guys had staked their claim. They
would say, “I like Zuleika,” and you
knew that meant if you tried
anything with Zuleika there’d be a
fight. In the interest of survival, the
smart move was to stay on the
fringe, stay out of trouble.
At Sandringham, the only time
girls in class looked at me was when
they wanted me to pass a letter to
the hot guy in class. But there was
one girl I knew named Johanna.
Johanna and I had been at the same
school intermittently our whole
lives. We were in preschool at
Maryvale together. Then she left
and went to another school. Then