at reading and writing. She was excited about some of the literature we studied that term and thought that the writing assignments were a piece of cake. I was certainly glad when we started studying together. While I have always loved to read, I had a geek’s abhorrence of writing. I did get fairly good at writing before I graduated from college the first time but Susie helped me to overcome my fear of composition to the point that I started to enjoy it by the time we got out of high school.

Next up was a Math class. The class covered very basic geometry and algebra that term. The class was a no brainer for me. Neither were the other math classes that we took through our middle and high school careers. I was pretty sure that I had a better math background than most of the teachers we had over the years, having had three semesters of Calculus plus a semester of Differential Equations for my Information Technology degree. I was also using that advanced math in my Computer Engineering courses. Both Jenny and Susie claimed to find math to be their most difficult subject. I became the designated math tutor and both girls stayed near the top of their math classes as Kelley and I worked with them.

The Social Studies class covered American History that term. This was another subject that I had taken before. I had forgotten more than I remembered from my prior experience. I was never ahead of the class in this subject, though what I remembered from my high school and college history classes gave me an edge.

I had Physical Education with Jenny just before lunch. We were assigned lockers and had a general orientation. Looking around the locker room, it occurred to me that I was about to live every teen boy’s dream of seeing a bunch of naked and/or scantily clad girls in the locker room. Unfortunately, I was going to be just one of the girls. I had everything that they did. We didn’t dress out the first day but would start the next day. The coaching staff also told us about extracurricular sports opportunities and invited us to try out for the various teams and squads. I had started growing again after the wedding and had added an inch and a few pounds to my stature over the summer, making me one of the taller girls in the class. I was also just starting to develop a respectful set of feminine curves.

One of the coaches came over to talk to me at the end of class. She introduced herself as the volleyball coach.

"Have you given any thought to trying out for volleyball?" She asked.

"Not really," I admitted. "My girlfriends and I were thinking of cheerleading. We’ve been taking classes for cheer all summer."

She looked at me closely, "I don’t see you as one of those airhead cheerleaders. You really should give volleyball a try. You look to be in good shape and should do well."

"I’ll think about it," I promised her.

At lunchtime we found an empty table in the lunchroom and compared notes on the morning. Jenny pulled out some applications for cheer tryouts and passed them around.

"You all need to fill these out and have your parents sign them," she instructed us. "There will be a clinic after school all next week that we need to attend. They pick the squad at the end of the clinic."

"Jenny," I began, "you know that you’re one of my very best friends, right?"

"Andi," she looked at me sternly, "I thought that we were going to do this as a group."

"I know that’s what all of you want," I apologized, "but I suck at cheer. I have two left feet and my arms always go the wrong way. There’s no way that I’ll make the squad and one of the coaches asked me to try out for volleyball instead. That seems more my speed." I didn’t mention the coach’s comment about the intellect of cheerleaders.

"You don’t suck at cheer," Kelley corrected me, "but you do struggle a bit. I bet that you’ll be better than half the girls that show up to the clinic."

"Yes, you won’t be the worst there," agreed Susie. "But, realistically, Jenny is the only one of us with a real shot at making the squad. We still need to be there to support her against that bitch Amanda."

"Then what are you going to do if you don’t make the squad?" I asked Susie.

"Get my homework done?" she shrugged.

"There’s also soccer and cross country," I mentioned.

"Not interested," Susie replied.

"Me either," agreed Kelley.

When I told the volleyball coach that I was still going to do cheer tryouts, she said that I could try out for the volleyball team later if I didn’t make the squad. There would always be room for talented players.

The first class after lunch was a Geography class. The material was not much different than what I took the first time around and I actually recalled a lot of my past learning as the class progressed. What was different this time around was the teacher. All the girls in the class mooned over the young man teaching the class. He was only two years out of college and, I admit, quite handsome in a suave sort of way. Amanda happened to be in the class and she seemed to be totally smitten by the young teacher. At the start of the term, I don’t think that she heard a word of the lessons. It impacted her grade too.

I had chosen a Life Sciences course for my science class. This turned out to be much different than the physical sciences that I had taken in my first pass through seventh grade. I found it interesting, especially the unit on sex education.

