Pink Shoes and the Sixth Grade Queen
It was a spring day in elementary school when it happened. The day before, I was just like everyone else. The day after, an outsider. And it all started with Crystal, the queen of the sixth grade.
She was new that year, a phenomenon in our small-town school where everyone knew each other since kindergarten. In movies, the new person is always the outcast, the one who wears last year’s fashions while sitting alone at lunch. But not Crystal. She slid easily into the popular crowd, weaving her way in like a cat rubbing against a bare leg. I still remember the way she looked. Brown hair cut just below her shoulders. A loose t-shirt tied in a knot over skinny jeans pegged at the bottom. White Keds over low profile socks on her feet. I remember because all the girls started looking just like her.
That should have been my first clue. I didn’t own any jeans, but as the daughter and granddaughter of seamstresses, I had plenty of homemade dresses. I wore these often, twirling the bell skirts on the playground while waiting my turn for Double Dutch. I also wore Keds, but they were my favorite color of pink worn over long socks that ended just below the scabs on my knees. One time there’d been a scavenger hunt at school, and everyone wanted to talk to me. Why? Because one of the items was the name of someone wearing pink shoes, and I was the only one in the whole…
