There were about nineteen hundred kids at Whitney Young, and from my
point of view they appeared universally older and more confident than I’d ever
be, in full command of every brain cell, powered by every multiple-choice
question they’d nailed on the citywide standardized test. Looking around, I felt
small. I’d been one of the older kids at Bryn Mawr and was now among the
youngest of the high schoolers. Getting off the bus, I’d noticed that along with
their book bags a lot of the girls carried actual purses.
My worries about high school, if they were to be cataloged, could mostly be
filed under one general heading: Am I good enough? It was a question that dogged
me through my first month, even as I began to settle in, even as I got used to the
predawn wake-ups and navigating between buildings for class. Whitney Young
was subdivided into five “houses,” each one serving as a home base for its
members and meant to add intimacy to the big-school experience. I was in the
Gold House, led by an assistant principal named Mr. Smith, who happened to
live a few doors down from my family on Euclid Avenue. I’d been doing odd
jobs for Mr. Smith and his family for years, having been hired to do everything
from babysitting his kids and giving them piano lessons to attempting to train
their untrainable puppy. Seeing Mr. Smith at school was a mild comfort, a bridge
between Whitney Young and my neighborhood, but it did little to offset my
anxiety.
Just a few kids from my neighborhood had come to Whitney Young. My
neighbor and friend Terri Johnson had gotten in, and so had my classmate
Chiaka, whom I’d known and been in friendly competition with since
kindergarten, as well as one or two boys. Some of us rode the bus together in the
mornings and back home at the end of the day, but at school we were scattered
between houses, mostly on our own. I was also operating, for the first time ever,
without the tacit protection of my older brother. Craig, in his ambling and smiley
way, had conveniently broken every trail for me. At Bryn Mawr, he’d softened
up the teachers with his sweetness and earned a certain cool-kid respect on the
playground. He’d created sunshine that I could then just step into. I had always,
pretty much everywhere I’d gone, been known as Craig Robinson’s little sister.
Now, though, I was just Michelle Robinson, with no Craig attached. At
Whitney Young, I had to work to ground myself. My initial strategy involved
keeping quiet and trying to observe my new classmates. Who were these kids
anyway? All I knew was that they were smart. Demonstrably smart. Selectively
smart. The smartest kids in the city, apparently. But wasn’t I as well? Hadn’t all of