I had to sign up for an art class that term. While I had been leaning towards photography, the rest of the girls wanted to take the Introduction to Fashion Design course. Somehow, we all ended up in the same class. This class definitely expanded my horizons. It turned out to be my most difficult class that term, probably because I had never been exposed to the topic in my prior education, either in or out of school.

"Are you riding home with us?" Susie asked as we put our things away in our lockers at the end of the day.

"No," I informed her. "Tom is picking me up."

"We are going to get together at my house to study once we get home," Kelley said. "I wish that you could join us."

I thought about that as they headed off to catch the bus and I went to find my ride.

"How was the first day of seventh grade?" Tom asked as I settled into his car.

"Fine," I admitted, "it’s pretty strange being back there again. Some of the other girls are scary, but I’m with my friends, so it’s not too bad. By the way, I’ll need to have you sign a permission slip for cheer tryouts."

He glanced at me with an amused smile. "You. A cheerleader? I never would have guessed. I didn’t think that you took those cheer lessons seriously."

"What!?" I exclaimed indignantly, "You don’t think that I’m cute enough to be a cheerleader?"

"Oh, you’re cute enough," he admitted, "In fact, you’re the best looking seventh grader I’ve ever seen. That has me worried, by the way. No. The problem is that you seem to be too smart to be a cheerleader."

"That’s about what the volleyball coach told me," I told him. "Anyway, I don’t expect to make the squad. I’m just trying out as a sign of support for my friends."

"Why don’t you try something else?" He asked.

"I will after I don’t make the cheer squad," I explained. "The volleyball coach asked me to try out for that."

He just shook his head.

"Girls!" He said, "I never will figure them out. If you’re going to end up playing volleyball, why try out for cheerleading? You will lose a week of volleyball practice."

I just shrugged, "I am finding that girls are more interested in supporting each other than boys are. I kind of like it. Volleyball will be there after I get done with cheer tryouts. I’m told that they have a hard time filling out the teams.

"Speaking of supporting each other," I changed direction. "The girls want me to spend time studying with them after school. I think I can use it, particularly for the fashion design course. My background in math and science would help them too. What do you think of me going to the condo after school on the days that we don’t have after school practices? We can use the condo as a study hall."

I could see that the idea seemed to rest well with him.

"Sounds good to me," he admitted. I was pretty sure that he liked the idea of not taking a break in the middle of the afternoon to collect me. "Sandra could pick you up there on her way home from work. Let’s talk about it tonight."

"Now," he changed topics, "We are having trouble with our latest project. It seems like a computer problem. Do you think could take a look at it tonight?"

"Sure Daddy," I said in my best little girl voice, "just as soon as I get my homework done."

He rolled his eyes, "Don’t get cute with me little girl."

I just gave him my best attempt at an innocent look.

"Learning a few feminine wiles, are you?" he grimaced. "You are good, but you don't have it down to perfection yet. My sister could wrap our father around her little finger with a single glance."

"Mine too," I told him. "My dad would be putty in her hands."

"I am afraid of what you will be capable of when you master the techniques," he said with a frown. "You are almost too cute for words now. Couple that with wiles and you will be dangerous. I’ve been told that raising daughters can be a challenge for fathers. I can see why. It is hard to be firm in the face of a cute girl with pleading puppy dog eyes."

I laughed. "I’ll keep working on it. You better learn to deal with it. I think that you have two more daughters in your future."

He just groaned.

----<0>----

Later, during our family dinner, Sandra agreed to the study plan. I called the girls and we agreed to start meeting the next day at my condo. We would be riding home together on the school bus.

Over the next six years the girls and I met at the condo most afternoons and many evenings after school working together to help each other succeed academically. We also supported each other through the joys and heartaches of teen life in our private clubhouse. Each girl had a key to the condo and they would often study there even when I couldn't. At first, our parents were worried about our unsupervised time but as the excellent results started to manifest themselves in near perfect scores and grades their concerns were allayed. We played off each other's strengths and each of us were more successful than we would have been on our own.

And we had fun too. It wasn't all serious study time. Middle school homework did not prove to be much of a challenge when you put your mind to it. While my most challenging class was fashion design that first term the other girls helped me through it, with Susie being the recognized expert. In turn, I helped them decipher the mysteries of math and science. Kelley coached us on language arts. Jenny turned out to be a history fanatic and kept us up to speed in that area.

