“I’m going to school,” I announced to Dad.

He blinked at me over his newspaper. “No breakfast?”

“No breakfast.” My stomach felt tight and jittery; breakfast was the last thing I wanted.

Dad’s gaze drifted to the table, which was piled high with bread rolls, jam, bananas, milk, a pitcher of orange juice, and boxes of cereal that he had obviously set out for me. “You want breakfast like a monkey?”

“Dad, please.” I never have to go through this routine at my mom’s house.

He picked up a banana. “What do monkeys say?”

When I was a kid, I was really into bananas. I still like them, but when I was in elementary school I basically subsisted on them. My dad thought it was hilarious to make me ask for them by scratching at my armpits, jumping up and down, and saying, “Ooh ooh ahh ahh.” You know. Like a monkey. So I thought it was hilarious as well. Anything that was proven to make my dad laugh made me laugh, too.

Sometime during middle school, it occurred to me that the monkey act might be stupid. But my dad never got over it.

“Ooh ooh ahh ahh?” He tossed the banana from hand to hand.

“I have to go, Dad.” I opened the door.

“All right, kiddo. Knock ’em dead.” He put down the banana and stood up to give me a hug. “You look great.”

And I guess that should have been a warning sign, too, because dads do not have the same taste as teenagers in what looks great.

I walked to the corner to wait for the school bus. Usually I’m running to catch the bus just before it pulls away because I’m cherishing every last moment in my house, where it’s safe, before I have to go face the next eight hours.

But that morning, I made it to the bus stop with minutes to spare. I’m never early to anything, so I didn’t know what to do with myself. I watched cars driving past and people coming out of their duplexes in business suits, off to work. I fought the pounding urge to put on my headphones. All I wanted was to listen to music, but wearing headphones makes you look cut off from the rest of the world, antisocial. I wasn’t going to be antisocial this year. I was decidedly pro-social.

A few other kids showed up at the bus stop, too, but none of them spoke to me. It was so early, though. Who wants to have a conversation so early in the morning?

The school bus finally pulled up, and we all got on. I did not sit in the front. The front is where the losers sit, and I was not a loser anymore. Instead I sat in the middle of the bus, which is a relatively cool place to sit, even though I didn’t feel cool about it. I felt panicked and nauseated about it, but I did it anyway. The bus drove off, while I sat on the peeling olive-green upholstery, taking deep breaths and trying not to think about what happened the other time I sat in the middle of the school bus.

It was last April, and for whatever reason I wasn’t sitting in the very first row, like usual. Chuck Boening and Jordan DiCecca suddenly sat down next to me, and I had been so excited, even though I had to press my body against the window to make room for them both.

It’s not like I was so excited because they are so hot, even though they are. It was just because they were talking to me, looking at me, like I was a real person. They were asking me what I was listening to on my iPod. They seemed genuinely interested. And I lost my head.

“I always see you with your headphones on,” Jordan said, leaning in close, and that was flattering, that anyone cared about me enough to recognize that I always did something.

“Yes,” I said, and did not elaborate that I always had my headphones on so I wouldn’t always have to hear the world around me.

“What are you listening to?” Chuck asked.

“The Cure,” I said.

Jordan nodded. “Oh, cool. I like them.”

And that was exciting, too, that this suntanned soccer champ and I liked the same eighties goth band. I believe that a person’s taste in music tells you a lot about them. In some cases, it tells you everything you need to know. I thought, in that moment, that if Jordan liked the Cure, then he wasn’t the cookie-cutter preppy boy I’d always assumed. And I imagined that he thought, in that moment, that if I liked the Cure, then I wasn’t the tragic loser he had always assumed. We were both more than our labels, and maybe we could be friends and go to concerts together.

So when Jordan went on to say, “Let me see,” I handed him my iPod.

Why? Why did I believe he had to see my iPod to know what I was listening to? I told you, it’s the Cure! You want to know more, I’ll tell you the title of the song! You want to know more, I’ll tell you how many minutes and seconds into it I am! But shouldn’t I have wondered why he needed to actually hold my iPod?

