Language Arts for the Gifted Child
Nina Sabak


There is something in you too dark to name. Like swallowing bees. You are eleven going on twelve, and the whole world has shifted by halves. Your skinned knees are bloodied and wild, your skin greasy, hips sore. This, your mother tells you, is growing up. The whole world has been in on the ruse: your entire childhood you thought maybe you would never change.
 
Right now, a sibling would come in handy. A brother, even. Someone older, a survivor to interrogate, a precedent-setter.
 
I’ll tell you when you’re older is beginning to sound like a threat.
 
God save eleven-year-old girls. You are too old to wrestle your best friend anymore, now that he can throw you, too old also to plead for a new Barbie house, too young to know what else to ask for. You set your stuffed animals aside. Teenagers sleep alone. Then you pile them back on the bedspread in the middle of the night, thinking, this is too lonely.
The girl who sits in front of you in class has cut off her hair. This happens at a sleepover you weren’t invited to. The story is that Cassie did it herself, after the pizza and the first movie, and everyone crowded into the bathroom to watch. You can’t blame them; when you see Cassie’s bare neck on Monday, your heart beats double time.
 
Matthew Bernie walks down your row during language arts, when everyone is supposed to be reading silently from the textbook, and he leans in over Cassie’s shoulder and whispers dyke so loudly that everyone but the teacher can hear it.
 
That night you consider asking your mother what a dyke is. You are sitting at the kitchen island, watching her cut sweet potatoes into strips, and the air is comfortable and buzzy with possibility. Your mother would probably know. But it’s a bad word, you have guessed that much, so instead you excuse yourself and slip out to the hallway, where your parents keep the dictionary.
 
Here is what the dictionary tells you: An embankment constructed to prevent flooding, keep out the sea, etc.
 
You wonder how Cassie could ever do that.
 
-
 
Your best friend is a boy named Lex. You have known each other since always, and every Halloween you coordinate your costumes. This year you’re Han Solo and Princess Leia. Last year you were Thing 1 and Thing 2.
 
Everyone comes to school dressed up for Costume Day. As Princess Leia, you wear a white robe and boots. The robe billows a little bit whenever you walk down the hallway, and you feel vast and important. This lasts until sixth period history, when you encounter another Leia and see her costume, which is hand-sewn and doesn’t look cheap at all. Her hair is long enough to do the buns for real. You had to wear a wig. Your scalp sweats underneath it.
 
“I like your boots,” you say, aiming desperately to please.
 
“Thanks,” she says, and turns away. Everyone is watching.
 
Lex pushes you into a pile of leaves on the way home, and you hit him in the shoulder as hard as you can, but he doesn’t even flinch. Your knuckles are sore for days.
 
 Someone needs to teach you how to throw a punch.
 
-
 
Cassie comes to school with pink hair on the day that choir parts are handed out. When your father picks you up from practice afterwards, he drives past her, and he says, “Where are that girl’s parents?”
 
The Christmas concert is just over a month away. The sixth-grade choir always performs for the whole school, which is only two grades, but still. Parents are welcome. Parents take this very seriously.
 
In your backpack you have printouts of “Up on the Housetop,” “Silver Bells,” and “Jingle Bell Rock.” The PTA is mad that there aren’t any songs about Jesus. Your dad is part of the PTA, so he’s mad too, and he tells you about it on the drive home. “Up on the Housetop,” he says, isn’t even good music.
           
The gossip at school is that Cassie dyed her hair with Kool-Aid and conditioner. Her best friend Becky helped. Becky’s limp blonde hair has a blue streak in it now, so this is probably true.
 
Then again, the gossip at school is that you and Lex are a couple, so who knows? “You had matching costumes,” a girl in gym class points out later that week. It’s the basketball unit and you’re practicing chest passes in groups of four.
 
“Oh, you so have a thing for him,” one of the other girls says.
 
This makes you laugh, but you catch yourself. They want you to say yes. You don’t know what they’d do with no. “No comment,” you say, and pass to her a little harder than is strictly necessary.
 
For the record, you don’t like “Up on the Housetop” either, but you would never tell your father that now.
 
-
           
​
Right before Thanksgiving, the other Leia switches into your choir section. She has a good voice and takes private lessons. You hate her.
           