Throughout my middle and high school years, most of my evenings and weekends were spent at home with my adoptive family. I spent much of the time working on my college coursework, helping Tom with various projects, and best of all talking with Sandra when Tom was otherwise occupied or traveling. Sandra helped me navigate the treacherous waters of teen girl life. She would help me deal with mean girls, predatory boys, difficult social situations, self-esteem issues and other things all girls are faced with as they learn what they need to know to be well adjusted adult women. When the inevitable issues of dealing with husbands surfaced from time to time, I tried to draw on my past experience to help her understand Tom better. I also helped her with my new siblings as they came along. While the girls of the Posse were a tight knit group, Sandra was always my BFF.

As expected, I ended up on the volleyball team instead of the cheer squad. Both Jenny and Kelley made the squad. Susie seemed content to have her afternoons free. She would come support us at the games.

Amanda and one of her sidekicks also made the squad. The cheer coaches quickly picked up on the friction between Jenny and Amanda and put them both on notice that if they couldn’t be teammates, both of them would be dropped from the squad. Which would be too bad since they were the best of the bunch. It seems that their rivalry was driving them to work hard to outperform the other. While they never became true friends, a mutual respect for each other’s cheer abilities was developed and a truce of sorts stayed in place all the way through High School.

Amanda was always a stuck-up rich girl and did her best to stir the cauldron of emotions that are a part of teen girl life. She wasn’t a nice person and more than one girl’s self-esteem was damaged by her emotional bullying. I was not pleased with Amanda’s antics, so I tried, over the years, to balance Amanda’s acid wherever possible by trying to comfort and build up the victims of her arrogance. I made a lot of new friends, both girls and boys, in the process. My maturity, and suggestions from Sandra, helped me to be immune to Amanda’s tricks.

----<0>----

Turning the corner in a back hallway one day on the way to the lunch room, the girls and I came upon a scene that got my ire up.

Amanda and her two sidekicks had a plainly dressed tall scrawny underdeveloped girl backed into a corner. The girl looked like she was about to burst into tears. While Amanda’s little group did not appear to be physically threatening, what I heard must really be damaging the girl’s self esteem.

"... and your clothes," Amanda was saying with disdain. "Did you get those from the Salvation Army? My God, you don’t even know how to brush your hair. How does it feel to be a loser? I bet your parents don’t even care enough about you to get you decent shoes."

The girl’s hair was unruly and her tennis shoes did have a few holes in them. Her clothes were ill fitting and old.

Amanda and her sidekicks were so intent on destroying the self-esteem of the girl that they did not notice us come up behind them.

"What’s the matter, Amanda?" I asked calmly with the rest of the girls arrayed behind me. "Are you feeling insecure again?"

"Go away loser," Amanda snarled at me. "Can’t you see that I’m busy here."

"And," I enquired, "exactly what are you being busy doing?"

"None of your business, loser," she snarled.

"I think that I will make it my business," I calmly informed her. I could sense some uneasiness from the girls behind me. I could also sense relief from the mousy girl in the corner.

"Go away loser," She threatened me, "or you will regret it."

"And why is that?" I asked. "Are you going to go around spreading rumors about me. Maybe that I used to be a man? Or that I’m really thirty-two years old? Or that I have some dread social disease? Who will believe you and what will that do to me if they do? Are you going to pull my hair and scratch my eyes out?"

"You are a freak," she declared looking at me as if I had lost my mind. "You are a loser. You didn’t even make the first cut for the cheer squad. And look at you - plain jeans and a T-shirt. Is that any way to make an impression?"

I shrugged my shoulders, "Maybe I am a freak, but that’s nothing new to me. I don’t think that it will get in the way of me being successful in school. And, most of the girls didn’t make the first cut. So what? It’s just not my sport. There are other things to be good at."

Amanda was getting really red in the face by this point. We had also attracted a group of interested onlookers.

"And my clothing selection," I continued. "Really? What’s that got to do with anything?"

"If you weren’t such a loser, Andi," she pointed out, "you could afford to be more fashionable."

