Supervision

I hadn’t remembered how high the ceilings of the house were, how the wooden floors echoed. I peeked in the doorway of the first room to my left: empty, except for bookshelves and a piano. The room on the right, the dining room, had a heavy oak table in the center, drapes drawn shut over the windows, and a fireplace, the marble mantle cluttered with candles. There were candles on the floor in the hallway too, all dusty and blackened, burned down to nubs.

A ballroom stood on the third floor, I remembered now—I had roller skated there. A big staircase led up to it, but I kept walking down the hall. I came to a smaller set of stairs, the servant steps. To my right was the kitchen. To my left was the sitting room where my grandmother waited for me, watching television with the sound off.

“Grandma?” I whispered.

Blue light flickered over her face. It was her. She was the same, only shrunken, only not speaking to me for some reason.

“I’m here,” I said.

She didn’t say anything.

“Esmé? Jennifer’s daughter?”

It hurt to say my mother’s name. Not hurt exactly. It felt forbidden, like a spell. It felt like I shouldn’t speak her name aloud. I wished I hadn’t. I felt dizzy, like I might be sick.

Her face unfroze at the sound of my and my mother’s names. She looked around, concentrating, as if she was listening hard. I thought she was going to speak. But she only reached over to the end table, picked a phone, saw that nobody had called or was calling, and turned the phone facedown again. She never met my eyes.

I turned away. “I’ll just go get my bags,” I said.

I lugged them up the main stairs because I didn’t want to have to face her again. Was she mad at me already? What had my sister said to her about me?

On the second floor, there were four closed doors, and two open ones. The front room held a white canopied bed. There were magazines and old, moldy books on the night table, and house slippers underneath it—my grandmother’s room.

That left the smaller room for me. I was relieved to see the bed had sheets on it, a pink quilt folded at the foot, towels draped over a chair. I opened the two doors in the room to find a closet, and a bathroom with a tub ringed in rust.

Had this been my room? I set my suitcases down, opened the drapes at the window, and looked out. The room faced the backyard. Beyond the old barn, there was a pond, round and still. I hadn’t remembered that, either.

Exhausted, too worn out to be hungry, I climbed into bed and pulled the quilt around me. I didn’t bother getting undressed, or calling the Firecracker to tell her I was here. Not home. I was not home. I would never say that word again.

I was too nervous to sleep beyond the first beam of sun breaking through the drapes. Despite weak water pressure, the shower worked. I combed out my long hair, pulled on a new shirt and jeans. The door to my grandmother’s bedroom was closed, and downstairs, there was no sign of her. I remembered her working nights, remembered the Firecracker making dinner, and grumbling about it. I found a bowl and cereal in the cabinet, milk in the fridge. I ate standing up over the sink, then washed and dried my dishes, putting them away where I had found them.

I wouldn’t bother my grandmother. I wouldn’t be a burden; she wouldn’t notice me at all.

The school bus stop was at the bottom of the driveway, my sister had told me, and a handful of kids already stood out there by the road. One of the boys looked up as I approached. One of the girls was studying a book, and another boy tried to knock it out of her hands.

She snatched it away. “I’ve got a test.”

“New girl today,” the boy said.

I adjusted my bag. I just wanted to get this over with. “I’m Esmé,” I said.

“Weird name,” he said.

“Weird family,” a second girl said.

“Do you think she’s a witch like her grandma?” the boy asked.

I held my bag tighter. “My grandma’s not a witch,” I said.

“All I know is,” the girl with the book said, “this girl got kicked out of her old school. She’s like, a juvenile delinquent or something. A total freak.”

“I am not,” I said.

But the boy just lunged for the girl’s book again. They wrestled, the girl smacking the boy on the shoulder, the other girl ignoring them, examining the split ends of her hair. I stood at the back of the bus line, hating this place, and hating my grandmother and my sister for bringing me here.

When the bus came, I sat in the first empty seat, and no one sat with me or talked to me. When we stopped and the bus emptied, I had to fight to get out into the aisle; kids kept pushing past me, and the driver almost closed the door.

I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to check in, but I waited around the office for what seemed like forever, until after the first warning bell had sounded and the office cleared. Then I followed the late kids out into the hall. No one asked if they could help me or what I was doing. I didn’t bother finding my locker. I pulled the print-out of my schedule from my pocket, and was searching for room numbers when the tardy bell rang.

Someone sprinted around a corner and plowed into me.

I was knocked to my knees. My bag shot off my back and onto the floor, the zipper splitting open. The boy who had knocked me down pushed himself up with a squeal of his sneakers and took off. “Hey,” I said. “I’m fine. Thanks.”

He dashed around the next corner and was gone.

“Jerk,” I said.

In the empty hallway, I stood and gathered my stuff. I collected the loose papers that had fallen from the folder that was supposed to travel with me to the office: my permanent record from New York. Words leapt out at me from the file: distracted … disrespectful … loner … antisocial … underachiever … daydreamer … lives in a fantasy world …

The words began to blur. No, I would not cry. Not on the first day of school. I shoved the pages back into the folder. Somehow, I found my classroom. A science lab. Students perched at tables, looking bored. There was one empty stool so I took it.

“All right,” the teacher said. She looked up. She was going to make some sort of announcement, introduce me, something embarrassing.

I tensed, waiting for it.

The door shot open and a boy came in, looking flustered. He headed straight for me.

He ran up to me. Then he sat on me—or tried to, sat right on my stool, on my lap. I pushed him as hard as I could, and he tumbled off the stool onto the ground. He looked up, his face blanching.

The class laughed, everyone at once. The teacher rolled her eyes and told them to be nice, told the boy to be more careful. He stood and reached for my stool again, and I backed up, scooting the stool with me.

“Sit in the back, Ron,” the teacher said. “I don’t think that chair likes you.”

“The chair?” I said. “Hello? I have a name.”

But Ron moved away, and no one asked me what my name was. The teacher didn’t do an announcement, or give me a book. She didn’t even take roll. She started the class like nothing was different. “So,” she said. “Today we’re going to talk about something that actually matters to us, matters to our history here in Wellstone.”

“History matters?” some boy said.

“The locomotive,” the teacher said. “You might be surprised to learn the steam locomotive has something in common with an aircraft carrier. Anyone know what?”

I looked around. No one knew my name here yet. No one knew my nickname—Miss Wrong—or had given it to me, thinking they were being smart, thinking they were being new. Slowly I raised my hand.

“The steam locomotive and an aircraft carrier. What do they have in common?”

I pumped my hand. I waved it.

“Anyone?” the teacher said.