Paperback Writer

“You know your junior year is often considered to be your most important year.”

As soon as I hear the words come out of Janet Kramer’s mouth, my eyes glaze over and I imagine a noose around my neck. They say your junior year’s your most important year.  It’s all about your junior year.  Everyone says so.  The guidance councilor, the kids in your honors classes, even your family.

Aunt Anna said it.  She must have picked that up in a parenting book somewhere because her total lack of college education doesn’t exactly qualify her as an expert.  Charlotte said it too, part of her older sister to younger sister advice given via the phone in her Sarah Lawrence dorm room.  Because she lived through it, she’s the frigging Dhali Llama of college admissions.  Whatever.

But what really gets me is how everyone says it like it’s the first time you’ve ever heard it; like it’ll be this epiphany on your life’s path or something but I don’t need to be told because I already know.  Your junior year is important, sure, but so is your sophomore year and your freshmen year and maybe even your eighth grade English class in which you got your one and only C minus because you were reluctant to put anything down on paper out of fear of what you might write.  Time will only tell I guess.

Janet starts on the subject of class rank.  She’s building suspense so she can surprise or shock me with the number but it won’t work because I already know that too.  I could ruin the surprise for her and tell her I’m sixth but I don’t.  I wait for her to say it.

“You’re sixth right now, Sarah.”

Right now.  I love that.  Janet’s own special way of telling me there’s still time to improve; that I can still climb the ladder of academic success because being number six out of a group of two hundred isn’t success enough.  Maybe it isn’t for her.  But it is for me and I don’t intend to move either way.

At this school, the first five students in the graduating class give speeches at commencement.  I don’t do public speaking.  I don’t care how good it is for self esteem.  It’s still standing in front of hundreds of people who most likely won’t hear a word I say so why make the effort?  No, six is good.  Six works.

Janet moves on to the SATs.  The real money would be in finding a way to take those for other students.  The paper thing works out just fine but the real money, the ivy league tuition money, is in the SATs.  Just imagine.  All those juniors trying to get into good schools, dependant on a score from some most likely racist standardized test, and clinging to the ideas that you get a few hundred points just for getting your name right and when in doubt, guess B because that’ll never lead you astray.  Think about the money they’d part with in order to relieve some of that stress.  It would be the ultimate SAT prep course.  A nice new crisp Ben Franklin and a few of his friends and viola!  A better SAT score than you could ever hope for and, as an added bonus, you even get your Saturday off to spend somewhere other than a stuffy sweat drenched classroom filled with twenty nine other juniors and seniors who weren’t as smart as you.  It could catch on.

“Sarah?”

“Huh?”

“What are you thinking about?”

“Analogies.”

“No really.”

I shrug.  “It’s an important year.”

And I say who gives a rat’s ass.  Actually, I don’t say that because I think that’s a stupid thing to say.  Why can’t I just say I don’t care?  Why do I have to embellish it?  Not caring is not caring.

Lexi would know what I mean.  She’s smart like that.  Maybe not book smart but what good is being book smart?  Lexi is more life smart.  Kind of ironic for someone who’s supposed to die before she graduates high school.  She doesn’t care about her junior year either.  She just hopes she survives being a sophomore.  Or maybe she doesn’t.  I don’t know really.  We don’t talk about that kind of thing.  It’s probably the reason we’re friends.  Sort of an unwritten, unspoken code.  You can have that with Lexi.  You can’t with Gemma.  It’s all right though.  She’s too involved with the stuff you’re supposed to be involved in when you’re sixteen to notice what’s really going on around her.  That’s the reason we’re friends.

“Sarah?”

“Number two pencils,” I say.

“Sarah, you have-“

“I know.  I get it.  I mean I really do.  It’s an important year and I should probably, you know, attend class at some point during it.”

“Indulge me.  Have you given any thought to college?”

I give lots of thought to college.  Mostly how I don’t even think I want to go but if I utter that sentence in this room, I’ll never see the inside of any other room ever again.  Instead I would be stuck inside the seventh circle of hell, reserved for the betrayers and students who waste their potential, doomed to an eternity of lectures and pep talks.

“No formal decisions but it’s between Harvard and Sally Struthers’s home correspondence school,” I say.

“Sarah-“

“What?  I could train to be a P.I. in the comfort of my own living room.  Can’t do that at Harvard or any ivy league school for that matter.”

“All right, fine,” Janet says, smiling as though she’s been privy to some great joke.  “Go to class.”

I go, immediately picking up my bag and heading to the door.  Just before I manage to escape, she speaks again.

“You know, one of these days I’ll figure you out.”

No she won’t.  I know it instantly but still I pause and bite the inside of my lip just enough so she won’t know I’m doing it.  I look back at her because I am obliged to do so and see her, sitting back in her chair, looking pleased with herself.

No she won’t.