I handed it to him, and he grabbed it and ran off to the back of the bus with it, and with Chuck, and with everyone else on the bus cheering them on.

Was it really everyone else on the bus? Or was that just how I recalled it now, five months later? Some people on that bus must have had something else going on in their lives. Some girl must have recently broken up with her boyfriend. Someone must have been worrying about his bio test. Really, could every single person on that bus have just been caught up in the thrill of seeing my iPod stolen? Really?

It seemed like it, yes.

So what do you think I did? Did I go charging down the aisle of that bus, eyes ablaze, and demand that Jordan and Chuck return my iPod, because it did not belong to them, because they did not deserve to listen to the Cure under any circumstances, let alone under these? Did I use my righteous indignation to reclaim my iPod, and did I emerge from this struggle triumphant, with everyone else on the bus now cheering for me?

No. Instead, I let them run to the back of the bus with my iPod. I let them go. And then I leaned my head against the window and I cried.

Does this seem weak to you? Could you have done better? Fine, by all means, do better. But you don’t understand this: sometimes when you are worn down, day after day, relentlessly, with no reprieve for years piled on years, sometimes you lose everything but the ability to cry.

I got my iPod back eventually. I told my homeroom teacher, and she told the vice principal, Mr. Witt, and he made the boys return my iPod and write letters of apology. Mr. Witt also told the bus driver, who somehow didn’t know—or acted like he didn’t know—what had happened on his bus, captured in his rearview mirror. The bus driver was annoyed with me, because it was my fault he got in trouble, and he barked at me, “From now on, sit up front, where I can keep an eye on you.” Which I did for the last month and a half of freshman year.

So now, on the first day of sophomore year, when I sat near the middle of the bus—to the front of the middle, but still—I felt my whole body trembling, because I knew how big a risk I was taking. The knot in my stomach had tightened, and as the school bus rounded a corner, I seriously worried that I might throw up. Fortunately, I swallowed it down, which is good because vomiting on the first day of school is not cool. Also not cool is rocking back and forth as you sit in a school bus, breathing loudly, and wiping your sweaty palms on your new knockoff designer jeans. But even that is cooler than vomit.

Because my stop is one of the first on the bus’s route, nearly all the seats were empty. They filled up fast, though. New kids got on at every stop, shrieking with excitement over new haircuts, new book bags, new manicures. Chuck and Jordan and their crew were nowhere to be seen, thank God, which implied to me that either they had all been expelled or their families had been relocated to prison camps. Or they just knew someone who had gotten a license and a car.

You might think that the absence of the iPod thieves would have made this a delightful bus ride, but it wasn’t enough. My goal this year was not “see if I can get through a single hour without being tortured.” It was “be normal. Have a few friends. Be happy.”

I wanted someone to sit with me. I could even picture what she would be like. She would be cool, but casually cool. Artistic, with an embroidered shoulder bag and long, messy hair. Maybe she would wear glasses. She would see right through this horrible charade of high school.

But this imaginary girl did not sit down next to me. No one sat down next to me. The bus filled up, stop by stop, until eventually all the seats were taken and three girls were crowded together across the aisle from me, while I was still alone. We’re not allowed to sit three to a seat, and I hoped the bus driver would yell at one of them to move to the empty space next to me. Sometimes he yells about stuff like that. But he didn’t yell, and no one moved, and I sat alone the entire ride to school.

But that’s okay, right? It was early in the morning, remember. It was practically the middle of the night. Who wants to have long, involved conversations with new friends at that hour? No one.

The bus pulled up in front of Glendale High School, and everyone immediately began jostling to get off. You know, because school is just so amazing for them. They can’t wait to get off the bus so they can start passing notes and planning parties and making out with one another.

I got off the bus alone, and I went to homeroom alone, and I got my schedule for the year and didn’t compare it with anyone. The bell rang and I went to Spanish alone, and when the bell rang again I went to Geometry alone. And, again, “alone” is preferable to “molested,” but I wanted more this year. I had spent all summer gearing up for this, and I wanted more.