I heard three snickers behind me at that comment. Apparently Amanda was not yet familiar with my fiscal situation. I wasn’t about to correct her impression either. She would hear about it soon enough without any help from me.

"I am as fashionable as I want to be," I shrugged. "Clothes don’t really matter, Amanda."

I pointed to my chest, "It’s what’s in here that counts. Unfortunately, it appears to me that you don’t have what it takes, so who is the loser?"

I think that she would have attacked me on the spot at this point if she could have. The growing crowd was not in her favor so she backed off.

"I sense that you’d like to scratch my eyes out, Amanda," I told her. "Just so you know, only losers resort to violence. It’s a sign that they don’t have any defense for their words or actions. So why don’t you just leave Christine here - It is Christine right?" I asked the girl, who nodded affirmatively, "Why don’t you just leave Christine alone and go home and kick your dog instead."

"This isn’t over, loser," Amanda snarled again as she turned to leave.

"Don’t mess with Christine again," I told her retreating back as she forced her way through the crowd, "or we will have this conversation again."

Christine gave me a hug after Amanda left and as the crowd dispersed.

The girls and I spent a few minutes with Christine trying to undo the damage to her self esteem that Amanda and her cronies had inflicted. We invited her to sit with us at lunch that day. After that, our lunch table became pretty popular, especially with the girls, and a few boys, that we had rescued from bullies. Christine did come from a low income family who had trouble making ends meet. Her clothes did come from charity shops and garage sales. She was already feeling inferior, making her a perfect target for Amanda’s bullying. We helped her to understand that economic status did not define a person’s value. She would always brighten up when I or one of the girls waved to her in the halls after that.

After a few more similar instances, other students started reporting bullying attempts to us and we’d seek out the victim and help them see the bullying for what it was. We’d also looked for opportunities to contain bullies as often as we could. Sandra and I researched bullying and techniques for containing it, with the help of my real mother, and I shared that information with the girls. We did a fairly good job of keeping bullying in check through our middle and high school years with the aid of my real mother and her staff.

After that first incident with Amanda, I heard whispers that I had been designated as the sheriff and the other girls as being my posse with the four of us riding to the rescue of bullying victims and to track down and confront the bullies. We were soon simply known as The Posse. We made a lot of friends, and a few enemies, along the way. We were also kept pretty busy during the middle school years. High school wasn't quite so bad.

Things did not always go smoothly for the Posse. The male bullies were harder to deal with as they were more prone to physical violence. There were a few instances of physical pushing or tripping by various bullies, but we had helped enough people that there was always someone there, boy and/or girl, to stand up for us when we needed the help. We also made sure that none of us ever went anywhere alone if it could be avoided. Having good friends helped to protect us.

On the volleyball front, though I started late that term, I was able to make a presence. I seemed to have a natural ability to anticipate moves by the opposition which made the coaches quite happy and helped us to win a lot of games. I could either be in the right place or direct my teammates to be ready during the games. All that leaping around in cheer practice also helped me in volleyball. It wasn’t long before I became Team Captain, a role I played through most of my middle and high school careers. My height was also a plus. By the time I reached high school I had grown to be 5’ 9", the same height as Sandra. We even started borrowing clothes from each other when I became the same size as her. The added height was enough to help me be a force to be reckoned with on the court. While not the tallest girl on the team, I was tall enough to be a threat and I was an awesome setter. I made lots of new friends on the various teams. We had a couple of bully wannabes on the team, but the real bullies, like Amanda, all gravitated towards the flashier sport of cheerleading. Kelley and Jenny had to deal with them more often than I did on my teams.

I tried my hand at basketball for a while. While I was okay at it, and made the school teams, volleyball was the sport where I really stood out.

Once we got a handle on the bullying, things smoothed out somewhat at the middle school. There was the occasional meltdown and/or confrontation among girls who were learning who they were and how to deal with monthly hormonal swings. We didn't have an answer for that. In fact, our little Posse had our own issues with hormonal meltdowns from time to time, but we were always able to work through it.

All in all, the emotional and social issues of middle and high school were the biggest challenges, which was why I stayed there in the first place. The school work, for the most part, required little effort. School would have been boring if it wasn't for my friends, volleyball, and the social challenges. I was glad that I had my college courses and work with Tom to challenge me intellectually during these years.