The Reinvention of Bessica Lefter by Kristen Tracy

But I did. I reached into the machine’s tray and took my cookies, and instead of going to the cafeteria and figuring out how to make friends, I walked to the row beside the stairs where some of the alt crowd ate. And I stood at the ledge. All by myself. And opened my cookies. And I ate them too.
    I didn’t talk to the alt crowd. That was part of what made them alts. They didn’t talk to each other. And as I ate my cookies, I didn’t try to fool myself into thinking my day was going to get better. I ate my cookies and tried to convince myself that I wasn’t going to die.
    And in my after-lunch class, geography, we weren’t studying beaches like I’d hoped, because Mr. Hoser, my geography teacher, was obsessed with polar regions. He wore a tie with a picture of a glacier on it and promised us a virtual field trip to Antarctica, brought to us by NASA TV. And while some kids clapped, I did not find this to be a thrilling concept. Public speaking was pretty awful too. Mrs. Moppett kicked off class by telling everybody that our major assignment of the semester would be to give a speech in front of the whole class on an assigned topic about politics. And the psycho-bully Redge Marzo was in there with me again. And the only good thing I can say about that particular psycho-bully was that he managed to hang on to the pen I gave him in nutrition, so I didn’t have to give him two pens a day.
    And my last class of the day, PE, which I knew was going to be puke-bad, was just as terrible as I had feared. My PE teacher, Ms. Penrod, took her job very seriously. Ms. Penrod used to be an Olympian. She’d thrown a shot put in the games in Korea, but she hadn’t won any medals. And I could tell right away that she was still bummed outabout it. And would most likely punish us for an entire semester. Also, the PE dress code required us to wear school colors. Which meant I was going to have to track down a pair of either purple or gold pants.
    When the last bell finally rang and I went out to catch the bus, I was so tired that I thought I was going to fall asleep and miss my stop. But that didn’t happen. Because I sat near the front and watched closely out the window for my house. When I saw it, I jumped up. I think I frightened the person next to me, but I didn’t really care. I hurried off the bus and ran inside and felt relieved that my first day of middle school was over.

wasn’t expecting my mom to be home. She always worked at the podiatrist’s office until three o’clock. But she was home! As soon as I walked through the door, she started taking pictures of me.
    “We didn’t get a shot of you this morning,” she said. I put my hands up and blocked my face. I was not in the mood for picture taking.
    “Can’t we do this tomorrow morning?” I asked. “When my pixie is fresh?” I pulled my hands down and she clicked another picture.
    “Okay. Are you hungry?”
    I nodded and slipped off my backpack and went to the kitchen, where I found my favorite sandwich already made. Turkey and pickles on sourdough.
    “This one looks great,” my mom said, showing me her camera.
    I glanced at the screen. Inside the small square I looked very tired and surprised, and my pixie looked totally flat.
    “That’s the first time I’ve seen what my hair looks like in a picture,” I said. “It’s short. I mean, I got totally snipped!”
    My mother nodded. “Luckily, it’s cute.” She took her camera back. “How was your day?”
    And I thought about crying and telling her that it was a bummer, but I was starving. So I just grabbed my sandwich and started eating.
    “Tell me about your classes!” my mom said.
    But I didn’t feel like reliving my day at all. I felt like forgetting it.
    “Okay,” my mom said. “Eat first and we can talk about it later.”
    I nodded.
    “Your grandma sent you a postcard from South Dakota!” my mom said as she poured me a second glass of milk.
    I swallowed. “Why is Grandma writing me from South