The Freak Observer by Blythe Woolston Page A

graduates, she is going to Pit Crew U. Her mom has promised. Reba wants to be on a NASCAR pit crew, and you don’t get there from here by wishing. That’s why she is still riding the bus with the rest of us mouth breathers instead of driving herself to school. She and her mom are saving up so she can go to Pit Crew U, and every buck they don’t spend on gas matters.
    Reba had her life figured out at fourteen.
    A part of me envies that.
    I sure don’t have life figured out.
    On the other hand, nobody’s figuring my life out for me, either.
    Esther’s life was figured out for her.
    She didn’t have any more to say about it than a heifer.
    I feel ashamed for saying that.
    It makes her seem lumpy and stupid. She wasn’t. Her future just wasn’t up to her.
    To be honest, maybe nobody gets to pick their future. But her situation was a little more intense.
    The list of subjects she couldn’t learn about in school was pretty long. All books have to be preapproved by her father. He doesn’t approve of much. Most of the time, the teacher has to come up with a suitable substitute. History books that cover anything “pre-Biblical” are forbidden, because there isn’t anything pre-Biblical. Dinosaurs are OK as long you assume they could have strolled into town and helped build the pyramids. Health classes when the teacher does sex ed are not allowed. This includes dopey little booklets about your period and sample tampons.
    Esther could take whatever math classes she wanted. Unfortunately, she wasn’t especially good at math and she had no love for it.
    All these rules meant Esther was going to be sitting in the hall or the office most of the time while “forbidden” subjects were covered in the core classes.
    She could always take Family and Consumer Science. She could make chili or biscuits or macaroni and cheese in Culinary Arts. She could set the table and wash dishes and iron shirts—just like at home. She could take Textiles and Apparel as long as the teacher provided patterns for “modest” sewing projects. She could be busy and productive, churning out casseroles and pot holders like a maniac, as long as the teacher never mentioned anything that could be dangerous to her moral values, like women working outside the home.
    To be fair, though, Esther never complained about her life—ever. In all the years I knew her, she never complained.
    Then there was me. I have no idea what I want to do, not really. And nobody was making my choices for me. So when we had to register for classes, I signed up for all the classes I thought sounded like things people who go to a university need to know. People who go to a university don’t make pot holders or rebuild transmissions—that’s what I figured. They can speak French and program computers and do science in a laboratory—that’s what I figured. Nobody told me any different.
    So I just swam through the crowds in the halls to my classes. I did my homework. I got good enough grades. When I wasn’t thinking about an experiment or a test question, I was thinking about what I had to do when I got home. I planned what to make for dinner, and I worried if I remembered to start the load of laundry for Mom before I left that morning.
    I have a tendency to frown and chew on my lower lip when I plan and worry. I didn’t know that then. It turns out that I was making major decisions about my social life without really trying. I found my personal way-to-be: I was a scowling–anti-social–geek–girl. As it turns out, this was not a good place to start on my journey to normal.
    . . .
    Even scowling anti-social geeks aren’t immune to the power of friendship. Friendship is for everybody.
    That sounds uplifting, like a “very special” episode of a stupid sitcom. Friendship! Friendship is for everybody! But exposure to friendship is pretty much an accident of time and place.