I wear a smile like armor.
I am twelve. It is my first day at my new school. My father recently received a highly influential and loaded patent deal, which pushed us up a few tax brackets and landed him in the good graces of some of the best and brightest tech moguls of the 21st century, hence the new private school for me.
Behave, I remind myself. Smile. Be pretty. You are an example for your family.
I can no longer afford to reflect poorly on my family. The public eye is on us.
No more ripped-up jeans. No more dirty hair. No more jamming with my band in the garage (but the violin is still alright; it's classical, ladylike, proper). Not that we were getting anywhere, anyway; a bunch of eleven- and twelve-year-olds in the suburbs? No. Perhaps it was better off this way.
No more eating like a pig. No more wrestling boys in gym class.
And most certainly no more kissing my best friends.
Not that anyone else knew about that.
After all, Nina certainly wasn't telling.
I walk into my new classroom, all bouncy blonde hair and big brown eyes, dimples in my smile and little freckles on my cheeks. I scan the room. Assess the threats. From now on, I am in enemy territory, and my ammunition is my smile and my pretty face. Fortunately, it's unlimited, and I'll never have to reload. Use freely and often.
"Everyone, we have a new student today! Let's all welcome Dana Carter to the class."
///
I am thirteen, and it is my second school year here.
The hierarchy has been established with, of course, me at the top. The next level down is my two best friends; Lavender was previously at the top of the social pyramid, before I displaced her, although she harbors no ill will towards me for my advances. Middle school is a never-ending power play, particularly in this high-class neighborhood among the daughters of senators and CEOs, and we both understand this. My second best friend, Alexis, was previously unpopular; a scholarship student, an African American girl, and ridiculously good at math, she was an outcast, until I plucked her from obscurity and gave her the social makeover every middle-school girl wishes for.
She does my math homework for me.
Not that I need it. When I am home alone, I study trigonometry online. I am light-years ahead of this tiny little middle-school class, but nobody could ever know this—a girl can't seem too smart. I have already aroused suspicion through my uncommonly sharp debate strategies in Social Studies, my uncanny prowess on the violin, my consistent 100 percents in English class; I do not want to be known as the brainbox.
More specifically, my mother does not want me to be known as the brainbox.
I am thirteen, but she is already worried about me being marriageable.
My family is... shall we say, old-fashioned. My father is the breadwinner; my mother stays at home, cooks, and cleans. Oh, my mother shall say, gaily, she could get a job, but who would want to? She just finds domestic bliss so fulfilling.
And it is only proper, after all. Old values are the best, after all.
More and more, the Dana I present to the outside world feels markedly different from the Dana inside of me. Outside-Dana smiles when I want to snarl; laughs when I want to cry; acquiesces when I want to rage and scream and fight. Outside-Dana even presents herself to my parents, these days; it's easier than fighting with them.
My father has never been prouder. My mother is so delighted that I finally outgrew my "tomboy phase."
I smile and nod and internally seethe.