By this point Cassie’s hair has grown out a little and the dye has washed out. The curl is starting to come back in. She is in choir too –a soloist like Princess Leia. Next to those long braids, Cassie looks sort of like a boy.
           
The latest gossip is that Matthew Bernie is going out with Leia, whose name is actually Amy. They sit together at lunch and hold hands.  In language arts, everyone has to write a poem for a writing contest, and Matthew does his about Amy. You and Lex agree that this is just, like, total barf.
           
Your mother leaves notes inside your backpack for you to find. Your father picks you up from choir practice without complaining once. This could be so much worse. Even when you decide to steal your mother’s razor to shave your legs one afternoon and end up stripping a whole ugly streak down your calf, even when she finds you in the bathroom putting on the seventh of ten Band-Aids – even then, remember, it could be so much worse.
 
-
 
On the day of the Christmas concert, you put on your nice green dress and thick white tights and tie your hair back with a sparkly scrunchie. The scrunchie was in your Christmas stocking last year, and it’s lucky.
 
When the announcement comes over the PA for all choir members to report to the auditorium, you follow Amy and Cassie out of math class. They don’t see you; they’re too busy ignoring each other. You are happy and invisible. Your shoes are silent on the buffed tile floor.
           
Lex is waiting down the hall, and you wave, but he doesn’t see you either. He is watching for Cassie. She goes to him, and she slips her hand inside his hand, and they walk like that the whole way to the auditorium’s double doors. They are talking about something, laughing, and of course this is how it is, of course, of course, of course.
           
“Where are my sopranos?” the choir director says from the stage. “Sopranos, over here. Altos, line up by the wall.” A few parents are already here, though not yours. A few siblings, too. Right now, a sibling would come in handy, someone younger, someone to make whatever you’re feeling into a lesson to teach later.
           
There is some confusion in the alto section, and the choir director has to climb down from the stage and use her outside voice. You take the moment to sneak a look at Cassie, three down from you on the right and one row ahead. Someone has bobby-pinned the stray hair away from her face; she has a neck like a swan and freckles on her shoulders. She is mouthing the words to her solo.
           
Then you look back to the loose crowd of boys waiting to be organized, and Matthew Bernie catches your attention, holds up two fingers in a V in front of his face, and flicks out his tongue. Your face burns. You don’t understand, but you do. The definition you found all those weeks ago was incomplete – how can you say something is meant to keep out the sea without ever explaining what the sea is?
           
“Okay, gentlemen, pull it together,” the choir director says. Only Lex is listening. This time next year, he will be someone neither of you knows.
           
“Excuse me,” you say, and you start pushing your way down the row.
 
-
 
Cassie isn’t facing the right way and doesn’t notice you coming. Have you ever even spoken before? Up close you can see all the flyaways over her temples and ears, and she smells like cinnamon.
 
“Hi,” you say.
 
“What?” she says, turning. “Oh. Hi.”
           
You’re supposed to say something else here, but instead you stare at her freckled shoulder and mumble, “I sit behind you in homeroom.”
           
“I know,” she says. “You’re Sarah, right?”
           
The choir director is shuffling her music, and soon she’ll turn to you all and begin the warm-ups and scales. There is barely any time. “I just wanted to tell you good luck for your solo,” you say.
           
Cassie’s face is hard to read. “Thanks,” she says. And that’s all. Now you will return to your row and wait for everything to begin.
           
But as you turn there is a hand on your arm, a warm hand, with nails painted pink and glittery. She must have done the manicure herself because the polish spills over onto the skin of her fingers. Cassie says, “You too.”
           
You will remember this.
           
You are eleven going on twelve and your heart is wild in its bloodied mess, and you climb the bleachers back up to your spot and scan the crowd. Your parents have come and are standing by the entrance, searching for seats. They are so small in their winter coats. It’s so loud but you think you can hear your father’s voice. You think you could hear it anywhere.
 
When they look up, you’ll wave. When they see you. Now they’ll see you. Now they’ll see you. Now.

About the Author:
​Nina Sabak just received her MFA in fiction from the University of Pittsburgh. Her fiction has appeared in The Rumpus and Bartleby Snopes, and in 2012 she published a chapbook of poetry, Naming the Mountain, through the Poetry Society of New Hampshire. She blogs ​here and tweets here. 

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