Musical Chairs
If you had to pin an exact date on it, Phedra Anne Bagley could figure that she had first recognized that she was really truly different on the first day at her new school in a new country. Before, back in Ohio, she had always (rather unjustly) blamed feelings of isolation on her name. It was certainly unusual, and she had often wondered at it, for she was fairly dark complexioned for someone whose name means “bright one.” A name so strange coming from parents named Mark and Susan is certainly even more puzzling. Her younger sister’s name was equally odd, but Maeve had never been taunted like Phedra was. Maeve was simply lucky like that.
“What’s your name?” a kid would ask.
“Phedra,” she would say, very quietly.
“WHAT?”
“Phedra. It’s Greek.”
“You’re from Greece?”
“No. I’m Italian and English and Portuguese and French.”
Then the poor confused child would pull a face and walk away, leaving Phedra to wander along the chain link fence and watch everyone else.
***
To a nine year old, Britain was more or less the at the ends of the earth. Phedra had heard mysterious stories about strange people who ate “biscuits” with tea (a strange beverage that she had avoided ever since she had burned her tongue at age six). So when Mark and Susan tried to gently break it to their two daughters that Mark’s job was transferring the family to London, Phedra was less than pleased.
“But, Mommy, I don’t LIKE tea! They’ll make me drink it everyday and I’ll burn my tongue right off! I won’t be able to taste anymore!” Phedra began to writhe around dramatically on the shag carpet of the living room.
“You won’t have to drink any tea, baby. Don’t roll around like that. Maeve doesn’t mind very much, do you Maeve?”
Five-year-old Maeve only wanted to know if Mister Poogums, her stuffed cat, could come too. Susan consented, and Maeve smiled cheerfully. Phedra, however, was far from satisfied.
***
Phedra’s mouth was rather dry as she walked into her new classroom. Granted, London hadn’t been that bad thus far. It was certainly much larger than her old hometown of Clairsville, but at least no one had offered her any tea yet. Nonetheless, she was still far beyond nervous as she walked as quickly as possible to a randomly selected desk in the classroom, crossed her legs at the ankle, and looked tentatively around the room.
The classroom didn’t seem much different than the ones she had been in back home. Her seat was wooden, securely screwed onto metal legs. The desk matched. Phedra stowed her pencil case inside the desk and shyly began to poke at her nails as the rest of the class straggled into the room.
“Pardon me.”
The words were polite but the tone was not. Phedra looked up from her cuticles to see a curly haired girl in a skirt standing with her hands on her hips. Two other girls stood behind her.
“Huh?” Phedra said, thrown off guard.
“YOU are sitting in MY seat,” said the girl, inserting as much attitude into her words as possible.
“Um…”
“Do you mind?” the girl sneered, squinting up her eyes at Phedra who got out of the seat as quickly as possible and hurried to the other side of the room. She plopped down at a different desk and stared pointedly at a point on the chalkboard, imagining that she was completely invisible. Her red-faced reverie was broken by giggling from the scene of her “crime”. She dared a glance out of the corner of her eye. The curly haired girl had pulled Phedra’s pencil case out of the desk and dropped it onto the floor.
Shaking with suppressed fury and embarrassment, Phedra walked as calmly as possible over to pick up her pencil case. As she approached the case, the girl sat down with a flourish in the desk she had won.
“EEEEEEEEP!”
The wooden seat flew off of the metal legs and hit the floor with a tremendous crash. A confused mass of curls and skirt and splintered wood was at Phedra’s feet, wailing its head off. Phedra was filled with a sort of vindictive pleasure for a few glorious moments until she found her upper arm firmly grasped by the hand of an adult, steered out of the classroom and towards the direction of the Head’s office.
***
About forty-five minutes later, Phedra found herself walking home from school, trying to keep up with her incensed mother.
“She was really mean to me, Mommy.”
“That is ABSOLUTELY not an excuse, Phedra. How on earth did you manage to pull a seat out from under that little girl? You could have broken her tailbone! And then what? We would probably be rushing to the E.R. right now!”
“I didn’t pull the chair out. I didn’t really do anything,” muttered Phedra sullenly.
“ANYTHING?” Susan stopped walking, “Then why was Rosy sitting on the floor crying her eyes out? The chair moved on its own free will?”
“Um,” Phedra mumbled. She herself wasn’t sure what had happened. She hadn’t really touched the chair, but she didn’t think that the chair had moved on its own free will either.”
“You’d better explain yourself young lady!”
“I can’t.”
“Did you or did you not cause little Rosy’s seat to come out from under her?” sighed Susan, trying to maintain control of her tone.
Phedra didn’t know what to say, but decided that it would probably be in her better interests to appease her mother. After a deep breath she replied, “Yeah,” wondering if she would ever be able to look a student from that school in the eye again, and if what had happened would mark her as different for the rest of her now-British life.