Wait Until Tomorrow by Pat MacEnulty Page B

probably because you’re a freshman,” I tell her as we’re driving away. But later we find out that another freshman was put in the show. It’s baffling.
    Over the next few years Emmy will have her share of successes and crushing disappointments. For the disappointments, I usually trot out the old story about being a finalist in a screenwriting competition and being sure that I was going to Hollywood and then not making it and feeling like the air had been sucked from the planet, or the sun had suddenly expired. And then a couple of weeks later my friend Mikey died and I had to take over his classes and be there with my friends to help them as they grieved and suddenly not getting that award and that new life in Hollywood didn’t matter so much. I don’t think this story helps, but I tell it anyway.
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    Although Emmy’s audition didn’t land her a role in that show, it did garner attention from the school’s young theatrical genius—a senior.
    â€œYour audition rocked my socks,” he told her in the hallway the next day. And as the director of the student-directed play that year, he took her under his wing. Emmy found herself ensconced with the nicest, smartest, most intellectually adventurous group of kids in the school. Hallelujah.
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    But there are still a few bumps in the road.
    One day I pull up to the school to pick up Emmy. She lands in the passenger seat like a wounded bird.
    â€œWhat’s wrong?” I ask her.
    Immediately she begins to sob, heart-wrenching, wheezing, mucus-manufacturing, chest-heaving sobs. The story emerges in fits and starts.
    â€œThere were these boys . . . in one of the classrooms . . . and I had to go in there to get a . . . book I’d forgotten.”

    Blood begins pounding in my head like African drums.
    â€œThey saw me and they started laughing. One of them said . . . ‘It’s that girl . . .Emmy . . . she’s so weird.’ . . . and they kept laughing at me.”
    â€œWhat did you do, honey?”
    â€œI turned and ran!” she screams at me.
    So there are a lot of things worse than being laughed at, but at that moment, with my child sobbing in my car, I’m wanting to go kick some juvenile ass. Rage seethes through me like red-hot lava. I’m pissed off at these unknown boys but even more pissed off with myself for letting her come to this school full of rich assholes. (I know. Many of the parents turn out to be incredibly kind and some of these kids will become her lifelong friends, but none of that is registering in the moment.) I can’t do anything except try to stifle a terrible memory that suddenly surfaces.
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    Our paths only crossed once. She was on a blue bike riding across the newly built wooden bridge that spanned the Willow Branch Creek. She didn’t have a “cool” bike with a banana seat like we did. She was not cool. She was blond and pale and plump. She wore the plaid skirt and plain white shirt of the Catholic School. My friend Carmen and I spied her. There were two of us and one of her.
    â€œFatty Patty,” we taunted. She tried to ride past us, but as soon as she crossed the bridge and was on the concrete walkway, we closed in. “Fat bitch,” we called her. One of us grabbed her bike and the other pushed her and she fell to the ground. Perhaps she skinned her leg or the palms of her hands as she fell. But there she was on the ground while we stood above her. Tears streamed down her face in helpless impotent rage. She screamed at us to leave her alone as she stood and lifted up her bike. Tears streaked her red face. Even as she rode off on her blue bike, pedaling furiously to
escape our insults, I knew she was—at that moment—far superior to us. My throat constricted. I wanted to call out, “I’m sorry. Please. . . .” I doubt I could have articulated what was in my heart. But if I could have, it would have been “forgive