After River by Donna Milner

compliments all the next day.
    Even Elizabeth-Ann Ryan couldn’t help but comment on my mother’s beauty. ‘Your mom looks just like a blonde Jacqueline Kennedy,’ she said to me as I drank from the water fountain a few days later. I straightened up and wiped the water from my mouth, but before I could respond she added, ‘You must be adopted.’
    It took a moment for the implication of her words to sink in. I forced the smile to remain on my face. ‘Must be,’ I said and turnedaway. Who needed friends? I told myself it didn’t matter. But looking back, I realize that my alienation in elementary school was, in large part, my own doing. I did nothing to encourage friendships. I either competed with the other girls or I ignored them. The games that drew them together, the skipping, hopscotch, and Barbie doll fantasies, held no interest for me. I told myself they weren’t important. I had Boyer, our word games in his room up in the attic, and books. And when Boyer was eighteen and became the school bus driver, I got to sit right behind him while the other girls watched with envy as my handsome brother, his eyes smiling in the rear-view mirror, talked to me about my day.
    Because of Boyer, school for me was only about learning, about soaking up knowledge so I could go home and impress him. By the time I reached grade six I was a serious ‘teacher’s pet’, shunned by the rest of the class. I had no friends, did not know how to make friends, and I didn’t care. At least I’d pretended I didn’t care for so long that I believed it.
    So when Elizabeth-Ann–who was easily the prettiest and most popular girl in school–came to me a few weeks after we entered high school and said, ‘Want to come to a sleep-over at my house on Saturday night?’ I had no idea how to respond.
    Something had shifted over that summer. My long hair was still pulled back and plaited. I still wore the same clothes as last year, yet the teasing had stopped. It was as if the world left behind last June belonged in another dimension and the slate was wiped as clean as the brand new blackboards of our junior high classrooms. The girls who entered grade seven that September looked and behaved far different from the girls who had left elementary school a few months before. Barbie dolls and skipping ropes were forgotten. Poofy hair and nylon stockings had replaced bobby socks and braids.
    They had discovered boys. More exactly, they had discovered my brothers. Morgan and Carl were both in grade eight now and as inseparable as ever. Mom swore that Morgan failed grade six on purpose so that he wouldn’t have to move on to high school two years before Carl. It wasn’t hard to figure out that they were the reason for my sudden popularity.
    â€˜Everyone’s coming at eight,’ Elizabeth-Ann said, smiling at me with a look that said how grateful I should be for this invitation.
    â€˜Why?’ I asked not sure what kind of joke this was going to turn into.
    â€˜Why what?’
    â€˜Why would I want to sleep at your house?’
    â€˜It’s a pyjama party,’ she said sweetly, as if she had included me all along and couldn’t understand my reluctance. She named some other girls who would be there. ‘Come on, it’ll be fun.’
    â€˜I’ll think about it,’ I told her before I made my way over to the school bus.
    Except for Widow Beckett’s niece from Vancouver, Judy Beckett, who visited her each summer, I had no one I could really call a girlfriend. And even Judy only came out to the farm during the day. I had never been away from home overnight, never slept anywhere but in my own bed. It was hard to imagine sleeping in the same room as a group of girls.
    â€˜Why, Natalie, that’s nice,’ Mom said when I told her about the invitation as we set the table for dinner that night. ‘Pyjama parties can be fun.’
    â€˜What do